Rivkah is the artist, writer, and creator of Steady Beat. She has been a professional in the print industry for over seven years including commercial photography, design, marketing, and print production—in spite of never having completed college—and has promoted writers and artists across the U.S. However, Steady Beat is Rivkah's first personal creation. An artist new to the field of graphic novels, she has been pursuing comics since August 2003, dropping past ambitions in pursuit of her own dreams.
A self-proclaimed workaholic, she has this to say of herself, "I need art like I need my coffee. First thing in the morning and several cups to last me through the day."
Rivkah currently resides in Austin, Texas USA.
The article Manga, American Style includes a mini-interview with the creator.
Leah is the main character in Steady Beat. She's kind and warmhearted, if somewhat temperamental. Youngest daughter of an American middle-class family, she feels often overshadowed by her older sister, Sarai. After discovering letters, candy, and flowers addressed to her sister from another girl, she's on the hunt to find out if her sister's really gay or not!
So what happens when that leads her into meeting somebody for herself? She admires Elijah's drive and responsibility, but is in love with the softer, sweeter side that he has difficulty letting people see. But when will she actually confess her love?
Sarai appears to be the epitome of perfection—except for the fact she's always kicking her sister's butt and whipping her into shape. There are a lot of angry feelings buried beneath the surface: one of them is jealousy for her little sister—whom she feels has the freedom to never listen to anybody and gets away with just about anything—and resentment to their mother who can't accept her being anything less than perfect.
Elijah Peterson is a young African-American Jewish man with two fathers. Nothing about him is what meets the eyes. Passionate about singing, he has difficulty trying to please both his parents—a very wealthy family with high expectations—and his own needs. He falls in love with Leah for the fact that she can be herself and not listen to what everybody expects her to be. He has a very protective, if jealous nature.
June Anders is Leah's best friend. Wild, spunky, and often eclectically dressed, she's the primary reason Leah is always getting into trouble. June has a deep connection with her mother—who raised her alone—but feels that sometimes her mother could be less like a friend, and well. . . more like a parent. She's extremely bullheaded with very little tact, but, despite her wild streak, June is a good and loyal friend.
From Publishers Weekly
Leah is a star high school athlete with a cool older sister named Sarai and a single mom who is a state senator in Austin, Tex. One day a letter meant for Sarai finds its way into Leah's backpack and she reads it. It's a love letter, and it's signed "Jessica." Thus begins the plot of this American manga by newcomer Rivkah. Leah can't believe her sister is gay—hasn't Sarai dated boys? Leah also constructs a humorous fantasy in which their harried mother kills Sarai when she finds out. A mysterious phone call from someone who saw Leah reading the letter sends the plot in another direction and ends with her getting hit by a car and waking up in the bed of Elijah, a handsome teenage boy who has two dads. The classic YA themes in play easily adapt to manga conventions—characters who mutate into demons and angels during especially dramatic moments, an emphasis on emotion over plotting and numerous story threads that will pick up in subsequent volumes. The art also sticks to the strongest aspects of manga, with appealing character designs set against background details that are by turns romantic and humorous. Steady Beat sets up enough mysteries and cliffhangers to bring readers back for future volumes.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Variety's Bags and Boards
So? Rivkah is another young woman writing and drawing original English-language manga for girls, though she goes more for drama with her first full-length series. Story follows teenage Leah Winters, a high school soccer star who finds a love letter addressed to her older sister that is surprisingly signed "Love, Jessica." Leah tries to figure if her sister is or isn't gay and along the way meets an attractive boy named Elijah. Rivkah's art is the real standout of this book; it's elegant, polished and lovely. There's more of a Western flavor to the art here, though it's impossible to place that impression on anything specific. It's almost impossible for me to judge the story as I'm still not a teenage girl, but the plot did feel a little light as though Rivkah was waiting for Vol. 2 to really put the story in motion. (There also is definitely a lot more in this book to justify the "dirty old man" feeling, though it's still all things considered very innocent.) This seems destined to be a big hit with the middle-school crowd.
~Tom McLean
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Newtype USA
Steady Beat is US artist Rivkah's first graphic novel, although Manga Academy published her "Pink" short story in Japan through its drawing contest. Rather than blindly copying Japanese manga, this Texan strikes her own screentoned path. With a breezy blend of sexual confusion, tweaks at the political establishment, and non-gratuitous gun use, Rivkah captures the atmosphere of the States with more authenticity than any Japanese creator. (Anyone who's watched Marmalade Boy's New York episodes can attest to that.)
~Egan Loo
Copyright © Newtype USA, Inc.
From Ain't It Cool News
Steady Beat is especially attention worthy in that it delivers on the promise that OEL manga would tell stories that spoke to an American audience with the strengths of manga storytelling. As much for the problems as the successes, Rivkah establishes herself as another TOKYOPOP-published creator well worth watching....
Steady Beat filters rich drama of shoujo structured trials brought by the relationships of love, family and school through an American sensibility that readers will easily be able to identify with....
Steady Beat is part of the new breed of OEL work that gets manga storytelling. The effect the work wouldn't be the same if it didn't look so much like shoujo manga. The design is certainly reminiscent. It has all the flashy, but also descriptive trappings of the genre, large eyes that are cute, but also emotionally expressive, sculpted hair and fashionable outfits that drawn in an audience, but also invite them to look in as windows to aspects of the character's makeup. Less apparent, but as significant, if not more so is that Rivkah utilizes the page composition of shoujo illustrators who know what they are doing. The use of space, angles of view and aspect cuts all subtly dictate how the reader progresses through the story, and effectively take them into the manga. Together these aspects produce a crisp flow of ideas the build on getting the most out the medium.
~Scott Green
Copyright © Harry Knowles.
From Focused Totality
Steady Beat creator Rivkah's made some waves in the comics community for daring to talk about things like "Passion" and "Art" and "Dedication"...but this is where the rubber would meet the proverbial road. I've enjoyed her take on the industry, and it was for the sake of Rivkah, for the sake of supporting a new voice, and for the sake of seeing if her money and mouth were co-located that I picked up Steady Beat.
I'm very glad I did. Very. Not because it's an unqualified success.... In many ways, it's the eminently dismissable teen drama it appears to be on the surface. But then there's the "Special Rivkah Factor," and it makes all the difference. The "Passion" that got her in trouble with seasoned comics pros is on full display, and it's wonderful. In discussing Fruits Basket, I talked about finally feeling in manga the real presence of the creator...and Rivkah delivers that in spades. From silly IM conversations between her and the characters to the text boxes that read like Pop-Up Video to the wildly expressionistic art, Steady Beat reeks of "Passion" and "Art" and "Love." Rivkah's not just talking a big game, she's bringing it. This is like that first disc from a band you'll grow to love...full of energy and promise, but not necessarily polish. Her art shines as characters and situations constantly distort to give you a view inside their emotional lives, ranging from standard manga deformations to surreal quirks like exquisitely rendered elephants as a symbol for the huge issues being left undiscussed. It's a very personal view of the world that's certainly influenced by manga, but not a slavish imitation of it. Rivkah's clearly her own person with her own artistic agenda, regardless of any OEL label.
~Mark Fossen
