Believed Behavior No.2: Never-Ending Self Actualization

How does one improve oneself? As human beings, we always question our own actions and behaviours. We want to be the better version of ourselves. Abraham Maslow described this as "self-actualization"; the desire of humans to become actualized to their full potential, to become all that you can be. In this issue of Believed Behavior, we meet characters who take (or took) active steps to reaching their full potential. Whether it's becoming a poet, realizing that you've made a wrong career choice, becoming an airplane or learning to recognize colours by touching them, these characters are on a quest of self-actualization.

I've talked about Believed Behavior previously and some of what I said still applies. Believed Behavior is a multimedia comics experience. Two issues are out and a third issue is coming out in June 2015. It's a collection of short form comics printed on newsprint as well as an online web platform that allows you to read the comics the way you want. Once you buy Believed Behavior, you get a copy of the physical object and have access to the full issue online. You can grasp at the ephemeral aspect of the comics in two ways that are completely disposable: newsprint and data. 

While the first issue lacked focus in terms of subject matter, the second issue`s focus is much narrower. As I said earlier, we meet characters who are on a quest for self-actualization. This issue features comics from Anya Davidson, Lale Westvind, Lyra Hill, Sophia Foster-Dimino and Michael Deforge. We start with Michael Deforge's story in which a woman has her body surgically altered to become an airplane. She always wanted to fly and blew her trust fund on the surgery. As the story progresses, she finds it's not as fun as she thought it would be: "This is less chill than I imagined". The comic leaves no answer as to her future except these bittersweet moments of loneliness and reconsideration. Then Anya Davidson shows us this weird world of masculine factory workers, where one employee wishes to be a poet. He keeps this close to his heart as he's afraid of what the others will think of it. In the end, it seems that his aspiration to become a poet has no impact on anyone`s lives. Sophia Foster-Dimino's comic is about a young bodyguard hired to escort a monk across the land, during which she quickly realizes that she's not up to the task.

Perhaps the most impressive comic in the package is the one from Lyra Hill in which a blind boy in a neon shop learns to recognize colours with the help of his father. It is quite moving and very well executed, particularly when you consider the really short nature of the comic. Additionally, Lyra Hill also did an artistic performance of the story of Papa Neon, which can be seen on Vimeo. It's quite impressive and ties into the ephemeral themes as well. This performance, much like data, is immaterial. It has happened and will never happen again. We can see it, but we'll never experience it.

The medium of the comics allows you to reflect on the nature of the content. It makes you reflect on the longevity of those moments of self-actualization. Believed Behavior is printed on newsprint. This type of paper is thin, cheap and easily destructible. It's very nature is forgettable and bound to disappear over time, so to are our moments of clarity when we achieve our fullest potential. We evolve, as do our needs and psyche, and we can only achieve our highest potential for so long until we change and need to reach for new goals and a new self-actualization. Can these moments be everlasting? According to both the content and medium of Believed Behavior the question has a clear answer.

Believed Behavior Season One: Poetry, Experiments & Distribution Methods

Onward to the future

What is Believed Behaviour? It's a multimedia comics experience. A collection of short form comics printed on newsprint as well as an online web platform to read the comics the way you want. Once you buy Believed Behavior, you get a copy of the physical object and have access to the full issue online. You can grasp at the ephemeral aspect of the comics in two ways that are completely disposable, newsprint and data. And somehow, this isn't a bad thing. I'll get into this later.

The comics contained don't appear to be tied to any themes, but they are connected by their page structure and an apparent desire and intent to experiment with the panel while maintaining a rigid structure. 12 panels per page, 2 pages per comic, that is all a artist gets. The results are varied and very interesting. We first get Floriculture by Krystal Difronzo, who illustrates her tale with wonderful colours and gruesome details. The majestic life of the flora contrasts brilliantly with the failures of the flesh. Difronzo creates a wonderfully eerie experience as the poetry reminds us that even nature decays with each season. 

We move on to another short comic by Edie Fake in which a demon tries to get into a faceless protagonist's house through the window. We only see the window as a demon teases and slowly infiltrate the house. Each panel acts as a window over time. It's a pretty clever use of the rigid panel structure to do something new. 

