As Ewing neared college graduation in 2012, they became consumed by the question: “What is gender?” This obsession sparked a quest in their quiet Wisconsin town, where they anxiously approached both friends and strangers for interviews to turn into comics. A decade later, their project has exploded into a fantastical and informative portrait of a surprisingly vast community across the US, collected in FINE: a comic about gender. This presentation explores the story of the book’s creation, and Ewing‘s own journey to sense of self and safety.