We are very pleased to share with you an exclusive 10 Questions Interview with Philadelphia artist, Candy Apple Comics!
This interview comes in anticipation of Candy Apple Comic's Pop-Up at OMOI on Friday, October 24th, 2025. From 12-6pm, Cat, the artist behind Candy Apple Comics, will be in the shop with us to chat and sell their wares including hand-drawn zines, comics, and stickers. Click here to get more details on the pop-up event. We truly hope you can stop in on Friday and join us for this fun event highlighting a local and upcoming artist! ☺︎
Hi there, Candy Apple Comics! Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our 10 Questions. We’re big fans of your comics and love the vibrant, personal charm you bring to the Philly art scene. We’re especially excited for your pop-up event at the shop on Friday, October 24th, and can’t wait to share more about you with our readers. Let's hop right into the questions...
1) What kind of environment did you come up in, and what kind of environment do you like to make for yourself today?
I grew up in a very loving family, full of people who were confident in my future and who nurtured every curiosity and creative impulse I had. My parents always took great care to make sure I felt seen and loved, and I think I’m so attuned to my own emotions because I was taught that they are important. That being said, I struggled a lot with my identity outside of my family, and I often felt “weird” or out of place. I had and still have a strong desire to share my feelings and be understood, though I am actually a very anxious and fairly private person due to past rejections. It’s a catch-22.
I like to create an environment for myself that feels comforting and homey, with room for company! I want people to feel welcome with me because I have always been so grateful for the people in my life who have made me feel welcome. I think everyone deserves a place where they can feel safe and comfortable as they are, and I hope that people feel that way with me.
2) What kind of stuff were you into when you were around thirteen? Any advice for thirteen-year-olds today?
When I was thirteen, my life revolved around books and fanfiction. I was—and still am—a big reader, and I did not discriminate. I’ve read some truly terrible stuff, and also some genuine works of art in every genre I explored. I think the main thing I took away from all that reading is a strong sense of empathy and an open mind. I read primarily to entertain myself, but I was also aware that I lived a very sheltered and privileged life in many ways, and reading broadly and deeply was a part of my self-education.
I think it’s natural for children and teens to be self-centered, and Young Adult fiction in particular is so important because it creates a place for young people to place themselves within the larger context of the world around them. Teenagers are so often dismissed and belittled, but YA lit frames their thoughts and emotions as significant—it can provide comfort and make you feel less alone.
My advice for thirteen-year-olds today, especially in a world full of powerful people who want to belittle and control those they deem beneath them, would be to read and learn as much as they can, especially when they meet resistance.
3) What's your stance on magic?
I believe in the magic of human connection. I think it’s a miracle that I am alive, and that I have people in my life whom I have had the opportunity to meet and to love by chance alone. That is pretty magical!
4) You’re well-known on the OMOI staff for your exquisite TRAVELER’S notebook set-up, can you talk about the tools you feel are essential to your creative process?
Exquisite! That’s a very generous description. I think the only “essential” tools that I have are a notebook and a pen. I need to draw and write on physical paper, and I always have those two items on my person in some form. I have a lot of thoughts and ideas, but I often struggle to follow through and complete the projects that I begin. Notebooks help me to organize my thoughts and feelings, and the tactility of analog stationery calms and grounds me, which makes it easier for me to make my ideas tangible and therefore, actionable.
Of course I have expanded on those essentials to say the least, and now have quite the collection of writing utensils, notebooks, notebook covers, and stationery-adjacent items (read: toolboxes and stickers). I am definitely a very visual and tactile person, and I really enjoy a weighty pen, beautiful inks, and smooth paper: all of which make writing and drawing more enjoyable!
I also think that having reusable items, like a fountain pen and a Traveler’s Notebook, help me feel more connected to my work, and they add an element of ritual and weight to my creative process. “This is the place where I can experiment, this is the medium through which my thoughts become real.” It sounds a little silly, but I believe objects imbued with meaning work better. The more I use, love, and care for my belongings, the more I feel connected to them and I feel that they give that same love and care back to me. I guess that’s also a type of magic!
5) When living your day-to-day, how do you know when you want to make a comic of a particular moment or story?
