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…