City Of Heroes: The Mouse That Roared: The Paul Sizer Q&A

Rich Watson: What would you say are the major themes of Little White Mouse?

Paul Sizer: I've always told people that LWM is a character study wrapped in science fiction gift wrap, meaning that my personal interest in the book is moving the characters through their lives, whether it's on a space ship or an abandoned satellite. My favorite series have always made me care about the characters first, and then asked me to follow them to weird and interesting places. That's why I've made one of the central themes of LWM family and the way that families can be a tremendous source of inspiration and power to someone. Loo, whether she always admits it or not, derives a great deal of her power to survive her new life from gifts her family has given her.

I think the other major theme of LWM is learning to define yourself outside of the things in your life waiting to define you. Loo came from a huge family, huge high school, and a huge city. I always find it interesting to see what happens to people when you take them out of their comfortable, familiar settings and see how they define themselves without their standard "tools." Many people, especially teens, are handed identities through media, consumer goods and peers to make them fit into a very specific peg hole. I wanted to put Loo through her paces and make her figure out who she was when all she had to worry about was surviving from day to day instead of which shoes to wear and which malls to shop at.

RW: How much of this universe do you have mapped out? You work in short arcs, yet there's quite a bit of history to these characters.

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