An Artist to Watch

By Rachel Moulton '97

I recently had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Maria "Wakka" Ciccone '05 - a fourth-year student originally from Dayton, Ohio, who is currently working on her senior project in Visual Arts and Print Media. Wakka lives in a world of her own creation. It is in the translation of this world to paper that her imagination, wit and dogged persistence become clear.

Rachel: What is your senior project?

Wakka: My senior project is a comic book. I'm thinking it will be a 48 page - a double-length book since traditional comics are 24 pages - self-published comic book called Sihm. I will script it, lay it out, pencil it, ink it, letter it, and self-publish it through a local printer. I'm then hoping to get some local bookstores to sell it.

Leon Post, the Local Counselor of Hell in Charge
of Internal Affairs, and Sihm Ginrai, a woman
accidentally taken to hell, travel through Wakka
Ciccone's '05 epic creation.

R: What is Sihm about?

W: Sihm is the main character, and her full name is Sihm Ginrai. Sihm is a girl who is hit by a car and her soul is taken to hell. She finds out that this was a clerical error. She wasn't supposed to be killed but just very badly injured. Death has been overworked lately so he's hired a couple assistants who just don't know what they're doing.

Sihm is taken to the office of Leon Post, the Local Counselor of Hell in Charge of Internal Affairs. There are seven rings of hell and every ring of hell has several local counselors and one lord. Leon is not in charge of any particular ring but is in charge of keeping the place up and running. He tells Sihm that they are willing to dispense with the rules in her case. She can choose to be tormented in hell with the possibility of redemption or she can take the job of Messenger, which means she won't be able to leave hell but she also won't be tortured. She decides to take the job.

The real point of the story is that Leon - a demon directly responsible for the fall of the angels and the creation of hell, an act commonly attributed to Lucifer - sets out to teach Sihm that metaphysical judgment is basically a reality created within the consciousness of all humans and is caused by human arrogance and fear of death. Humans are afraid of themselves ending. They want to live on forever so an afterlife is created by us. In this story man has created "God" rather than God has created man.

If you think of the universe as one single living being, we are just a piece of that. Leon wants to use Sihm to destroy this because he feels it's stalling creation. It hinders creation from fulfilling its process - the universe is created, it starts expanding, and then everything starts contracting until it is dissembled into nothingness. It can't do this because of all this stuff floating around that humans have created.

R: How long have you had this story in your head?

W: This story is based on a series of reoccurring dreams I started having in high school. I work on the comic while I'm asleep and while I'm awake. A lot of the locations and character designs are stuff I've seen in dreams.

R: What artists influence you?

W: One of my biggest influences art wise is MC Escher. Leon's office is based on an Escher lithograph. My biggest comic book artist influence is Yukito Kishiro. His work is very philosophical and darkly comedic. His artwork is also wonderful. I'm very influenced by Japanese stuff. Writers like Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams have also really influenced me.

R: Do you see yourself working on this project after graduation?

W: Oh yes. The entire Sihm story is actually very complicated. It has a very apocalyptic ending. I know I wouldn't be able to encompass the whole story in just one comic book. I'm thinking three series with ten comics each. I have the whole story mapped out in my head. Working out the middle is the hard part.

R: How have your co-ops influenced your work?

W: Last term I did a creative co-op that was all about working on this project, and it forced me to sit down and draw all the landscapes and characters. I have this whole world in my head and my co-op helped me establish a solid framework. I ended up working at the Winds Café and on my stuff on my own time. It gave me an inkling of what my near future will be like as I go out and try to make it as a comic book artist.