In Planet of the Pets, the PET.X corporation creates an irresistible new species designed for wealthy consumers, but this new species also has natural instincts that collide with humanity’s greed, resulting in catastrophic damage. How did the idea of the Fuzzos develop, and what made adorable bioengineered creatures the right vehicle for the story’s larger themes?

I was thinking about how our current late-stage capitalism is chugging full-steam ahead on wringing everyone dry – and it seems that there’s nothing we won’t monetize and consume. So to me, the obvious, most absurd next step is a company creating an original, proprietary species to sell, focused-tested for maximum cuteness. The Fuzzos are living things – and yet, they’re treated as any other hot new fad or vanity toy. It’s so offensive a concept I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t happened in reality yet.

How does the Fuzzos’ journey from manufactured luxury products to independent living beings shape the story’s central conflict?

Even though the Fuzzos will never comprehend their origin as products, this nature to own and consume is in them. On some level, it’s the selfishness of survival – to horde the most acorns regardless if you already have enough. But also, it only made sense that as humanity fades and they become independent, thinking beings, that they would fall into the same traps as the humans who bought and sold them. Our nature is their nature too.

What ethical questions about genetic engineering and the commercialization of living creatures were most important for you to explore?

While I was writing the story, the news about the dire wolves and wooly mice genetic revivals broke and I thought… my story won’t be allegorical for much longer. But the immense power of genetic engineering aside, it’s clear we are all too willing to put a price on life, even implicitly if not literally. It’s our impulse to break down everything in our world into a nice, neat commercial value. I don’t think there are any easy answers to how we might as a society effectively subvert those impulses into more caring behaviors, but I think now more than ever we need to ask those questions.

How did you decide how far to push the comic’s humor, political commentary, and darker subject matter?

I’ve been told I have a dark sense of humor, so there’s that. But even still, I feel like exaggeration is the main ingredient in satire. And when the state of the world is so comically exaggerated to begin with, a story drawing attention to those absurdities can’t pull any punches – or at least, that’s my approach. My story also aims to draw a line through humanity’s full history of violence to the present, and it just seems irresponsible to sugarcoat. I appreciate some readers might find the darker elements troubling – and I’m certainly not out to create an unpleasant experience – but at the end of the day, if the goal is to inspire an alternative to the extremity of human (or Fuzzo) failings, then it has to be extreme.

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