This graphic novel was immediately sequestered by my 9-year-old daughter and hoovered up in one sitting. And despite the strong thread of grief and loss running through the story, she would frequently call out to me to share the lines that had made her giggle! That is one of the most astonishing things about this original novel – the interplay between the text and illustrations really shows us the whirlwind of emotions that Cooper is experiencing, and the complexity of his relationships. When the stuffed rabbit from his magician Dad’s top hat starts talking to Cooper and leads him to believe he might still be able to find his dead father, you will absolutely want to keep reading to see what will happen next!
Read on for author-illustrator Nigel Baines’s inspirational guest post about…inspiration!
I think I’d describe most creative endeavors as a long walk down a windy beach in the rain to a café that is closed! Somehow though you remember that journey, pick something up and put it in your pocket and one day you look at it and it reminds you of something and off you go on your story. That’s impossibly vague but for me profoundly true! We are story making machines. There’s an argument we are simply a story told to us by that part of our left brain that tells those tales. We gather and collect and discard and edit whether we see ourselves as writers or not. I think the cartoonist Mel Calman was asked once how long it took him to do a hastily scribbled figure of a man and he said ‘about five minutes and forty years’. I’ve worked in publishing for a long time as a designer and illustrator but was fraying at the edges and yellowing in the sun. My Mum developed dementia and for two years I sailed in a mad storm with her completely disorientated. After Mum died the skies cleared and I took off to study for a Masters in Authorial Illustration in Falmouth. It saved my creative life. For my final project I produced and self published a graphic novel about my experience with Mum. Eventually the wonderful Anne McNeil at Hachette saw it. She had been nagging me for years to write but I’d never known how to start, where to start. But now we had a start.
A portrait of artist Nigel Baines
Graphic novels are ideal for expressing emotion and tricky feelings so I started there. I took some elements of my own growing up, got stuck, drank lots of tea, stuck huge A2 sheets of paper all over my walls, read everything I could from John Yorke to Christopher Brooker and frequently wanted to give up! I hadn’t seen a ‘dead dad’ story approached in graphic form and I wanted to capture some sense of the confusion that arises from loss, any loss. A lot of it came from my own life. Not so much the death of my parents but the feelings of being lost and quietly placed into a corner as a child. That’s the one message I wanted to get across, a message I would have liked to have told my younger self, that when you look back over your life, it’s all ok, it makes sense of a sort, it is all your story that you have weaved into the story of self and it is impossibly unique to you. I wanted it to have adventure too and the old comedian in me couldn't resist peppering it with awful jokes. I’m not a magician but I’ve always loved magic, always loved how it ties in with the deception of our brains, how easily we can be fooled into accepting a reality. I am fascinated by what magic does to us. We are storytelling creatures and constantly look for patterns. Apophenia describes our tendency to ascribe patterns to things that are not there. Magic breaks that spell. It releases us into a world where anything is possible, where logic is turned on its head, where actors can become Presidents! Plus, we love our emotions being given a sharp tweak. We love being terrified, we love being confused, not all the time but being presented with things in films or entertainment releases endorphins and dopamine. It can be a great rush! Maybe after all this you would like to have a crack at comics or graphic narrative. My first message...you don’t have to be able to draw...again...take a look at Allie Brosh as one example. The first graphic piece I did really taught me something. I was walking back to my car at Uni when I saw a homeless man walking with a huge dead crow in his hand...so, being of curious mind, I caught up with him and asked him why. A conversation followed. The next day I turned it into a four page story with a fictionalized ending. I'd never done anything like that before, and it seemed to work. Yet it all came from a simple everyday (ish!) moment. Every day, every life, is full of these. Your world view is utterly compellingly unique. You don’t need a big story to tell, the small ones are often the best. I would work with words first. Write something down and play with it and then scribble out how it might work as pages and panels. Maybe write each panel idea on a post it note and place them on a sheet of paper and move them around. It is important to play, to immerse yourself into being playful. You might surprise yourself.
Find more fantastic content on the rest of the blog tour!
