Svetlana Chmakova is profiled in the Toronto Star:
If the story of her life were a comic strip, Svetlana Chmakova’s creative process would span eight to 10 panels.
And she’d be a cat trapped in a box in the first frame.
In the second, Chmakova, a comic book author, would stare with wide kitten eyes at the confining walls. The next four panels might show her at various stages of bewilderment, clawing the cardboard and searching for a way out. The seventh panel could depict her stumbling into an exit.
In the eighth, she’d climb through.
“That’s the Aha! moment,” Chmakova says. “Maybe there would be two more panels…like when the cat gets out and is all happy, then realizes there’s another, bigger box. `Oh no! there’s a lot more to get through before the end.'”