The final comic by Andy Burkholder explores a protagonis`s state of mind. It uses an extremely slow action, a water droplet from the condensation of an AC unit falling down on a man's head, and uses it to explore mental health issues (Autism I think). The character's thinking about writing an email to Rose, and uses narration boxes in overdrive to reflect his train of thought. He is constantly forming incomplete sentences and beginning anew with more information before finishing up. It becomes so large that the narration box overwhelms and take up more than half a panel at times. 

This first collection from Believed Behavior is interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Above all else, I liked how they experimented with the distribution process. You can get a surprisingly long preview online and you unlock the full comics of the issue once you buy the book, you also get a newsprint of the comics. Both of the mediums used, newsprint and data, are unreliable and ephemeral. The newspaper pages are flimsy and likely to be destroyed, while the website and data are just as likely to disappear for a variety of reasons. Beyond this elusive longevity, there is something really refreshing about Believed Behavior. Perhaps it is its innovative online platform or it may be that it embraces the disposable aspect of physical comics, which was for a long time a staple of comics themselves. I would recommend it to anyone interested in looking at an experiment in webcomics and publishing. This is a look at possible alternative models in publishing.

Strangebeard: An interview with Kelly Tindall

Kelly Tindall is an illustrator, cartoonist and teacher in Montreal. I first met him at the Ottawa ComicCon. He was doing a panel with Richard Starkings on Elephantmen and lettering, which was quite interesting. I’ve been following his work ever since. I’ve come to know Tindall a little bit over the years, by seeing him at shows and interacting online with him. I enjoy his work and style enough that he was amongst the first artists I thought of to create save the date cards for my wedding.  

He has worked for a number of years on Strangebeard, a webcomic about Jenny Brigham, a young girl who becomes a pirate after donning the hat of a pirate master. She absorbs a part of his soul and is possessed by his ghost. He successfully kickstarted a campaign to help print his webcomic and translate it in French.  He was kind enough to take some time for an interview post-kickstarter, post-book launch tour to talk with me. I have edited a few things for flow. 

Kelly Tindall's Blog

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Philippe Leblanc: Tell me about your kickstarter experience. What kind of feedback did you get and how did it line up with your expectations going in?

Kelly Tindall: From the people who supported me in this Kickstarter effort, I'm slowly receiving feedback. I've sent the final copies and people are starting to receive them. Its been really gratifying to see people post pictures on social media. People seemed really impressed with the quality of the printing. The cover has a gold foil logo which turned out nicely. I think based on the feedback I got, people were generally happy and impressed by the final look of it. It looks like a trade paperback you'd get from a big comics company. The few minor issues with shipping and .PDF files have been ironed out as well. Overall, feedback has been very positive.

PL: I believe this was your first Kickstarter campaign. How did you feel about this platform going in?

KT: Yes, first campaign. I'm not an early adopter by any stretch of the imagination. I'm the guy that waits for all the updates to be applied before I download a game. The guy that waits for all the kinks to be removed from the iPhone before getting one. I knew some friends had done kickstarters, but at first Kickstarter felt almost like busking. I had done that early in my life and it felt penny anty and small. Over the years, I came to see that you can achieve a high quality level of production through Kickstarter. So I reconsidered and thought that through my experience at Image comics, I felt I had the knowledge to do a book, printing, distributing and all on my own. What I didn't know how to do, I could easily ask my friends and industry contacts, some people who were making comics since before I was even alive. So I parsed through these ideas and felt it was something that I could do. I could make my book, which was always the main goal. And since there were no publishers willing to take a chance on an all-age book starring a girl, I realized I was better off doing it myself. 

The feedback on that alone has been great. People come up to me and thank me for doing a book starring a girl, something they can share with their kids. It was always a no-brainer for me for this story. I wanted to juxtapose the big-bad, magic wielding pirates with someone more innocent and normal, and how better to do that than have a little girl. I don't know, it seems to be working, like I struck a chord with people that was always so obvious to me.

