Chinese Mom Creates Honest Comics About Her First Child vs. Second Child

The decision to create comics began when Chen’s second child turned two in September 2016. She began a website, Messy Cow Comics, and Facebook page to host her comics.

“I’ve done a lot of comics for fun when I was younger,” Chen told NextShark. “When my second child turned two, I had the urge to start again because of how little time I had– if I didn’t start, I might never achieve my dream to be a comic artist. Parenting was a prominent topic because it was my life then. It was fun and meaningful to document my children’s growth, as well as mine. Sharing my stories is my way to communicate with people.”

All of this wouldn’t be possible without Chen’s mother, who helped ignite the inspiration within her to take up art.

“My earliest memory was when I was about 3 years old, my mom drew a mermaid on a piece of paper and told me a story. That was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Funny she didn’t remember it at all, but I think that inspired me to draw,” she said.

It seems like she plans to continue what her mother did when she was young to her two children — Electra, the firstborn, and Ali, the second child.

When asked about what influences her art, Chen told NextShark that it totally depends on the form she’s creating.

“For my comics, I read a lot of webcomics and they influenced my own creation. Other influences are from books and podcasts I read and listen, a lot of them are about parenting, psychology, and philosophy,” she continued.

Balancing work, art and life is definitely not an easy task, especially for Chen now that she’s a mother. And in fact, she acknowledges that she’s not very good at juggling between the three in her artwork titled “Balance.”

“Besides my children and comics, I also work as a game developer,” she said. “My mom helps me a lot with my children(as lots of Asian grandmas do), huge thanks to her. When I’m in my good state, I work very fast. When I’m in my bad state, I sleep very little. I wish I could be more efficient, I’m working on it.”

Despite all the hard work, Chen is very lucky to have a lot of supportive people around her.

“They are supportive just like my other audience, they enjoyed the good ones and didn’t care much about the bad ones,” she said. “I have a few close friends who always encourage me to keep going, I appreciate them very much.”

“My children know that they are in my comics, they want to know what happened in each story.”

“I recently made a comic about giving birth to my first child. She loved it and asked me to read it to her over and over again. I will translate it into English when I have time.”

Check out her other works below from her “Birth Order Matters 2” series:

Follow Weng Chen on Facebook and on Twitter for more adorably funny web comics!

Images via Messy Cow Comics