Felipe Smith: I went back home and I just worked. On top of that, I had friends that lived in Tokyo. They came and rang the doorbell at around midnight. But that turned out to be a good thing, because they slept on my bed. I had nowhere to sleep, so I had to keep drawing. (laughs)

So by the time 11:30 in the morning rolled around, I had drawn 35 thumbnails, I just had five to go. I hadn't slept. I had been drinking energy drinks all night and I was already feeling lightheaded, but I was almost done.

I just took the thumbnails, went straight to the publisher and did the last five at the office because I knew I couldn't fall asleep with so many people around me. I literally did the last five pages in front of him.

Q: And this was all done in a period of... maybe 24 hours?

Felipe Smith: Well, I started at midnight on a Sunday night, and then Monday I had that meeting in the afternoon.

Q: Wow.

Felipe Smith: So I made the meeting with my 40 pages. By the time I handed it to him, I was tired. My editor, he looks at them and he made this really serious face. It looked scary, especially when I wasn't sure if my stuff was good or not. He looked at the thumbnails once, and then he laughed, and I thought, 'Oh, no, I just showed him some horrible stuff.' Then he looked over them again, looked at my agent and told her, 'Yes, I want to work with this guy.'

My agent was really happy. They're like shaking me, and saying 'Yay! Great!' I just didn't know if I'd heard what I heard or if I was just tired.

I felt sick to the stomach. The thing is, I was happy that I was given a chance to have my story published in this magazine monthly. But I also knew what was coming up: a lot more of what I had just done the night before, but over a longer period of time.

I didn't approach this project as just a way to get published in Japan you know? To me, what's really important is really integrating myself into the industry there as an artist. Just having one or two series is not that big there. There are artists there that have series that go on forever. There are artists who work over 30 years and just doing the same thing. And not only monthly, but weekly, they're doing 20 pages a week. So that's kind of the real big league, when you have to draw stories weekly, not just monthly.

It takes a little bit more than just getting one of the biggest publishers to put out your stuff to get recognition in the Japanese comic book industry. I think the people who get the recognition are the ones that are consistently publishing without a lot of breaks in between series; their work is just always out there, you know? So it's really, really competitive.

For me, that really counts — when you get to that point. So there's a lot of work ahead, but this is just kind of the first step.

Q: When I first heard about how much work you had to put into drawing this series, I was amazed. I heard that you literally got sick; that doing this amount and this pace of work literally exhausted you — and you seem like a guy who normally has a LOT of energy to spare.

Felipe Smith: Oh, yeah. After I finished my thumbnails and my editor said he wanted to work with me, we went out to have dinner. He looked at me and said, 'Okay, you're pretty built guy, so that's good because that means you can draw a lot.' I thought, 'What does that have to do with anything?' (laughs)

The thing with the deadlines is that you need to come through with the work when you're supposed to, even when you're sick, and if you don't, you're going to be really messing up their schedule and their magazine. They're planning for a certain number of pages from every artist every month, so if you miss your deadline, then they have to find somebody else to do more pages. It's a really big problem if you don't meet your deadlines.

If you miss a deadline here, people are a little more lenient. Release dates get pushed back all the time, and readers here are used to that. They're willing to wait a little longer.

But part of doing things the right way in Japan is always getting things out on time, because the readers are relying on that. Because the readers have so many things to pick from to read, and there's always new stuff coming out, it's real easy for them to forget about certain series or certain artists if they're not out there. The artists that last the longest in the industry are the ones who are consistently out there.

IN A MULTI-CULTURAL WORLD, WHAT MAKES MANGA... WELL, MANGA?

Q: One thing I find really fascinating about your style, and Peepo Choo in particular, is it's just so in your face sometimes — you take no prisoners! There's this scene in the comic book shop where you're basically saying 'f**k you' to both Japanese otaku nerds and American comic book nerds for being so obsessed about comics! (laughs)

Felipe Smith: Well, I don't know if it's saying that! (laughs) Well, the thing is this: I'm pretty much knowledgeable about both sides of these two comic book worlds, you know?

I was saying this back in 2006, when I was doing MBQ and people were telling me, 'This isn't manga, because you're not Japanese.' I even did a video about it in Argentina, in a book store.

Q: What did you say in this video?

Felipe Smith: I just said, 'Hey I've got this series, it's got black and white art and it gets really good reviews. I've got a lot of Japanese friends who like it a lot, but it really doesn't get any exposure in the U.S. People just say that it's not manga.'

I told this to a bookstore owner who is really knowledgeable about comic books. He has two bookstores, he had a TV show where he went all over the world interviewing artists from everywhere: Japan, the States, Italy, Spain, France.

He told me, 'Well, it's very simple, you know? People who want to read manga want to read things that are done in Japan because they believe that that's the true manga and it can't be done by anybody else.' He also said, 'You're not Japanese, you can't do genuine manga, just because of where you're from.' He said, 'You're American, so you do comics. You were raised in Argentina, so you can do historietas because these are things that you know about,' Now, I don't believe in any of that, at all.