PL: It's interesting you shopped around your book to publishers, but there wasn't enough interest. Why is that you think?

KT: Well, I mean, there's a lot of factors involved with making a book. There's me, how I wanted the book to be for starters. I'm not a known quantity. I have a lot of credit to myself, but mostly it's for lettering, or colouring or fill-in issues. Nothing I can point to specifically to say "Look! I made this book". So that's a strike against "me", it's harder to get a foot in the door without being able to show something concrete. Then there is the story itself, an all-age book, starring a girl, and pirates. It's difficult to market. Publishers like to be able to tap into the young adult, older teenager market, this is too young for them. And as a comic book, how can you market that to the regular "30-40 male" demographic who buys comics, or is seen as it's biggest market. It's a new series, not established anywhere before, not a spin-off of anything so it's a wild card. You never know with kids what they'll float towards. Kids` whims are ever fickle and that's fine. We can't make the market bend to us. That's fine too. 

A few publishers liked the concept, the ideas and style, but weren't willing to take a chance on it. An even smaller number said they could publish, but were certain it wouldn't do the material justice. So I decided that it was better for me to do it on my own. 

PL: And this way, you get to have the book the way you want it.

KT: Exactly, and this way I have final say in everything. You shouldn't trust any artist who is 100% satisfied. I am mostly pleased with how it turned out. I'd change dozens of things, but you know what, all the mistakes are mine, start to finish. I'm not blaming anyone if the colours look weird somewhere or there's a continuity error here. That's all on me. I learned and will do better next time. It's a challenge to set up a campaign, run it and manage your funds once you have them. It was a challenge, but it was worthwhile for the book, but also for me as an artist and a person. It's good to be reminded that challenges exist, it means you're on the right track.

PL: Would you go through a similar exercise again, for a sequel or anything else?

KT: Yes. My tentative plan is to make 6 Strangebeard books. I may do a Kickstarter when I'm ready. I'm working on the second chunk of it (part 6 to 10). My next master plan is to publish The Adventurers which is my other webcomic. It's a diary strip about my daughter and family. It would be a mix of strip and longer narratives. I'd like a small hardcover, we'll see if there is interest from publishers on that end first, but I liked the campaign the first time around, so I might tap into that instead. I've had several requests for this. People like Strangebeard, but they love The Adventurers. It's a lot more personal and resonates with families more. Having a few copies of those handy would please many people, it would be a good mover at shows. 

PL: How long have you been working on Strangebeard?

KT: Officially, it will be 2 years in March, but the ideas and characters originated about two years prior to starting actual work on Strangebeard. I originally conceived it as a 3 to 4 panel webcomic, kind of like a newspaper strip, but that wasn't going to go anywhere and certainly not achieve what I wanted to achieve. I then transformed it into a more regular full page story online with the intention of publishing it at some point down the line. In it's current form, we're close to 2 years now.

PL: What was your initial motivations in creating this? What were you trying to accomplish with Strangebeard, both narratively and career-wise?

KT: Well, narratively, I didn't deviate much from what I had originally envisionned.  I went back and added more things for foreshadowing, but that's about it. I'm not sure I have all the kinks worked out with characterizations yet. I think I'm doing ok, but I'm not sure I'm applying this technique, or that literary technique, I'm doing it more intuitively. Maybe it's a good thing and it's working, 

Career-wise, it allows me to do more comic work both for myself, and for audiences. It allows me to point out to Strangebeard as the thing I created. I can showcase my style. It gave me some exposure too with companies, which led me to do some work this year for Monkeybrain and Blind Ferret, so it's happening. People are also hiring me to do work in my own style, and not force me to make my work look like someone else`s or a "house style" like DC or Marvel would have me do. It makes my work a lot more interesting, fun to do and I can work faster too. 

PL: It's better for morale and quality of life for sure. You mentioned earlier that you always envisioned Strangebeard as a printed book. When you started this webcomic, were you working for the screen, or for the page?

