♪ [heroic music] ♪ ♪ ♪ - Hello and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is writer John Claude Bemis.

John Claude, welcome to Comic Culture.

- Oh, wonderful to be with you, Terence.

- Now we're here to talk a little bit today about your new graphic novel, "Rodeo Hawkins and the Daughters of Mayhem."

Now, I understand this is your first graphic novel.

So what made you decide to go from writing the traditional young reader books into the new medium of the graphic novel?

- Well, I come at it first just as a fan.

I mean, I've been a fan of these kind of stories for a long time and also just as kind of a creative person, it's fun to try new things.

The book, I didn't originally imagine that the book was gonna be a graphic novel, but I thought that I might turn it into a fantasy novel, which is more typical of what I write.

You know, those early ideas were just coming in in a way that were highly visual, that were real heavy on the dialogue, and they were coming so fast initially that I just wanted to capture it relatively quickly and wrote it as a script.

And so seeing it in that script format made me realize, oh yeah, the possibilities, this could be kind of fun as a graphic novel.

- The graphic novel has become sort of the new Scholastic Book Fair, you know, Judy Blume book.

And you see so many great graphic novels for younger readers.

So I'm just wondering, as you are approaching this screenplay that you've written essentially, how do you make that step from, you know, saying this would be great as a graphic novel to being able to actually produce a graphic novel with your artistic partner, Nicole Miles?

- We come at it maybe a little differently than some that produce comics and graphic novels, where they might come in initially as a team.

But from my standpoint of working in, especially in children's book publishing, having this as a script, you know, finishing the draft of the story, having that manuscript, you know, my first step is to show it to my agent.

And then he loved the idea of a graphic novel.

I mean, it's been extraordinary just to see the rise of this side of books for young people, in particular in the past 15 years, it's just really exploded and taken off.

And so it was first kind of taking that to a publisher and I was fortunate to wind up with this extraordinary editor at Holiday House, Margaret Ferguson, who is just kind of legendary in working with children's graphic novels.

And so it was only once she and I started working together that then we started looking for an illustrator and found that person in Nicole.

- And Nicole is an illustrator of some renown.

So when you are working with someone who is, you know, got a big reputation, she's taking a risk with you as the new person in this equation of the graphic novel.

So was she able to maybe give you some feedback on when you're describing a scene that maybe she could find a better way to do it?

Is it more of a, you know, she's going to help you execute your idea or is it something where she's really just gonna take that script and do it as written?

- Well, it was very collaborative between the three of us and which was frankly a bit of a surprise just because I have so many friends who are picture book writers.

And I see often the way, if you are a writer of a picture book, and once you start, if you'd have someone else who's separate as the illustrator, then normally the publishing house, the editor wants to keep those two people at arm's length from one another.

But this was much more of a collaborative process between Nicole Miles as our illustrator and my editor, Margaret Ferguson.

And so a lot of times it was the three of us kind of putting our heads together on things.

And even before Nicole was brought on, you know, Margaret and I had, my editor and I had developed this kind of vision for the story, had really gotten the script refined, worked out a lot of the kinks that we wanted.

But once we found Nicole and realized her style, what her strengths were, there was certainly a lot of tweaking of the story to be able to play to her strengths.

In particular, just how good she is.

She does simple line work, but just those facial expressions, those gestures, those landing the humorous moments in a way with the character reaction, she was just so good at that, that it was, you know, a lot of it was really the three of us kind of coming together and figuring out that, you know, to use her talents to the best effect for the story.

- And there are a lot of scenes that are humorous, but there also are a lot of scenes with high stakes.

How are you kind of finding that balance between something that might be a little heavy for a younger reader with something that could be a little bit lighter and take that heaviness away without taking away the impact and the meaning for the story?

- I grew up on, you know, Star Wars and Indiana Jones, you know, these kinds of stories, that kind of Spielberg approach where things were, where they're not explicitly comedies, but there's a lot of humor baked into the storytelling.

But the adventure, the excitement, in this case, the fantasy world building is all taken quite seriously.

You know, that that side of that world is meant to be really thought out, well-developed, you know, from my standpoint, just trying to make it as interesting as possible, something in a world that I really want to explore in my imagination.

