Forget Wonder Woman or Charlie's Angels and even, yes, Princess Leia. We girls here at sari sari want to be Akiko.

So what that we're in our mid-20s and Akiko is a teeny, undeveloped fifth-grader? Yeah, she has no superpowers, no magic lasso, no invisible plane. She's not even live action. She's solely a comic book character. Yet, Akiko still kicks ass.

What chick wouldn't want to be a cute little girl, with a cool name and an odd, but highly-likable assortment of alien friends who come by, quite often, to sweep her away to planet-hopping adventures? She searches for missing royalty and battles villains with names like Alia Rellapor, all while her robot clone sits in for her here on Earth. Ah, a robot clone. If only...

Unlike Wonder Woman, who fought crime in an uncomfortable boob-constricting, dominatrix-lite outfit, Akiko gets to kick it in a pair of blue jeans, T-shirt and sneakers. She has no Charlie to answer to and no ridiculous and impractical hairdo.

But the real beauty behind the Akiko stories is they appeal to a wider audience than girls like me. A lot of boys, grown-up boys, are fans. You don't even have to be big fan of comics. An appreciation of a good story and art is all that's necessary.

Akiko's creator Mark Crilley was kind enough to talk Sari Sari about his work.

sari sari: Congratulations on the success of Akiko. Did you expect to appeal to such a wide audience?
mark crilley: I certainly hoped it would! I've always thought of Akiko as being very mainstream in its approach, so I guess the idea of it appealing to a wide audience was something I was wishing for right from the start.

ss: Who are Akiko's readers? Are you ever surprised?
mc: At this point older readers seem to outnumber younger ones by a good margin. I've always written Akiko as if it were 'Calvin & Hobbes,' something harmless enough for kids, but filled with jokes and dialogue that can only be fully appreciated by adults. Moonshopping, for example, has the look and feel of a children's story, but includes Mr. Beeba refering to 'troubling Oedipal connotations'!

ss: For people who are unfamiliar with Akiko, how would you describe it?
mc: The short version: Wizard of Oz meets Star Wars. The long version? Well, I'd say it's a series that blends fantasy and sci-fi, featuring a 5th grader named Akiko and her adventures with friends she has made on the planet Smoo. There's humor, action, suspense, romance, something for everyone (I hope)!

ss: An interesting part of the book is the letters section. This is a cool thing to do. I assume going through the mail takes lots of time. Why do you do it?
mc: I think interacting with the readers is a lot of fun. The letters section is something that exists only in comics and magazines (children's book writers, for example, have no such regular forum in print) so I think we comic book creators owe it to ourselves to take full advantage of it!

ss: Are any of the characters modeled after people you know (physically or personality-wise)?
mc: No, not really. I think there are aspects of my own personality in all the characters, but I almost never base my characters on real people. An exception is Akiko's 'Uncle Koji', who appears in a back-up story; he's based on my father-in-law!

ss: Where do you come up with names like Beeba, Poog and Froptoppit?
mc: All the names are of my own creation, invented to suit the "feel" of the character. "Alia," it turns out, is a real woman's name, though not a common one. I thought I'd made it up until I met someone named Alia a few years ago.

ss: When you were a child, did you want be a comic book artist/writer when you grew up?
mc: Not really, no. My older brothers and I were "DC" kids, with Batman, Superman and the Flash figuring very high on our list of important heroes. I remember Richie Rich, Archie and Li'l Lotta, but don't recall being particularly blown away by these comics, or by comics in general. They were more a springboard for acting out our own adventures in the backyard!
In fact, I didn't get serious about comics until five years ago, after I got the deal with Sirius. Since then it's been a crash course on how comics work, what comics readers want in a comic, etc. I'm still figuring things out, one issue at a time!

ss: Did you study art in school? Where?
mc: I majored in art at Kalamazoo College, where I studied from 1984 - 1988. I learned mainly about drawing from the old masters, oil painting techniques, etc. Nothing at all to do with comics!

ss: I heard you spent some time living in Japan? What did you do there? Is that were the idea for Akiko was born?
mc: I lived in Japan for more than two years, teaching English in a small northern city called Morioka. I became fascinated with foreign language and travel while in college, and Japan was actually the 'last stop' in a series of journeys that took me from Senegal to Taiwan to India etc. during the late 80's/early 90's. It was while I was in Japan in the fall of 1992 that I first dreamed up Akiko.
It all started as a weekly "serialized" comic story I used in my classes in Japan. I worked at the pace of one page a week. The end result was a 33-page illustrated story that became my first comic book, Akiko on the Planet Smoo (published by Sirius Entertainment in 1995 about a year after I'd returned to the USA).