KT: Ultimately, it fits on screen, and reads well on tablet too. But I didn't care much, I wanted to do a comic that looked like a regular page of a typical comic you'd find everywhere. The fact it fits well on tablet and screen is an added bonus. I'm not pushing the limits of the medium. By no means am I someone like Boulet, constantly experimenting with the format. I wanted to create a page and have a way for people to see it.

PL: When you kickstarted your book, you threw yourself at the mercy of your fans and the internet, they may not have been as responsive as you hoped. How would you have seen Strangebeard continuing if it hadn’t worked?

KT: I'm not sure, maybe I'd have run another campaign on a different platform. I was quite confident I would make it. I've seen successful campaigns with smaller fanbases than the one I had. The only thing I didn't anticipate was how quickly it would work. I even managed to reach a couple of stretch goals. I knew it wasn't going to be a runaway success like Sullivan's Sluggers, but I knew I would at least make the minimum funding. I wasn't seriously worried about making it. I realized I had a following and that we could make this work and make everyone involved happy.

PL: I met you at Ottawa Comic-Con a few years ago and you were running a panel with Richard Starkings. Do you do regular panels in cons?

KT: Funny enough, Richard did help me out with this and he's a really great fellow. I just sent him his book last week and he immediately posted pictures to his social media pages of him reading it in the sunshine of Santa Monica.

I have to do more panels. I don't do as much as I should. They take away from your time at the table, but they're worth it. They bring in a different crowd than the people who walk up to you at your table. You're not selling them anything but you're providing knowledge on a bunch of things, these are always fun.

It's easier to reach people during those as well. Comicbook people aren't always charismatic and some have a hard time to strike up a conversation one on one if you're at your table. It's intimidating. So it helps to ease people into opening up once there is a common ground, or topic. I think it helps that I'm a teacher too so I have experience with groups like those.

PL: So you teach when you are not making comics?

KT: I teach night classes at the Montreal Syn Studio. It's an art school on St-Catharine where I teach introductory classes on comics. I get paid to think analytically about comics, and to teach people how to make comics and what makes them unique from a storytelling perspective. I get to flex mental muscle I may not be able to otherwise. It gets me out of the house and studio and it's good to be able to share knowledge on the art form. 

PL: Getting back to Strangebeard, I’ve noticed when reading the print version that some of the earlier pages felt a bit disconnected, like you were parsing through ideas as you went. How much of it was plotted when you started and how did that change over time? At what point did you know where you were going?

KT: I didn't script the book, I did plot it though. I can't write a script, it just doesn't feel right for the medium. I need to see it. When I start a chapter of Strangebeard, I sit down with a page and 22 or 24 thumbnails and I lay out everything I want to happen from the beginning until the point where the chapter ends. A lot of the time, I'll know where I want to end up, so I write as I go along so it looks more organic, sometimes, I'm not quite sure what they'll say, so I wait until I finish a page to add text to make it punchier. It has to work visually before it can work with text. It's kind of a disjointed and inelegant way to work, and it's sloppy, but it's what's working for me now. I know what I want to happen and when, but I need to leave myself some wiggle room too. If I script it, it's too rigid. I want characters to evolve organically, not because I force them to. I'm worried my characterization is suffering because of it. I want to make sure the characters feels right, distinctive and unique and memorable. I don't want people to remember characters just by what they're wearing or what type of weapons they use. I have to do what's right for me to make this work.

PL: As I said, at first, it feels more disjointed, but as you go through the book, this aspect seems to be less and less present. It seems like you've learned how to work with this technique efficiently, or at least you made it efficient. 

KT: Yeah, I agree. A big part of it was learning how to use this technique to give more breathing room for the characters. I knew where I wanted to go with the story, but I didn't want to just have "things" happening to the characters, I wanted them to feel fully formed. I was getting feedback from readers that Jenny was a fun character to read, particularly because of the juxtaposition of her mega attitude and her vulnerability. That was what people were responding to. They didn't want to read about a sort of Clint Eastwood type character, but they wanted to read about a little insecure girl trying to be this Clint Eastwood type character. 

