In a recent The Hollywood Reporter interview, award-winning webcomic creator and co-producer of the queer movie ‘Nimona’ ND Stevenson said that the film “has always had this transness and gender fluidity at its heart.”
The creator continued to say that there are even lines from the film that have a new meaning now than when they were first recorded, especially in the context of the current political climate around American racial and queer communities made specifically by a small group of people who sow fear to everyone– something that is present within his story’s true villains too.
“I don’t think that any of us expected the state of the world and current events to unfold exactly the way they have,” Stevenson shared.
“I think that [Nimona] has always had this transness and gender fluidity at its heart, but there are lines that have new meaning now, even from the first time I heard them recorded,” he added.
Stevenson, who is transmasculine and nonbinary, also shared that the character of Nimona is his “avatar and alter ego.”
“She is a character with a lot of pain and anger at her heart, and that’s why she exists. When I made her, I was doing it for my own catharsis,” he added.
The futuristic comic was originally self-published online in 2012 and would gain enough popularity to be published as a graphic novel in 2015.
More than a decade after its release, Stevenson said that he also went on a personal journey to the realization of the universality of experiences and stories that transcend gender and race.
“Early on, I was getting so much of, ‘How do we relate to her if we’re not teen girls?’” he said in the early stages of the production of the film.
Ultimately, though, he said that the mindset of a character not being relatable enough in terms of race, gender, and experience is not true.
“All stories are universal, even if they represent something very specific, niche or personal,” he added.