And then hopefully that young reader will also just like find this world to be one that is like thrilling to go into when they're reading the story.

But then just as it was for me when I was a kid, you know, thrilling to later just daydream about, you know, potentially even play in the backyard as the characters and that kind of thing.

I naturally kind of like this kind of storytelling where the humor comes out and gets to play against things that are thrilling and are high stakes.

And so it's a balancing act, but I think that the two work so well together.

And while I've had a lot of humor in a lot of my fantasy novels that I've written in the past, this was really one of the first ones where I was got to just sit down and kind of craft jokes in a way that a comedian might, or if you're working on something that might be closer to a comedy script.

The joke is not just a kind of throw off, but it can become a little bit more of a centerpiece to particular scenes and particular moments.

So it was a lot of that.

And I've learned a lot from paying attention to what comedians and people who write jokes in humor do of, you know, don't just stick with your first idea.

You know, when you try to come up with something funny, try to come up with a whole bunch of different versions of it a whole bunch of other, you know, lines that might be just as funny.

Test those waters to see what really is, you know, really tickles your funny bone in that moment.

And so it was a lot of getting to do that, which I hadn't done quite as much previously.

So it was kind of fun to hone those skills, to get to play around in this kind of new sandbox of possibilities and graphic novels again, are just so dialogue heavy, you know, that you really get to see these characters in a visual way acting on the page.

So it feels much more cinematic, much more akin to film in that way.

- And you know, as a writer who is writing novels, being able to step back and just focus on those character moments, the dialogue, and not have to worry about filling the page with the description of, let's say, a character like Bugbear, where you are having to, you've got a lot more space to let the art tell the story for you.

So is it difficult?

I know you wrote it sort of screenplay style, but is it difficult for you to maybe back up a little bit and just say, you know what, maybe this is a little too much dialogue here because the art shows so much of it.

I can refine it, I can boil that joke down a little bit more and have more impact by using less words.

- Yeah, and that is one of the most fascinating parts of it, is just how much room you have and what you just don't need that is used in novel writing when you're using full narration and you're having to use words to conjure the images in the reader's mind.

But with the graphic novel, I had to come in from it, from a very visual aspect where I might be imagining what particular panels were going to look like, making assumptions about them, possibilities, but in order to write the story and write particular scenes or even write particular characters in a way so that they come to life.

But the approach that I had, 'cause I know a lot of comic and graphic novel writers have different approaches to how much they're gonna dictate to the illustrator what's gonna be on the page.

And I came in with that philosophy of not over dictating to Nicole, my illustrator, what the characters might look like or what particular scenes.

It was just the bare bones of the storytelling, what was absolutely essential to that particular scene in terms of the action and what might happen there so that I could just give her a lot of freedom.

'Cause I'd seen her work, I knew what she was good at, I knew her skill sets and her talents.

And so I felt like the end product was gonna come out so much better if I could just give her room to feel invested in putting what she wanted into those scenes and helping to bring them to life.

And so it was incredibly rewarding and really fun just to see what she did.

'Cause again, I had certain images in my head, say with the character design, what Bugbear might look like, but I gave Nicole very little input on what Bugbear did look like.

It was like, she's a giant bear with a couple of antenna who wears some sort of military style outfit and has this kind of giant electro blaster.

But in the end, that's about it.

And so then to see what Nicole winds up doing with that character or even any of the number of characters that are in the story was just kind of so fun.

What wound up being, what was almost exactly the way I had it in my imagination versus at times where she really surprised me with the design of the character.

- You talk about the blaster and I'm thinking about some of the material in this book, we're talking about high stakes, we're talking about characters who die in this graphic novel.

So is this the same audience that you've written for in the past or is this maybe an older audience that you're aiming for with this graphic novel?

- I was a fourth and fifth grade teacher for a long time.

And so that kind of, that time in childhood is one that I just know very well from being around those kids.

And that time for me as a young reader, that was that fourth, fifth grade, but even into sixth and seventh grade was a time when I was really discovering some of those books that I was most in love with, from the Tolkien's and the C.S.

Lewis type of stories.

I have always written really with that audience in mind, that kind of upper elementary and middle school age reader.