So I started devoting more time to that and that's when I think it started flowing more freely. It helped once I realized that the core of the story was Jenny, Lemmy and Sealock as a sort of Tintin-Snowy-Haddock kind of group. This was perhaps clear for the reader, but not for me at first. I had originally envisioned that Sealock would die, he does goes to the plank in the opening and for the longest time, it was going to happen. Once I realized that Sealock had to live, it opened up more narrative opportunities. I'm a big believer in redemption. If you are willing to do the effort, you need to receive consideration for it. So part of the story eventually becomes the story of his redemption. And a clean redemption, not in a pirate, backstabbing, puppet master way, but as a person, a mentor and a friend. This, and how this will fit with the other pieces of the narrative, is really interesting to me. Jenny became the way to do it as I wanted her to save him. And it clicked: she will be bringing along people to their better selves whether they want to or not. It helped me figure out who she is. I want Jenny to have the attitude of the 12 year old, without the jerkiness of it. There's this part where Captain Morder is being all terrifying and evil and Jenny is just sassing her without being too much of a jerk teenager. 

PL: Since you mention the character of Jenny, Strangebeard is the story of this teenage girl learning how to become an adult. As a parent yourself, how do you feel your experience as a father influenced your writing of this character?

KT: I'm not sure how much of this has seeped into my writing yet. I might look at this in 10 years and tell myself "I had no idea what I was talking about". My oldest daugther will turn 4 soon. I get a lot from her, the willpower, the excitement over everything, but I don't get a lot of Jenny from her. There's not a whole lot I use from her now. Jenny is more of an amalgamation of all the strong women I met in my life and how I feel they would behave or react in those situations. She's not anyone really, she's many persons and resides in a compartment in my head. I feel like I know who she is now, better than when I started and it's a good thing and it works. At least I think it works, that's not up to me to decide.

PL: I had anticipated that Jenny would be a character inspired by your daugther, or at least some kind of role model you wanted for her. Your answer is quite interesting.

KT: Yeah, she's not a moral character for sure. One thing that always bothers me about pirate stories in general is that pirates don't do any pirating. Actual piracy is crime, bloodshed and mayhem. I wanted a bit of that in the story, she wants to rebel and be a criminal. I wanted some elements of it in the book, but without the blood and violence. It's really family friendly. She attacks a small fishing boat, she steals a precious heirloom from the governor's house, she's testing out the water to rebel and to see if piracy, being scary and evil is for her. She's in a morally grey zone, and one that all pirate stories must touch. Being an actual pirate is not fun, real life pirates are straight up bad guys. They're not all puns and swash buckling rogues, they attack ships and kill people. Modern pirates are too. I'm thinking of the most recent pirate movie that come to mind and that's Captain Philips. Pirates are criminals. The typical fictional stories involving pirates normally has the "good pirates" like Jack Sparrow and "bad pirates" like Blackbeard. I'm kind of doing this with the pirate masters in Strangebeard, but at this point, they're not so much interested in piracy so much as they are in revenge. 

PL: Since we're on the topic of piracy, how much of Strangebeard is inspired by the "Golden Age of Piracy", Caribbean pirate stories?

KT: Most of it, it's a very interesting period. It took place mostly in one part of the world and it was over in a few years. 

PL: Being established in Montreal yourself, do you feel you can get any inspiration from the province of Quebec naval history? Montreal and Quebec City were both trading cities established along the St Lawrence river and were tied to ships and naval history for centuries.

KT: It would be interesting to use it to get away from the violent connotations of this Golden Age piece. I don't know how much I can use. I researched some Canadian naval history when I started Strangebeard. Stories of privateering were interesting, but I'm not sure it gave me a lot of inspiration for my story. I couldn't get extra juice from it for the story I wanted to tell. My pirates aren't really analog to any real pirates. I don't have a Blackbeard, Black Sam or Henry Morgan or anything. There are references, but not any explicit ones. Even the pirate masters is more a reference to more contemporary media and not actual history. I'm taking bits and pieces. In a pirate story, you want to do the stuff, the naval battles, the treasure maps, the buried trasures, sword fights and adventures. But you also have to make it work with the context of the story. With Strangebeard, I want to hit story beats while mixing and integrating the tropes of the genre as well. I'm working on a buried treasure chapter, but I want to integrate structural elements from the heist movies and novels from the 60's moreso than the traditional "treasure island" thing. I want the story to move and integrate the elements of the sea without the deep focus on the naval history. I don't want my characters to be stuck at sea, with a "William Hope Hodgson survivalist style" story for a long period of time. It's more pop fun adventure. 

