{"id":11221,"date":"2026-09-22T07:35:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T14:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/?p=11221"},"modified":"2026-10-06T14:49:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T21:49:56","slug":"talking-age-appropriateness-in-comics-with-author-shane-porter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/talking-age-appropriateness-in-comics-with-author-shane-porter\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking Age Appropriateness in Comics with Author Shane Porter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Not too long ago I had the good fortune of meeting and having a bit of an in-depth conversation with Shane Portman the Emmy Award nominee writer behind Tumble Leaf, <\/em>and Shape Island<\/em>. We enjoyed a sprawling conversation which covered a variety of subjects and will take the form of a written & video interview over at KidasComicsUnite.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was one part of that convention which I was particularly interested in and thought I should sequester this particular conversation for those who I think would be interested in this topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who is Shane Portman<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Shane Portman:<\/strong> I’m a writer, creator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Primarily, I’ve worked in animation. So I was the head of development for BixPix Entertainment, which is a stop-motion animation studio that created shows like Tumbleleaf<\/a><\/em><\/u> and Shape Island<\/a><\/em><\/u>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Age Appropriateness in Comics<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Lugo:<\/strong> Among  the various conversations that I\u2019ve been a part of, I’ve noticed that there’s a kind of  phenomenon that comes up with creators. They’re passionate about a project and they have a vision for it, but sometimes they’re not quite clear or they’re not quite accurate in terms of the age group. They might think it’s middle grade, but it ends up being YA or the other way around. I was wondering if you could shed a little light on that phenomenon from someone who’s had the experiences to kind of internalize those filters?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shane Portman:<\/strong>  I think it’s always best to aim for the top of whatever the age demographic is, because you want to be able to kind of bring in as many kids as you can into this. So for when I was writing on preschool series, you would aim for five and six year olds, even though you’re really writing for kids younger. Because you want kids to come back and watch it over and over again. Hopefully over a couple of years, they might be able to stick with the show for two, three years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Middle grade is a pretty big demographic. So  I feel like those ages are kind of a little amorphous. Some people say like and some people say eight is kind of like the middle grade times, when it begins. Then it goes to the tweens, the end of your tweens. So I feel like in that area, you’re aiming for that tween that is almost YA, but you don’t want it to cross totally into YA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You want it to kind of be older so that kids can grow with it. As long as they’re in that kind of area and then they step out into the next  demographic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Lugo:<\/strong> So is it true that children don’t want to read stuff that’s age appropriate for them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They want to read something a little older than their age level<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shane Portman:<\/strong> I think that seems pretty true. Yeah, it seems like I think everybody, even little kids, don’t want to be called a baby<\/em>. It happens very quickly, they say \u201cI don’t want to be called\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to be one of those kids,\u201d you know, \u201cthose big kids.\u201d So I feel like from a very young age we’re already thinking \u201cI’m a big kid\u201d and that sticks with you, I think through your entire life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Emotional complexity in comics<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Lugo:<\/strong> Your comic SHRUB<\/em> is a middle grade graphic novel, addressing something as emotionally complex as grief. How do you find the balance between being truthful about those experiences, but also not overwhelming a young reader?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shane Portman:<\/strong> Yeah, I mean, I think I think that’s. It’s a tricky line to walk, but I think my personal experience, living through a lot of what I put into the story, was what I wish somebody had told me when I was dealing with it at that age, like grief and loss. So while that might feel like a little much to somebody who isn’t a child, maybe who isn’t dealing with grief at the time, I think the helpful thing inside of Shrub<\/em> or a story like Shrub<\/em> is the kind of fantastical character. There is sort of a silliness and  fun built into it from Shrub<\/em> and from this road trip adventure happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there’s a balance of playing with some comedic devices and some fantastical devices, but then keeping that emotional heart still beating the entire way through. Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Lugo: <\/strong>What does metaphor and fiction allow you to say about grief? That that an autobiography really could not, or would be constrained by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shane Portman:<\/strong> What I love so much about the metaphor of Shrub and, you know, kind of letting your grief take root is that we can make it more of a visual thing. We can break it down into elements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shrub doesn’t have a mouth. They’re just eyes on a shrub. And, you know, they’ve got arms and legs, but they don’t have a mouth. So they’re not verbal. Their way of connecting to the world and understanding the world is to root in and connect to the mycelium underground. And they kind of draw in the wealth of emotion and history and information that’s kind of embedded in that ground. So they’re pulling up all this memory and all this stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in the comic, you can kind of see that kind of draw out and be pulled out. And that to me was so valuable. In the comic itself, a Fanbase press came up with this concept of using these gatefold pages where the page folds out. So anytime Shrub has one of these moments where they’re kind of connecting to the ground and drawing in, the page folds out. So you have this kind of experience of things unfolding and information coming alive in a way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Lugo:<\/strong> That’s excellent. So it’s kind of like taking the story into a more meta context, right? Where the actual delivery system of the comic is doing some of the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shane Portman:<\/strong> Yeah, I was so excited about that that I was thrilled when they proposed that idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

So\u2026 What is Shrub?<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Shane Portman:<\/strong> It’s about a lonely shrub who winds up befriending these two grieving siblings, and they head off on this road trip adventure to find the shrub’s last known relative, who apparently is a background actor in Hollywood. So they’re heading off on this road trip to Hollywood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in the process, they go through a journey where they are reconnecting with each other and learning to let their grief take root, which is something they hadn’t done. So the series, the theme of the series is this idea of letting your grief take root and, you know, reconnecting and finding connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Lugo:<\/strong>  This is a story whose roots tap into a profound personal experience for you. I was wondering if you could explain how it was that you ended up collaborating with Barbara on this project. What were its initial seeds?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shane Portman:<\/strong> Initially, I just had an idea for a shrub character and that sat in my brain for a while. I didn’t really know what to do with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just thought that was kind of cool and interesting and cute. So I just put it in the back of the brain, to see what happens. After letting it  marinate back there for a bit, this idea started coming to my mind as a story kind of started rolling out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It became a way for me to address a lot of stuff that had happened to me as a kid. I dealt with loss as a child. When I was almost 10 years old, my dad had a traumatic heart attack and he was in a coma for a few weeks. They were able to bring him out of it and he was brought back to life. But when he came out of that coma, he had brain damage, he was a completely different person for the majority of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He passed away in 2006, and when he passed away, I had all of these feelings. I didn’t know all these unaddressed things which I didn’t have time or the understanding, when I was a kid, to address. There was all this stuff, this grief that I had from the dad that I lost at 10 who was never the same again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Shrub<\/em> is a story about addressing grief and being OK with the complications in it. And part of what I really wanted to talk about is that I’m one of four kids. I really wanted it to be a story that addresses how grief affects a family and particularly siblings differently, depending on how old you are, when something happens, when trauma happens to your family, what position you are in that, you know, that ranking of your family, eldest, middle, youngest. That was interesting to me because of what happened to my family and my siblings. So I really wanted to explore that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when I brought it to Barbara and Brian at Fanbase Press, they told me about this idea of graphic medicine. So we came up with this concept to bring in. Each issue features an essay about grief that either comes from a specialist who has personally dealt with grief or one of my siblings and my mom. We all address what happened to us throughout this process. So it’s deeply connected to me and my family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check out the collected edition of SHRUB
Click here<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not too long ago I had the good fortune of meeting and having a bit of an in-depth conversation with Shane Portman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[64,363,34,244,287],"tags":[150,67,551,200,190,253],"class_list":["post-11221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-crowd-funding","category-interviews","category-kickstarter","category-patreon","tag-blog","tag-comics","tag-fanbase-press","tag-interview","tag-kickstarter","tag-kids-comics-unite"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3egHU-2UZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11050,"url":"https:\/\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/discussing-the-odyssey\/","url_meta":{"origin":11221,"position":0},"title":"Discussing The Odyssey","author":"PLUGO","date":"July 30, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Christopher Nolan\u2019s Odysseus may have survived the Cyclops but can he survive the scrutiny of two cartoonists who grew up reading Homer\u2019s epic?","rel":"","context":"In "blog"","block_context":{"text":"blog","link":"https:\/\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/img_8195-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/img_8195-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/img_8195-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/img_8195-1.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/img_8195-1.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/img_8195-1.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9923,"url":"https:\/\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/lets-go-a-kids-comics-studio-anthology-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":11221,"position":1},"title":"Let’s Go! 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