Walking the road to god knows ...Von Allan
I'm not quite sure how and when I met Von Allan. What I do remember is making arrangements to meet up with him and his wife at SPX, and he handed me a printed preview copy of a graphic novel about a teenaged girl with a mentally ill mother. There are many things to say about this work, but one of the things that most struck me as I sat down with it that night in my hotel room is that Von Allan really nailed Marie's body language. Not only is she a shy girl going through an incredible emotional ordeal, she's doing it in a body that is going through the changes of puberty — where one's body is changing shape and size and it just feels awkward — and to this day I'm still floored at the kind of eye that knows how to capture and incorporate that kind of background detail in a story. And yes, the book did find a publisher, and now that it has, we're happy that Allan took time out of his schedule to sit and answer questions for us.
Von Allan: Let's see. I'm a Canadian, an artist (well, duh), and a former retailer. I'm 34 and perhaps the biggest difference between myself and most artists is that I came to art very late; I was definitely a late bloomer on the art front. I was a pretty introverted kid and I grew up pretty poor (not 'ghetto poor' but 'welfare poor'). There wasn't that much money around and getting by was pretty tricky at times. Despite Canada's health care system, it isn't easy being poor. I get a little stunned when I encounter people who think welfare cases are just scamming the system; while I'm sure that happens to some extent, the percentages are, I suspect, extremely low. Most people don't enjoy poverty. In our case, it was tough because my mom was a single mom and she had a lot of issues with mental illness on top of it. So managing her life and just taking care of me was pretty daunting. I would love to talk with her about it and just try to get more insight into how she coped, especially on the days when her demons were so prevalent. I'm not sure I'd have her kind of courage. And she had a kid to look after on top of it. Unfortunately, my mom died when I was 20 and I never had a chance to have these conversations with her. Before getting into artwork I ran a bookstore here in Ottawa for a solid five or six years. I learned a great deal about retail management, and it was a lot of fun. There wasn't any money in it, unfortunately, which is a long lament from those who work in the book trade. But man, as a learning experience it was second to none. Plus, I met my wife there, so it's even better. ST: What got you in to comics? VA: I moved to Ottawa when I was eight years old. I was lucky enough to hook up a good friend (who I'm still in touch with now), who introduced me to comics in one of Ottawa's very early direct market shops. I fell in love with them very quickly. I don't remember any particular comic really cementing things for me; I just loved the form in general. It was pure escapism. Not just escapism into the world, but true escapism from the problems that were all around me. It was nice to lose myself in the pages of The X-Men. And I was a weird enough kid to really enjoy titles like Axel Pressbutton when I was 9 or 10, too. Heh. Much about me is probably explained through that. I don't remember any hesitation. I took to the medium immediately and really enjoyed it. But only as a reader. I gobbled them up, but I certainly wasn't that interested in doing them. ST: What made you think, "Hey, I want to do this, too!" VA: Heh. So, why start, then? And why start so late? Well, a big part of it was that I honestly didn't think I could do it. Again, I was an introverted and shy kid and I didn't have a lot of self-confidence. I simply didn't think drawing was something I'd ever be able to do. I did have some pretensions of being a writer, maybe. But certainly not an artist. What changed all this was my experiences at the bookstore. Part of it was just meeting artists and getting a better insight into how professionals work. The struggles, the highs and lows, and the vast amount of work that goes into a given image. That really helped. As I've said many times to many people, I tended to think of artists as being hit by a magic wand as they emerge from the womb; one is either gifted with being an artist right from the get go or one is not. As it turns out, that was incredibly naïve. Art, like most things, is work. One works to learn and works to get better. That became very obvious to me. This combined with the fact that I really like script writing. Far more than I enjoy prose writing. Every