PL: So a more kinetic moving story inspired by these historical elements and genre tropes.

KT: Yes, a story that's propulsive. I don't want the story to be bogged down in the reality of it. I think it's important to get inspiration from many places and various media. There are elements of classic literatures, I'll integrate some kind of Sargasso Sea story. There are also elements of movies, comic books, kids cartoons even, like Johnny Quest and Duck Tails. It's integrating your influences and putting it back on the page. You have to see all of those stories, told differently across different platforms and see how it works, why it works and what resonates with you. You need to analyze it and understand it to pass on this energy onto your own work. You know its working when people are enjoying themselves. It transfers onto the work, much like a cook transfers his passion into his meals.

PL: Strangebeard is a family-friendly book in a lot of ways. I can see kids and parents alike reading the book. What type of feedback have you received on the book from parents, and how does that differ from feedback from kids?

KT: I've received feedback from parents concerning how their kid enjoyed it. Some have told me they ran and read it cover to cover and asked for more. Girls between 8 and 14 seem to really enjoy it. I haven't gotten much in the way of official reviews, but I've received positive feedback from those who bought the book either for themselves or for their kids, which was mostly the case. Kids seem to really enjoy it. It's got a different base than I anticipated, a bit older than I thought, but people are reading it and are excited about it and as a creator, I couldn't ask for more. 

I'm really excited for the future of this. I have so many ideas and concepts and things to explore. Grey zones and breaking down cliches and what not.

For more information on Kelly Tindall's work, check out the links below.

Kelly Tindall's Blog
Kelly Tindall's Tumblr
Kelly Tindall's Portfolio

All images from Strangebeard can be found at http://www.strangebeard.com/

Book Club Report: A Discussion with Sam Alden on It Never Happened Again

Longing and Belonging

I'll always remember the day I was first introduced to comic books. One of my dearest childhood memories was walking (6 blocks exactly) to the independent video rental place near my family's house in Quebec City. It was a cold but sunny spring day and my grandmother took me there to get one comic book. She was over for the weekend and wanted to encourage me to read in English. My entire family is French. I went to a typical French school, and the English language was not commonly spoken in that part of town, or even in the town in general. She understood the value of learning a second language, even though she never learned one herself. She knew I enjoyed cartoons and figured that I would at least be interested in the medium of comic book.

I must have been no more than 6 years old at the time. We got there and I stared at a single spinning rack of comic books for a while. One comic book felt huge. There were so many to choose from. What was I supposed to pick with all of these 18 choices? I browsed and I picked a Batman comic. I will never remember which one it was, but I will always remember the feelings it evoked. Walking home, my grandmother holding my hand, the sun landing on my cold face and also importantly, the feeling of paper on my fingers. It was the first comic I remember reading and it became an important part of my life. I will always be grateful to my grandmother for it and to my parents who supported this addiction. It changed my entire life. 

This moment was a revelation, both important and fleeting. It happened once and my life was changed forever. I have been chasing down this moment for the past twenty years. Hoping to relive that first high, yet I have never been able to fully recreate it. I'm talking about this because this month, the Ottawa Comic Book Book Club read Sam Alden's It Never Happened Again, and Sam kindly agreed to meet with our group to discuss his book. 