SS: Which part do you enjoy most, the writing or the drawing?
mc: I'd have to say that drawing is slightly more fun for me than writing, but really it's the 'back and forth' between the two that makes comics storytelling so enjoyable.

ss: Usually how far ahead are you with story development? Do you know the end of a story arc as you work on the first installation?
mc: I do have a pretty clear idea of the ending right from the start, but almost all of the details of the story remain 'up in the air' as I work on the final pages. Sometimes I come up with pretty dramatic plot twists at the very last moment and work them into the story right then and there!

ss: I notice Akiko and Spuckler look a little different in the first book than they do now? Is the style still evolving?
mc: The way I draw the characters has changed a lot over the years, mainly because I'm constantly trying to improve the way they look. I even did a back-up story where Spuckler encounters himself as he was drawn years ago! I think I've arrived at some fairly permanent standards in the last couple of years, though.

ss: Do you go to a lot of the comic conventions? What are they like for you?
mc: I attend at least two or three per year, sometimes more. It's a lot of fun to meet Akiko fans, and I greatly appreciate those who come up and tell me what they've thought of the last few issues, etc. The process of flying out to conventions can be pretty exhausting, though, that's why I don't attend as many cons as I used to.

ss: What are some of your favorite comics?
mc: I must confess I don't read many comic books. Oddly enough, I enjoy reading biographies from my local library more than anything else! Maybe my life as a fantasy-creator drives me to embrace real-world biographical history when I'm "off duty"!
That being said, I definitely read all the comics by the old Trilogy gang: Jeff Smith, Linda Medley, Charles Vess, Stan Sakai and Jill Thompson. Those are in my opinion the finest comics on the market. Another favorite (that people might not expect to hear from the creator of Akiko) is Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library. His work is absolutely masterful.

ss: Would you like your son to bring home a girl like Akiko one day?
mc: Ha! If that's the sort of girl he wants to marry, I'd be delighted. I hope he finds someone who has a more extensive wardrobe, though!

ss: Does your wife read the book?
mc: Sure! Miki sees most of it as it's being made, of course. The 'Komura' story couldn't have been done without her, actually, since she provided the Japanese translations I used in that tale.

ss: Has fatherhood changed your work in any way?
mc: I must say I'm continuing to work of Akiko pretty much as before, with surprisingly few big changes. I'm a little hesitant to come up with a 'baby based' story line or something like that, but I'm sure little things are going to sneak in here and there. The character of 'Master Pacholli' in the Moonshopping arc, for example, comes from a strange nickname that Miki and I came up with for Matthew: "Mastapacholli"!

ss: Does Poog eat?
mc: Not that I'm aware of!

ss: For those new to the book, what's a good issue to start with (aside from the very beginning, of course)?
mc: Issues #25 and #39 are nice, since they're both 'done in one'. Alternatively, issues #19, #26, #32, #35 and #40 are good 'jumping on points', since they're all the first issues of hew story arcs.

ss: Will Akiko ever get older?
mc:No, I don't plan to make Akiko grow older and older. This is the norm in comics and cartoons with kids (Peanuts, The Simpsons, etc.) and with good reason: making an iconic child change into an adolescent ends up altering a lot of the aspects that made the character who he or she is. Charlie Brown as an awkward teenager would be more than just a little bizarre!

ss: Do you have plans for non-Akiko comic books?
mc: I've got a collection of some comics I did in 1995 coming from Sirius Entertainment in January 2001, called 32 Pages. It's a strange assortment of very neurotic, Crumb-like drawings and short strips that is radically different from Akiko. I'd also like to have children's books published that are entirely unrelated to Akiko; hopefully I'll have good news on that front within the next year or so.

ss: Any Akiko spinoffs?
mc: None at the moment. If it ever happens I suppose Poog would be the first! (He's just so darned popular!)