So this is very akin to the same age group that I've written for in the past with a lot of those same kind of stakes because at that age, that life and death kind of stakes can just be an appealing and interesting part of a good fantasy adventure.

- When I was in sixth grade, my English teacher, Mrs.

Kutz, made us all read "The Hobbit."

And it was a great introduction to fantasy literature.

We felt like we were reading something that was grown up because it was a lot of pages.

And we also had the fun part of reading about the ring and all of this other stuff that's going on, this high adventure.

And it really sets us on a path as readers to seek out that interesting, unexpected fiction.

So as someone who is on the other side, someone who is writing this type of fiction, are you thinking that current media gives you a lot more latitude than they may have had when I was in school?

I mean, when you were in school, we didn't really know about the multiverse, but here you are leaning into the fact that we've had so much multiverse in the last 10 years or so that you have jokes everywhere about it.

And it's part of what makes your book so interesting.

How do you kind of balance that expectation of what the audience may know with what you're hoping that they can get out of the rest of the story?

- Yeah, 'cause I'm certainly acutely aware of how young people today, the readers that I'm writing for, are very different from who I was when I was their age.

They live in a very different world.

And I keep that in mind.

I'm writing for them.

As much as I'm writing for myself, the version of myself that I imagined when I was at that age, what would have been fun and interesting?

But so much of that kind of fantasy literature from my childhood really looked, you know, like the Tolkien's, the Hobbit, a lot of those kinds of stories was looking, fantasy was very much looking to these traditional kind of medieval Europe kind of settings.

And I think that we've seen how, you know, with this rise of using the multiverse as a fantasy setting to explore is becoming more and more engaging and interesting.

I think really speaks to the more contemporary readers in a number of ways.

I mean, I think in one sense, I think that there's a little, I haven't grown tired of seeing fantasy stories that are set in kind of pseudo medieval European worlds, but at a certain point you do kind of want something new.

You wanna, you know, see something a little bit different.

In the multiverse, which maybe I should pause for a second and just explain, just to make sure in case some of our readers don't know what we're talking about with this term, multiverse.

But when we're talking about this idea, it's based on this idea that we live on our earth in our universe, as we all know, but this possibility that there might be other universes and alternate versions of our earth on some of these other universes, and maybe even alternate versions of ourselves.

And we see a lot of stories that are exploring that because I think it still becomes a portal fantasy.

You know, it still operates in that way that for the reader, it feels like they're heading into a world that is wildly different from our ordinary world.

And that older readership that kind of looked to medieval times or fairy, you know, a world of fairy or a Narnia, you know, it was still that escape into this magical world.

Now the multiverse gets, allows us to play with that, but often does it with kind of less medieval set dressing, you know, because the possibilities can be a little more contemporary.

That can be a fantasy world, but we're going into an alternate version of it that share some things with our world, but also takes aspects of what world and sends them into wildly different directions.

And so it gives a lot of latitude, in other words, for writers of fantasy to be able to play in the multiverse.

- It is a lot of fun.

We think about the possibilities.

There are the two Tories in the story.

And one of them is the way Sidney puts it, she's a plant person.

The multiverse is a great way for us to sort of say, everyone's the same, but when it rains, it's donuts, like that episode of "The Simpsons."

So the multiverse is a great playground for what you're doing.

And I'm just wondering, you know, as you are, again, playing in this multiverse, you have the one constant, the character of Sidney, who is the only Sidney, and I don't think I'm giving away too much about the book.

You kind of get to that pretty quickly in it.

So as you were developing these characters, is there some sort of like underlying message about somebody who might feel that they don't necessarily fit in everywhere?

He is the only boy in "The Daughters of Mayhem" after all.

So is there some sort of message that you've kind of baked in there that we can kind of glean as we're reading through it?

- Yeah, I don't know about a message as much as just kind of posing, you know, interesting puzzles and questions and mysteries for the reader.

There's something just kind of fun about these kind of playful thought experiments that you get to do with things like the multiverse, where you have, as you mentioned, you know, we have in our story, the main character is not Rodeo Hawkins and not one of the Daughters of Mayhem, but is this relatively ordinary kid named Sidney Poblocki.

But as it turns out, he's being hunted by a very powerful groups of people, including the Daughters of Mayhem, but also every other version of that Sidney is being hunted.