Sam Alden by Sam Alden

Sam Alden is a 25 year old cartoonist and illustrator from Portland, Oregon. He has previously written web comics, comics and graphic novels, which include Haunter, The Man that Dances in the Meadows, Backyard, and many more. Hiw work is generally published online first and printed afterward. His comic Wicked Chicken Queen published by Retrofit Comics, won an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic at SPX a few weeks ago

Fleeting moments

It Never Happened again collects two short stories, Hawaii 1997 and Anime. The first is the story of a Young Sam Alden who is on vacation in Hawaii. He goes out one night to see the beach and the stars and meets a girl. The second is the story of Janet, a girl who feels out of place in her hometwon and plans to visit Japan, where her favourite fictional anime character lives to find her place in the world. The themes of longing and belonging are very much present in this book. The Young Sam will spend the rest of his life trying to find the girl, or some version of her, always yearning to recreate this moment. Janet wishes to recreate the experience of Kiki, or even become Kiki as best as she can. She is also looking for a place where she can belong, a goal she may never achieve as the anime paradise she wishes to reach is as fictional as her idol. 

Sam was kind enough to tell us the genesis of Hawaii 1997 and how it was a stepping stone to his current style of drawing. Drawn on notebook pages during a flight back to the U.S, this comic came to life as a sort of personal challenge and as a way to fight the boredom of air travel. The style that came through was, and is, still very distinctive and appealing and Sam embraced it. This took him away from his previous style, a sort of Craig Thompson emulation, and into his own distinctive creative style. We are all the better for it. This book shows Alden's style evolving. The use of pencils is so raw that, as a reader, you try to avoid touching it for fear of scratching or smearing the pencil marks. The look is fantastic and you can find stunning passages nearly everywhere. Of particular interest, when Young Sam puts his head underwater (above) or the map of the unknown town in Japan (below)

In Transit

Language also held an important role in the book. Janet's only silver lining in her otherwise bleak story is when she is complimented by a local man on her mastery of language. We were wondering if language had any influence on Sam's writing. It did in some ways, but not what we were expecting. Language in Anime serves to further reinforce Janet's feelings of isolation. She does not fit in her hometown, she does not fit in in Japan, and even worse, there, the foreign language isolates her from the community even more. This experience was similar to Alden's own trip to Japan when he was younger. The language barrier kept him at a distance from his environment, never quite fitting in. 

Isolation, and the search for a place where she belongs

We were also surprised to hear Sam talk about what influenced him to write this story: a similar trip to Japan with his then-girlfriend as a young adult. Nothing went as planned, not that he had planned much, and the whole fiasco became a real catalyst to the man he grew up to be. Writing Anime also forced Sam to adopt a different point of view on his experience. Our discussion then turned toward gender. By writing a female protagonist, Sam often wondered whether the characters felt true enough. In a way, he distorts his experience and projects them on a woman. In this regard can the text be read as true, as authentic? The group (which consisted that evening of over 80% of women) felt so. 

Haunting

The theme of longing are present, so is another recurring theme in Alden's work: Haunting. The community Backyard is haunted by the wolfchild, the woman is haunted by The man that dances in the Meadows. In this book, Young Sam will be forever haunted by the memory of the girl. Although it didn't appear that Sam did this consciously, the idea that people are haunted by memories, feelings and even their own mind is a recurring theme in Alden's books. The author did confirm that he does not believe in ghosts.

Finally, we were very interested in hearing about Sam's process in writing for the screen and for paper. He explained to us that he had always intended Hawaii 1997 to be printed. The movement of the kids running translates very well online as well, but that was not the primary goal. The pacing and movement also works on the page as it was intended. The Anime story was also conceived for the page and it truly shines this way. He constantly works to improve the layout and searches to find an optimal pace for the story, both for the online/Tumblr audience and for the page. His new webcomic Hollow tries to integrate those two elements. It will be interesting to compare the final results.

Gazing at the unreacheable wonders of the universe

We were lucky to have such an interesting conversation with a talented young comics author. Not only did it help us gain some perspective and knowledge on It Never Happened Again, it allowed us to learn much about his process and his thoughts on making comics. Much like Young Sam's search for an ineffable girl, or my quest for this very first comics experience, our group will keep looking endlessly for a similarly enlightening discussion on graphic novels. In the meantime, we will value our discussion with Sam and recommend everyone to seek out this outstanding work.