Manila-based author and illustrator Kara Bodegon-Hikino is months away from releasing her debut graphic novel, Squalo & Mage vs. the Rage of the Bakunawa. But when we sit down to talk, she’s less interested in milestones than in how the work found its way to her at all.

Meeting Her Where She Is

I meet Kara Bodegon-Hikino on a day when she’s sick, a flu she picked up from her kid, which she mentions right away, not for sympathy but simply as context. She laughs, coughs a little, apologizes even though there’s nothing to apologize for. It feels like an honest way to begin, unguarded and unpolished, exactly how she tends to show up.

She talks the way some people think, out loud, revising herself mid-sentence, circling back when something doesn’t feel quite right. Not because she’s unsure, but because she’s careful, more interested in being precise than in being smooth.

“I think I’m just tired,” she says.

She says this after mentioning that her first graphic novel is finally done, after referencing the book deal almost in passing, the kind of thing most people would probably lead with. She doesn’t linger on it. She rarely does.

The Moment Everything Shifted

When we circle back to how the book deal happened, she shrugs slightly, as if she’s still not sure where to place it.

It started during a Twitter auction, one of those moments that looks casual from the outside but carries real weight if you’re paying attention. Creators floated ideas in public. Agents and editors watched quietly. Everything happened fast, without much room to second-guess yourself. Kara didn’t have a full book, or even a fully worked-out plot. What she had was a feeling, an image, a sense that something could exist if she followed it far enough.

So she pitched it, more or less in real time, and waited.

When the idea was greenlit, when it became clear that someone wanted to make space for it, that’s when Squalo & Mage began to take shape. The world didn’t arrive fully formed. The characters and the emotional weight of the story developed gradually, shaped through revision, pauses, and long stretches of uncertainty. It wasn’t reckless. It was instinctive, which is often how Kara works.

What She Means When She Says “Luck”

“I really thought it was just luck,” she says. “Like… pure luck.”

She says it immediately, almost reflexively, as if calling it anything else might feel too bold. Luck, in that moment, was a way to accept what was happening without gripping it too tightly, without assuming it would last.

At the time, that explanation felt safe.

Then there came a stretch where luck didn’t feel like a useful word at all.

When Life Got Heavy

The pandemic arrived and flattened whatever sense of momentum she had. Days blurred together. Her father died of COVID. She got pregnant. Postpartum followed and lingered longer than she expected.

“I couldn’t work,” she says. “I really couldn’t work at all.”

There’s no drama in the way she says it. It’s simply a fact. The book paused, not because she lost belief in it, but because there was no room left to carry it. Life narrowed. Survival took precedence. Time became something to endure rather than something to shape.

Grace, Before She Knew She’d Need It

Looking back, what stands out isn’t luck so much as what was already in place before everything slowed down.

Her editors didn’t rush her or pressure her to explain the pause. They didn’t tighten timelines or make her feel like she was falling behind. They told her to take her time and come back when she could. She talks about this with a kind of quiet disbelief, as if patience from an industry still feels slightly unexpected, even when it’s genuine.

Not long after, her father passed away.

“He was a huge fan of Squalo,” she says, smiling automatically, the way people do when memory arrives before emotion. “He always said he was Squalo’s number one fan.”

She pauses before continuing.

“It’s hard,” she says, “to have your dream come true and not be able to share it with the people who mattered most.”

Grief didn’t arrive all at once. It settled into the everyday, into mornings that wouldn’t quite start, into pages that stayed blank, into a story that waited without demanding anything from her while she learned how to move again.

How the Story Grew Alongside Her

When Kara talks about Squalo & Mage now, she doesn’t frame it as autobiography or metaphor. She talks about it the way she talks about most things she loves, in terms of feeling and relationships rather than themes.

There’s grief in the book, but it isn’t instructional. There’s friendship, but not the kind that fixes everything. There’s movement, uncertainty, and the sense that healing isn’t something you rush toward but something you arrive at slowly, often without noticing. These elements weren’t placed there deliberately to echo her life. They surfaced because the book was written over years when her life was also changing in ways she hadn’t planned.

The Kind of Person You’d Want as a Friend

Talking to Kara, there’s a steady sense that she could have been your friend, the offbeat, imaginative, non-judgy one who listens without trying to fix you and doesn’t rush conversations toward conclusions. She makes room for unfinished thoughts and doesn’t seem uncomfortable when they stay unfinished.

That openness carries into everything, even when she talks about parts of her past that still surprise her when she hears herself say them out loud.

Being Told You’re Not “Smart,” and Why That Was Wrong

As a kid, she wrote stories and doodled in class and got in trouble for it.

“My teacher told me I’m stupid,” she says, then adds, almost immediately, “So like… f— that.”

It makes me laugh, because it sounds so unlike her, a brief flash of defiance from someone who is otherwise gentle and measured. It isn’t anger so much as refusal.

Later testing told a different story. Her creativity measured far beyond her age, even as more traditional benchmarks lagged behind, a mismatch classrooms rarely know how to interpret. Institutions are built to reward speed and correct answers, not imagination, pattern-making, or the ability to sit with a story for a long time.

When creativity doesn’t fit the system, it often gets mislabeled.

“I think I feel lazy because I’m slow,” she says, then stops herself. “No. I wasn’t slow.”

She doesn’t finish the thought, but she doesn’t need to.

Myths, Music, and the Way She Thinks

At some point the conversation drifts into myths, the way conversations do when neither person is in a hurry. Filipino stories she absorbed without realizing how deeply they’d settled. She talks about them casually, without reverence or performance.

“I wouldn’t call myself an expert,” she says. “It just felt right.”

That same instinct runs through everything she loves. Before books, she thought she might end up in music. Music still shapes how she thinks, through rhythm, pacing, and restraint. Her husband works as a live sound engineer, and their life follows the ebb and swell of shows and quiet months. She’s learned to work inside that rhythm rather than against it.

You can hear it in how she tells stories, in the way she pays attention to pauses and to what’s left unsaid.

Seeing Her Again

I see her again later at StickerCon. This time the conversation is lighter. We talk briefly about our kids and how they’re both convinced they’ll grow up to be Pokémon trainers, and she laughs in a way that feels easier, less guarded.

She’s sitting behind her table, chatting with people as they pass, answering questions without rushing. She looks comfortable there, not transformed, just herself, in a place that makes sense.

At some point she mentions, almost casually, that preorders for Squalo & Mage are now live.

I tell her that’s great, because it is. I’m genuinely happy for her, even if there’s a small, private flicker of envy too, the good kind, the kind that doesn’t shrink you, just reminds you what’s possible.

She’s the kind of person you want to support. The kind you root for quietly. The kind whose success feels earned because it grew out of who she already was.

Kara Bodegon-Hikino’s debut graphic novel, Squalo & Mage vs. the Rage of the Bakunawa, is out May 26, 2026 and now available for preorder.