time I wrote anything, I would tend to think in terms of visuals. Even when I was struggling with a piece of writing, the visuals weren't usually the problem. The imagery would be very strong. I realized increasingly that I wouldn't be much of a prose writer. I don't particularly enjoy writing exposition. It doesn't grab me at all. I do love exploring characters, and I love learning about them through dialogue and how they interact with one another. That's enjoyable to me, and part of the fun I have with writing. As I realized that art was something that most artists learn to do, I started thinking of trying to become one. I literally sat down with Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and started to learn. At 26, I started to learn to draw. I sucked at first. But I kept at it and, with the support of my wife, I got better at it. Slowly. It was a struggle and it wasn't easy. There were a lot of bad days and a lot of self-doubt. But I got better, kept learning, kept trying, kept going. The only trick to art is to keep doing it. Making a living at it is a whole other trick. But doing art for art's sake is something anyone can do. At any age. Keep going. ST: When you look at your art and stories, what influences do you see? VA: I don't know if I really see an out and out influence. I'm probably too close to the work to really be a good judge of that. This kinda gets into abstract discussions of style, too. I know what I like and I'm not surprised that what I like has found its way into my art. As one example: I like strong, bold inking. I like hatching. I love (love!) brush inking. When I look at a lot of comics today, this is one of the things I see that seems to have died out. Strong, bold inking. The same could be said about writing. I don't have a fondness for caption boxes and thought balloons. I've never particularly enjoyed them on a personal level and they aren't in any story I've ever done. That doesn't mean I wouldn't try them if I felt the story required it, but it's not something I go looking for. Actual artists I like tend to be old school. Barry Windsor-Smith. Matt Wagner. John Byrne. Tom Palmer inking just about anyone. Gene Colan. Mac Raboy has been a more recent revelation. ST: A graphic novel is a very ambitious undertaking. How long did the typical page take, and what projects had you done previously that made you think you were ready to take the plunge? VA: Oh, there was no real indicator that I could do a graphic novel. But how does one know when one is ready? What I did was do a number of small short stories (that will most likely never see print) in an effort to try and learn how to put stories together. Art is problem solving. And it's a never-ending quest to solve them. That's part of the fun and sometimes the frustration. I did these little stories 'til I felt I was ready to start road. Then I started it. The script came first and that was all locked down before I started drawing page one. I tried my damnedest to work at a page a day pace (inked and lettered), and I stayed fairly close to that. But, I wound up going back in and re-drawing and re-working a number of the early pages. Some of the latter pages, too. I had become a better artist and there were some weak pages and panels that had crept in. Sometimes that's a result of just having a bad day. Sometimes it's solving a certain drawing problem on the second or third go-around that I didn't handle all that well on the first pass. This kind of thing happens. How does one get better without drawing? And having the ability to be self-critical without being overly critical? The best word for all of this is "editing." While the initial inked and lettered pages didn't take all that long, the editing took a lot longer than I thought it would! ST: Where did you get the idea for The Road to God Knows ... ? VA: First, quick note (goofy artist time!). The title is actually the road to god knows ... — all lower case all the time. Why? Well, I never wanted anyone to think that the story is a religious work. So I've been hoping that the lower case, especially the lower case g in God, would help that. I know. Weird. The story is very personal and I'd be lying if I didn't say it touches on quite a bit of autobiographical ground. My mom was badly schizophrenic when I was growing up, and much of the story is drawn from those experiences. Part of the reason I couch the story in terms of mental illness is that schizophrenia isn't really mentioned in the story itself. The reader is left (as is Marie) to their own conclusions of exactly what is happening and why.
