INTERVIEW: Magnolia Porter Siddell on The Golden Boar

A clipped image from the first page of The Golden Boar webcomic that shows main character Merro, a young woman with long dark hair, two horns, and a ring around one horn, standing in front of a panel that shows students setting up on a theater platform.

Magnolia Porter Siddell‘s newest webcomic, The Golden Boar, began in March 2022 and tells the story of Merro and the fantastic island world of Moonforest that is home to a reclusive magical community. Here, Porter Siddell shares some of the ideas behind The Golden Boar — from character and world design to how her past works and experiences have served as inspiration.

For those who may not be familiar with The Golden Boar, what’s your go-to synopsis for it?

The Golden Boar is an unconventional fantasy romance. In an isolated island kingdom, young Summoners call forth the spirits of the Beasts from the forest around them, to defend their secluded home. For one young woman, Merro, the Beast spirits are more wild than she had imagined and might be too much for her to handle- unless she can unlock the wild part inside herself to match them.

What was the inspiration for The Golden Boar? There are definitely some fantastic elements going on in the story, so I’m definitely curious if there are any specific stories or ideas that you drew inspiration from when you started working on it!

It’s kind of silly, but I was really inspired by the Fate series of games and anime, and I basically wanted to write my own version of that. For those unfamiliar, the Fate series is about magic users, called Masters, who summon the spirits of famous historical figures, called Servants, to fight for them. The historical figures (such as King Arthur, who is kind of the main character) often manifest as cute anime girls, regardless of what they actually looked like. It’s kind of a stupid story in many ways, but the Master/Servant relationship is really interesting to me because it’s this sort of deep and intimate relationship that isn’t defined strictly by romantic or platonic boundaries.
I liked the idea of summoning this being who you would be very intimately bound to, even if you don’t quite know who they are yet, and having to trust and work together with them as if your life depended on it, becoming close very quickly. That’s the feeling I wanted to bring to The Golden Boar (although we haven’t quite gotten there in the story yet), playing with relationships like that, that can only really exist in a fantasy setting.

Right away, Moonforest and the characters really catch your interest just in the prologue alone. Was there any particular reason you decided to open the comic up with Alunara?

Merro is the protagonist of the story, but she doesn’t start out as a Summoner- the early part of the comic is her journey to getting there. Alunara is already an accomplished Summoner with her own Guardian Beast, so I wanted to start with her, to say more strongly “This is what the comic is about.” Plus, I really like her dynamic with her Beast, Lion, and I wanted to start establishing it as soon as possible.
We’ve only seen a little bit so far, and I hope readers find it interesting.

Speaking of characters, Merro is immediately a stand out to me. How did she develop from your initial idea for her? Were there any big changes in how you decided to write and illustrate her originally to what we see in the final comic now?

I’m so glad you like her! Merro actually already existed, mostly fully formed, when I first started to think about the comic. Her dynamic with her Guardian Beast (who we have yet to officially meet, though we get a glimpse of him in the first page) was what made me want to make the comic in the first place, so both of them and their opposing personalities were always pretty strong in my mind.
Merro was always studious and a bit rigid, but with a lot of passion deep inside, so that when things don’t go her way she can really blow up. I enjoy characters who care a lot about “following the rules” and making sure others do too- characters who are compliant, but in a really aggressive and domineering way. Merro is very much that kind of person, so I have fun writing her.
A two panel comic page with a large summoned beast with blonde hair and pointed ears sitting behind a girl with two horns, long dark hair, and a dark outfit on. Her expression reads as very unsure of the beast sitting behind her.
The first page from The Golden Boar prologue.

Another element of The Golden Boar that really stood out was the color palette. It definitely helped to set the tone and feeling of a fantasy world, so I’m curious if you chose certain colors on purpose. If so, was that choice backed by personal preference or a particular feel you wanted to incorporate? 

I really wanted to push myself with the color palette in Golden Boar. I love using color, but I sometimes felt that with my previous comic Monster Pulse, I would choose colors haphazardly due to time restraints. I wanted to use color very deliberately in this comic, especially since the setting is so important to the story.
I love the dark blues of the island forest, contrasted with the oranges and purples of Merro’s home. Moonforest is a setting where (due to magical reasons) there’s never any full daylight, so I wanted to make sure the light in the comic looks more like warm flickering firelight than sunlight- magically created, artificial, but cozy and welcoming. I hope that comes across!

Working as a cartoonist, writer, and game developer undoubtedly brings a range of different experiences to you — both in the storytelling and work you’re doing. Was there anything from your past experience that helped you create The Golden Boar?

Well, the setting of Moonforest was something that was mentioned in the fantasy visual novel I wrote in 2016, Rose of Winter. It was the unseen homeland of one of the main characters, and there were only a few details (such as the perpetual-night thing) that were set in stone about it, so it seemed like a good setting to expand on.
I had decided that if I ever wanted to do a fantasy work, I would set it in the Rose of Winter world, since it was pretty open-ended, with a lot of room to explore different kinds of stories. I love the idea of having lots of stories loosely set in the same world so that you can build it up as a real place without being beholden to a strict continuity or anything (similar to Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea setting, or her “Hainish cycle” of science-fiction stories).
I’ve never written a comic that’s set in a made-up world before- my previous webcomic had supernatural elements, but was more or less set in “the real world”. Having a little bit of a fantasy world already set up, that I could explore further rather than build entirely from scratch, really gave me confidence to dive into this.

With your other webcomic, Monster Pulse, being a long-running work, was there anything you were looking forward to in starting The Golden Boar?

With Monster Pulse, I knew more or less where the story would begin and end, but I didn’t have much planned beyond that. I enjoyed writing it as a sort of episodic story, and I’m pretty happy with how it came together in the end. However, in between Monster Pulse and The Golden Boar, I wrote a graphic novel called Tiffany’s Griffon (which will be published by First Second in the near future, with art by the amazing Maddi Gonzalez). I really enjoyed plotting out the whole thing at once, and being able to go back and foreshadow things that I knew were going to happen later, establish themes more strongly, and so on.
I decided I never really wanted to write “by the seat of my pants” again. So I was really looking forward to Golden Boar, which was written and outlined a lot more strongly than Monster Pulse ever was. Of course, there’s still some wiggle room, since it’s a long-term webcomic and not a single graphic novel. But so far I feel a lot more confident about where the story is going than I ever did with Monster Pulse!

Lastly, what’s your favorite part of the comic (that’s already published at this point)?

Oh, definitely the part in the prologue where Alunara kisses Lion. It came out exactly how I wanted, and readers seemed to respond to it with surprise and intrigue, which is what I was hoping for. I see Alunara as a very stoic character so far, so that kind of behavior is surprising for her, and the motives behind it are hopefully still mysterious and interesting. We’ll see more of why she did that, and what she feels about it, later. I can’t wait to get into it!
(I also really loved drawing the big splash page at the very beginning. Merro and her Beast are incredibly fun for me to draw, especially when they’re together. That’s another part of the story I’m really excited for. Stay tuned!)


The Golden Boar is available online to read for free. Updates happen on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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Paige Lyman

Paige Lyman

Paige Lyman is a freelance writer and journalist who covers culture and entertainment. She has contributed stories to Digital Trends, The New York Times, Wired, StarWars.com, Women Write About Comics, and more.

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