“I’m glad you approve,” I say. “I’m parked around the corner.”
She follows me out, saying goodbye to Joe. And then she takes my arm and smiles up at me. “I definitely approve.”
Yep. I am fucked.
* * *
I’VE ALWAYS KNOWN Lola to grow quiet when she’s thinking about something that’s troubling her. I assumed that the reason she doesn’t tend to talk out her problems the way Harlow and even Ansel do is that she wants to take the time to sort through it on her own first. But when she brings up the conversation with Austin in the car, and wants me to list some of the pros of his ideas, I lock up, wondering whether the reason she likes to take so long before talking about things is that she doesn’t always trust her own judgment.
“I’m not sure I could argue the merits of either suggestion,” I hedge, merging onto the 5 North freeway.
“Just for the exercise,” she says. “Why might it be better for Razor to be from another planet?”
I sit quietly, thinking on the question. But my mind reflexively fights it; they’re both shit ideas. Quinn shouldn’t be made into a sexual creature. Razor isn’t an alien. There’s no reason to change it.
The tires trip easily over the road and Lola stares out her window while she also thinks about it. It’s these easy moments where I seem to plummet deeper in love with her.
“I guess it could allow them to do something cooler visually?” she muses after a few minutes of silence. “Some more creative way to flash back to his life before without just a panel shift.”
Shrugging, I say, “I guess, but Razor’s alternate time in the book is just as visually different in flashbacks as another planet would be. I mean, the way you do it is unique, but time shifts are done elsewhere, too. The Multiversity collapses all parallel timelines into the Hypertime.”
“I know, but maybe that argues Austin’s case. Multiversity collapses all of the DC timelines to explain how they all could exist. Maybe the idea of parallel time is easier to grasp there because people want a way to reconcile all the various takes on the same characters.”
“I think yours is simpler,” I say, adding, “more elegant, I mean. It starts with the idea of a parallel time loop. It doesn’t use it to explain things in hindsight.”
She hums, nodding at this. “I guess I’ll just need to hear what they say. It’s so easy to do something when it’s just me and a book and my ideas. It’s different when I expose it all to this larger collective consciousness.”
This thought lands heavily between us. She’s going to let Austin and the screenwriter try to convince her? And maybe she should. But I can’t help but feel like I wouldn’t. Like a man in her position maybe wouldn’t.
“It’s not because you feel cowed by him?” I ask her.
Lola tilts her head. “It’s not my expertise,” she says, adding, “Film, I mean.”
“But the story is. Razor is. Quinn is.” Quinn is you, I want to say. Don’t let him change you. Don’t let him sexualize your journey from ruin to triumph.
Nodding, she looks back out the window. “I know. I’m just thinking about how I want to handle it.”
“What if he insists Quinn be eighteen?” I ask her. “What if he says without a romance angle in the story, it won’t float in Hollywood?”
Lola turns and looks at me, and I catch a flash of fury in her eyes before I have to look back at the road. “He might be right,” she says. “That’s what sucks. It might need romance to work as a commercial film. We didn’t sell this to an art-house indie. We sold it to a major studio. Profit is the key. And I knew that going in.”
I see what she’s saying but it twists me, tightly. “You wouldn’t push back?”
“Of course I would,” she says. “And I know what you’re saying, but I guess I want to make sure I do it right. You should have seen the meeting. Angela and Roya got maybe three words in, and they’re the executive producers here. And contractually, I only have so much input.”
“Really?” I’m aware of the comic community’s ongoing discussion about feminine representation on the page and in creative staffing, but I still find myself surprised that Lola’s film might not be hers after all.
She nods. “I’m twenty-three. I’m the first female comic creator to have a major motion picture, and I’m one of the few people out there writing and illustrating it all. If I was Stan Lee or Geoff Johns walking in there—or even just some nobody guy with my age and experience—I could tell them what the fuck to do and they would listen. A man having strong opinions and pushing back right away is someone with sound business sense. If I walk in there as Lola Castle and push back, I’m pushy and hard to work with. Maybe someone will even use the word bitch.”