I think the big danger in tackling this type of subject matter is that it's really easy to become preachy and didactic, which is something I wanted to avoid and, hopefully, (well, if I've done my job right) I'll have succeeded. We'll see. One of the things I actually struggled with when I was figuring out the story a few years ago was if I should make it truly autobiographical or not. There's brilliant cartoonists like Chester Brown and Joe Matt who've certainly done some amazing work on this front. When it came down to it, though, I felt it was a better approach for me to make it fictional. Going this route allowed me a great deal more freedom in how I approached "my" story. Pure autobiography is very difficult to do well, and I think I would have felt guilty if I fudged any of it. Another problem was a lot of the events I wanted to deal with didn't happen all at once, and certainly didn't happen in a straightforward way; a lot of it only becomes apparent with hindsight. Add in the fact that some people were in my life at certain points and not at others, and it starts to get muddy. All in all, it would be a battle to make it work. Being able to create a fictional framework, and hopefully make a more compelling and streamlined narrative was important due to this. Taking the fictional route allowed me to play with the characters far more than I ever would have been comfortable doing with real people. Kelly, for instance, is really an amalgam of a variety of different people I knew at the time and not based on any one person. That freedom gave me more options when I wrote the script and (I think!) made the story that much stronger overall. In some ways, the road to god knows ... is actually inspired by Matt Wagner's approach to his Mage stories. While road certainly does not have the element of the fantastic that Wagner put into Mage, it does have the same sense of fictionalized autobiography. You still need to be disciplined in the craft of writing the story regardless of whether it's fiction or not. I'm just not sure road would ever have happened if I had made it pure autobiography. And, aside from anything else, it would be just too close to home. ST: Mental illness is a touchy subject to write about. What kind of reactions have you received from readers about your treatment of how it impacts Marie and her mother? VA: Well, no one is smacking me in the mouth over it and I think that's a good thing. Most people seem to be fairly touched by it, and I'm extremely pleased with that. I was really worried that it wouldn't work for some readers because they either wouldn't empathize with Marie, or just feel that her and her mom's reactions weren't believable. That doesn't seem to have happened, at least so far, and that's pretty awesome. Part of this may just be that mental illness is one of the last taboos. Most people that I know have had some encounter with mental illness. Either in their family or through a friend of a friend. I doubt sincerely that "six degrees of separation" exist when it comes to mental illness. Probably more like two degrees. ST: Why did you choose to make the protagonist a girl? And what were the unexpected challenges/discoveries in creating Marie? VA: Part of this I touched on above. I really didn't want to do a pure autobiography. Changing the gender of the protagonist allowed me to get some distance, both emotionally and also as the story's creator. I don't think of Marie as "me" at all and her gender really helped with that. One of the other things is I wanted to have a number of female characters in the story. There's the main triumvirate of Marie, her mom Betty, and her best friend Kelly. All female. One of the things I was conscious of was not having only one female character represent "all women." By having multiple female characters that, hopefully, the reader experiences as unique individuals, would help to avoid that. I think. I don't think there were really any major challenges in writing her as a female character. I tried to give her weaknesses and keep her as real, warts and all, as I possibly could. ST: What was the hardest scene for you to write? VA: Oh, there were a few. The toughest one is probably the spaghetti scene. That hasn't unfolded in the GirlAMatic pages yet, so I'd rather not talk too much about it. But that was the toughest mainly because it's based on some very true events. ST: What scene in the road to god knows... are you proudest of? VA: It's funny. I'm pleased with the story overall. There isn't one scene that really jumps out and grabs me. Certainly not one where I'm slapping myself on the back saying, "I knocked it out of the park!" I'm pleased with the story. I think I did the best I could with my abilities at the time. Doing this story was very important to me on a personal level. It was also a great trial by to learn how to put a book together. And it was fun. Challenging. Really incredibly challenging. But fun. ST: Looking back at it, what would you do differently? VA: I think I probably need a bit more time to jell with my art. That was probably the main thing I've gone back and tweaked. Or rather, edited! I think I might have avoided some of that if I had done some other projects first. But geez, that said we learn by doing. Get better. Suck less. I will say I deeply regret going to my first SPX, in 2005. I rushed to get ready for that show and it showed. Aside from the expense, I don't think it was a great initial showing of my art. Ah, well. Live and learn.
ST: How did you end up taking this project to GirlAMatic? VA: Actually, this mainly came about through asking. When my wife and I were at APE in April 2007, I had given one of the galleys to Lisa Jonté, who is the editor at GAM. A few months later she had issued a call for submissions for GirlAMatic, and I put together a package for her. Fully formal and professional as I could make it. The one nice thing is she still had the galley so she could, presumably, review the entire story along with my submission. And then she said yes. It went just like that. I should add that they are a great, great crew to be involved with. ST: What's next for you? (Any plans to revisit Marie at a later point in her life?) VA: Well, I've done three short stories that feature Marie as a younger character. So backwards rather than forwards. Right now there isn't a plan to show how these characters turn out. I might revisit these characters and their world down the road (never say never!) but right now I'm happy with the story as it is. In some ways it might hurt the story to revisit things, too. Especially if the story takes a direction that readers wouldn't be keen on. That's the risk in doing a sequel. In the meantime, the next story is tentatively called "Stargazer." And it'll feature a much younger group of characters in a very different story. I can't say loads about it right now, but I'm really hoping it works. And I do think that in some ways it's a thematic follow-up to road.
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