Where would Day Two be without Zia? Possibly better off (by her own admission)! Our resident bonkers genius snake girl finally gets her character sheet.

For those who still haven't picked up on it, Zia's Hispanic — Mexican, to be specific. She is not a Japanese anime girl: She's Hispanic. When I started writing Day Two, there was a whole lot of press in the United States about Hispanics and immigrants, a lot of it negative, and I thought, "If this comic succeeds, I want the other main character to be a Hispanic success story, just to prove a point. She'll be smart and capable, and come from a highly-successful big traditional Mexican family too."

Thus Zia was born, along with a ton of backstory for her family. Here's her parents' backstory, because it probably won't ever fully end up in the comic directly (although you'll encounter bits and pieces of it soon):

Her parents, Carlos and Isabela, both immigrated to the United States from Mexico, Isabela from Mexico City when she was just a child, and Carlos from Nogales (Sonora) when he was in his early 20s looking for work. They met in San Diego when he was 22 and she was 18. Two years later they were married, and a year later they had Juan. Carlos worked incredibly hard while courting Isabela, saving every dollar. The same year they were married, he opened the first MVP store. He expanded the business aggressively, having a both a knack for business and several lucky breaks, and when MVP was only three stores, he raised money to buy another chain of ten more, Luco Drugs, and merged it with MVP. MVP has grown steadily ever since and is now a $250 million company employing over 500 people.

I really like that backstory, too, because it's a really compelling American success story: Immigrant comes here with nothing but the clothes on his back, works hard, works smart, is dedicated, and decades later he's happily married with a big family and running a huge, successful business that employs hundreds.

Carlos's mantra is "God, Family, Business, and Baseball" — too bad Zia's really not into any of those things. 😏

Here's all of Zia's many siblings, in order, one of whom you'll get to meet in chapter 6, "Angel's Among Us"...

• Juan ♂; age 40; lawyer who lives in San Diego, part-time sailboat racer
• Paul ♂; age 39; Chief Operating Officer of the drug store chain; has two children he adores
• María ♀; age 37; Chief Financial Officer of the drug store chain; she's unmarried and work-focused
• Felipe ♂; age 36; full-time minor-league baseball player, willingly supported by parents
• Sara ♀; age 34; married housewife with six children
• Miguel ♂; age 32; business degree; works part-time for the drug store chain while starting other business ventures on the side
• Cris (Cristóbal) ♂; age 31; young Catholic priest
• Angel (Ángel) ♀; age 30; communications degree; gives motivational speeches
• Eva ♀; age 29; medical intern, soon to be a doctor
• Beca (Rebeca) ♀; age 28; married housewife, first child just born
• Eliza (Elisabet) ♀; age 27; married housewife, no children yet
• Marco ♂; age 26; volunteers on mission trips to Mexico
• Theresa ♀; age 25; in her second year of law school
• Zia (Catorce / Constanzia Florence) ♀; age 23; post-grad dropout genius

Zia is very much the blackest of black sheep in their family 😉

Important confession: I am not Hispanic. I don't know Hispanic cultures directly. I have friends who are varieties of Hispanic, but I'm really just doing my best to get Zia's character right by doing lots and lots of studying. So if I get some cultural tidbit about Zia or her family wrong, please forgive me, and I promise I'll do my best to fix it: My goal is for Zia to be an awesome lead character that other Hispanic people can look at and love and see themselves in. Day Two couldn't be Day Two without Zia.

Actually, wait: Don't see yourself in Zia. Nobody should see any part of themselves in Zia. See yourself in any of her many, many rational, sane, smart, capable, highly-successful siblings instead 😁

It's not obvious from the character sheet, but Zia's voice is the only one I know for certain: If there were ever an animated Day Two series, I would desperately love to have the incomparable Lisa Ortiz as Zia's voice actress. I realize that Lisa is Puerto Rican and not Mexican like Zia, but I've had her voice in my head as Zia's voice since the very beginning, and the fact that they both have Hispanic backgrounds is just a cool side benefit. I doubt there would ever be an animated Day Two, and I still haven't figured out a good voice actress for Chloe, but when Zia speaks, now you know what I think she sounds like.

So there you go. Finally, Chloe and Zia both have character sheets, and I bet there's a lot here you didn't know before.