I watched this one segment that Jerry Seinfeld did (he was a prominent figure in my household growing up) where he said something like, “to a comedian, everything is a joke.” I think the comics write themselves as I am living my day-to-day life because I’m always thinking about comics, and I feel my life is comical. I feel like a cartoon character sometimes. I don’t know if it’s because my family is full of such big personalities or because we all watched too many sit-coms and are subconsciously recreating amusing dynamics or doing bits, but every day something will happen and I’ll think “you cannot make this stuff up,” so I don’t!
The difficult part is trying to decide how to land the “punchline” in a limited, sequential format. Sometimes I’ll spend days agonizing over how many panels I should draw to stretch a moment out or cut it short for the best comedic effect. The particular phrasing I use for the speech bubbles, the sound effects, the expressions on my character’s face—there are a lot of decisions to make and each one has a big impact on the overall feel of a comic. Humor is very subjective though, and I usually end up going with whatever makes me laugh as I’m drawing it.
6) What's something you'll spend money on, and something you refuse to spend too much money on?
I will always spend money on my friends and family. I like giving gifts, though I don’t think I’m particularly good at it—I think sometimes I get distracted by how much I like something, and think that someone else will feel the same amount of enjoyment at receiving it as I would. Regardless, I have never regretted money spent on someone I love. Whether it’s a gift, a meal, or a train or plane ticket to see them, it’s always worth it to me.
Something I refuse to spend too much money on is rent! (I live with my parents, haha!)
7 + 8) Area trend you wish would come back? Area trend you wish would retire?
I think the biggest trend I miss is the “area trend.” I really miss seeing localized variation—the more niche and nonsensical the better. I like it when something is very popular in one specific place and it makes absolutely no sense to people outside of that community.
Now that social media algorithms have made internet virality a possibility, trends develop much faster and are much more widespread. Everywhere I go I see the same things. Clothing, food, speech patterns...The worst part of this is when specific items start “trending” and all of a sudden it’s a “must have” and all this hyperbolic language starts being thrown around only for that item to be discarded in the next trend cycle. I feel like language is losing its meaning. “Obsessed”, for example, is now a word I dismiss as soon as I hear it because it often doesn’t mean anything now.
That’s a trend I wish would retire: trending words, especially when it comes to marketing. I don’t know if it’s because of SEO, social media algorithms, or tired attention spans craving familiarity, but listening to the same sound bites and pre-plucked words and phrases all the time makes me feel like I am going insane.
I realize how pretentious this makes me sound (please forgive me), but it reminds me of George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” where he talks about how constantly using “ready-made” phrases is easy, but it often results in saying things you don’t actually mean because
you’re settling for an approximation. Letting the word choose the meaning instead of the other way around. I think about that essay a lot.
9) What's something you wish people engaged with more?
I wish people engaged more with their own thoughts and emotions. I think it’s very common to avoid deep self-reflection because it can unearth things about yourself that you don’t like, or that you don’t want to acknowledge because it is painful or you have been taught to be ashamed. There are a lot of things about myself that I have wished I could change in the past, but I have been trying to reflect on myself from a place of curiosity and acceptance instead of judgement and shame. I’ve learned a lot about what kind of person I was, am, and would like to become by doing so.
I think when you truly understand and accept yourself as an imperfect and complex human being, you develop a compassion for humanity that makes you less likely to cause others harm. There are, of course, people who understand themselves to be completely perfect and superior to others after self-reflecting, but I think the lesson there is that there is only so much you can learn alone. Self-reflection is a good thing, but you also need outside perspectives to challenge your own biases.
Anywho, on the whole I think it’s healthy to be curious about why you believe what you believe, and how you came to be the person you are.
10) And, any shout outs?
Definitely my family and my friends! I know I am someone who needs a lot of encouragement and love, and they have never disappointed me in that regard. I love them very much.
In terms of art and comics, Caroline Cash and Andrew MacLean are my two biggest inspirations. I actually met Caroline Cash at Omoi and was shaking in my boots, but she was very kind and encouraging, and gave me the courage to start selling my comics at Partners & Son, which is an incredibly cool comic spot in Philly run by two lovely people. Check it out!
Also, I would like to shout out Omoi! It was one of the first places I visited when I moved to Philly, and I am a frequent customer (I actually featured it in my Hourly Comic Day 2025 comic!), so it means a lot to me to have a pop-up here. <3
Thank you kindly for taking the time to read through this 10 Questions Interview with Candy Apple Comics. Take care. ♡