Ming Doyle ’03 course!) when Sophie visited the Big Island with her husband Alex and family. Sophie was incredible and obliged my crazy last minute idea to send a Hawaii dog back to California with her. I think I can speak on behalf of Sophie when I say that together, we look forward to changing the lives of many dogs. To check out adoptable senior dogs in San Francisco, visit muttville.org and be prepared to swoon; those sweet old faces will be sure to steal your heart. Well, that’s all, friends! It has been a pleasure crafting cohesive (and maybe even occasionally entertaining?) notes for you these past eleven years. I will miss having an excuse to reach out to all of you but if you are ever in Hawaii, please do not hesitate to let me know. In the meantime, go Big Blue! —Lauren
2003
15th REUNION
Will Heidrich wheidrich@gmail.com
It is hard to believe but in August, 20 of our classmates kicked off planning for our 15th Reunion coming June 8, 2018! Keep an eye out for additional details from Jesse Bardo, Janis Scanlon Rice, Alexa Raducanu Franchot, Evan Panich, Bob Yamartino, and the rest of the group. So far 2017 has marked a number of great milestones for our classmates. Congratulations to Danielle Vardaro, Kanyi Maqubela, Tom Oliphant, David Hill, Lirra Schiebler Hill, and Mari Ono Zilles, all of whom recently became parents. Danielle and her husband welcomed twin boys in February in Seattle, where Danielle works for Boeing. Kanyi and his wife Marta welcomed their son, Temba—named after a relative and teacher you may remember—in New York City. Tom and his wife Dana welcomed their daughter, Penny, in San Francisco this summer. David and Lirra also joined the ranks of parents this year, welcoming Enzo Dylan Hill in January in NYC. David started his residency at Rush Hospital in Chicago this summer, so the Hill family has since relocated to Chicago. Enzo’s godmother, Mari, is also a new mother! She and her husband Kyle welcome their son Nalu Oliver Hideo Zilles this summer as well. Congratulations are also in order for several more of our classmates who made their wedding vows in 2017. Gardy Gould married his longtime girlfriend, Tiffanie, in July with several of our classmates and Andover family member in attendance! Nyssa Liebermann tied the knot with her longtime boyfriend on Thomson
www.andover.edu/classnotes
Creating Brave New Worlds
W
ith ink and paper, Ming Doyle ’03 creates new windows to the world, from futuristic dystopian landscapes to the gritty mean streets of 1970s Hell’s Kitchen. Turning the pages of Doyle’s handiwork feels a bit like discovering a wardrobe that also happens to be a gateway to Narnia—there is much to unpack here, both psychologically and technically. An artist and writer courted by major publishers, Doyle says her journey to becoming a successful freelancer in the competitive comic book industry began at Andover. Visual arts instructor John McMurray took note of the student sitting in the back of his sculpture class, her hand working dizzily over the pages of a notebook. After perusing Doyle’s sketches, he asked whether she’d ever thought about drawing comics. “He set everybody up to solder, but then he took me aside, set up a projection kit, took out a box full of art slides that he had been collecting, and gave me an impromptu lesson about comic books and how they work,” Doyle says. “He taught me what a comic book is. As a result, I started drawing my first comics and posting them.” At 16, Doyle learned how to launch a website in her computer class and selfpublished Zero Sleep Beauty, her own gender-flip version of fairytales. Her interest in challenging the boundaries of racial, sexual, and gender stereotypes has continued throughout her career. In 2010, industry giant Marvel asked Doyle to add her signature stamp to Girl Comics, an anthology by and about amazing women working in comics. Then came her first full series, Mara. An inventive take on the world of celebrity and sports, the Image Comics series follows Mara, a gifted young athlete (who also happens to be a nonheterosexual woman of color) who runs into trouble when she begins to manifest superhuman traits. Critics hailed Mara’s mix of strength and vulnerability, calling her one of the best new female characters to spring up in 2013. In 2015, when DC Comics rebooted the dark adventures of popular occult detective Constantine, they tapped Doyle to cowrite the series. The result was a story arc that hits an emotional target. Despite her character’s special abilities, Doyle’s Constantine is flawed, making him terminally—and relatably—human.
Cover for Vertigo Comics’ The Kitchen, No. 1
Born in Boston to an Irish-American sailor and a ChineseCanadian librarian, Doyle credits her family’s unique cultural story for influencing her artistic sensibilities. “I’ve always been interested in the dichotomy of unexpected pairings,” she says.
She is driven toward complex characters and stories that are told from a different point of view. In the graphic novel The Kitchen, set in the 1970s, a group of women take over mob affairs after their husbands are sent to jail. There is poetry in Doyle’s characters—the women are tough and businesssavvy, but they can also be mean, vengeful, awkward, messy, say the wrong things, and have their own goals beyond being wives and mothers. “It’s a completely female perspective,” Doyle says. “That’s something we don’t get a lot.” When Doyle arrived on the comics scene in the early 2000s, female writers, artists, and fans were not as visible. Today, she says, the industry is approaching gender parity. “We are finally becoming more prevalent,” says Doyle. “As a result, fans are seeing new kinds of stories and art that they wouldn’t have experienced 20 years ago.” —Rita Savard Andover | Winter 2018
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