And so we get to, you know, kind of learn that they're, you know, how other people's lives could have gone in different directions.

And that kind of thought experiment of like, how might my life be different if I'd lived in this other world?

Would it be, or had this other version of my life had taken a different direction?

Would it be better?

Would it be worse?

And for Sidney at times, he sees how some of the other Sidney Poblockis had better lives in many ways, but certainly in other ways, they had worse ones.

And so, yeah, it mostly becomes less about a message and more about just kind of fun and playful kind of puzzles and thought experiments to pose for the reader about it.

- And I think that's what great literature does.

It kind of makes us want to think.

It makes us want to either explore the world a little further, or it makes us want to, as we're reading it, we can't help but wonder, like you're saying, try and answer those questions on our own about what would happen if I had powers or something like that.

So again, you know, as somebody who has written a lot of fantasy novels for young readers, now moving into graphic novels, do you find that there's plenty more questions out there for you to ask that are going to inspire you to keep writing?

Or do you sometimes feel like, maybe I'm going over the same thing and I need to pump the brakes and start from scratch?

- No, for me, it's always, there's always something new to explore with it.

There's always kind of new angles and new things.

And that's what's been fun about kind of setting up the cast of characters that we have in "Rodeo Hawkins" and "The Daughters of Mayhem" and Sidney is, you know, when I create a cast of characters, I grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons.

And one of my very favorite parts of that was the creation of your characters who were going to go on the campaign and how they might be, you know, different from one another, you know, how they're going to play different roles, who's going to be the muscle, who's going to be the brains, who's going to be, you know, one with more heart, who's going to be someone who's going to be the sneaky kind of potentially traitorous one.

When you have that kind of rich cast, I'm realizing the more that I kind of, working on some of the upcoming books, is that it's just diving in deeper.

Rather than adding new elements to that, going in deeper with a lot of the character development and the possibility of posing some of these new questions, new riddles, new possibilities for the, even just that idea of what if there are many different versions of us?

You know, this first book has many versions of Sidney Pablocki, but I'll give a little teaser that the next book in the series, which is going to be called "Rodeo Hawkins and the Sons of Disaster," is that the villain in this story, who is setting a trap for Rodeo Hawkins and the Daughters of Mayhem, has found Sidney's old best friend, Walt, but not only him, but every version of that Walt.

And so it's kind of setting a trap using all these multiple versions of Walt in the next book.

I love the challenge of just taking what I have and then looking for new ways of playing with the material, new possibilities to explore.

And for me, right now at least, it feels like they're assuming, I have notebooks just filled with ideas and possibilities of different directions.

And so it feels like rich terrain to be playing with.

- And with a strong cast of characters, I know for myself, when I'm writing, sometimes I'll struggle with a character until I find their voice.

And then it seems as if that voice is guiding how I'm going to, I guess, approach a scene or what they're going to say or how they're going to say it.

So I'm wondering, as a professional writer, are you relying a little bit on the characters to say, "No, no, I'm gonna do it this way."

Or is it simply you kind of know it and it's just gonna happen as it happens?

- Yeah, I love that question.

And it's just interesting because I remember at other stages of being a writer, I would hear that writer talk about how, "Oh no, the character just tells me what to do "and what's right."

And I used to kind of scoff at that and say, "No, come on, really, you're the one that's in charge.

"It's all coming from your imagination.

"You are the one that gets to decide."

But I think with that kind of approach of feeling like the character speaks to you as a writer is coming at it from a place where you are being much more intuitive to that creative process, rather than trying to over-manipulate it from a kind of maybe more logical standpoint.

You have to kind of trust your instincts on this.

And you have to kind of develop characters that are rich enough and thoughtful enough and have enough quirks and characteristics that set them apart from one another that there's a certain way that they would probably do stuff.

They have their own very particular motivations and psychological needs and emotional needs.

So once I've kind of figured that out with the characters, it does feel much more these days like those characters kind of tell me what to do.

And if I'm starting to head down a scene where I'm trying to force them into a box that just doesn't make sense for them, my intuition will tell me, that character will tell me that, no, there's another approach, a better idea out there to explore.

- You know, I think it was Mark Wade who once told me that writer's block, not being able to put something on a page is usually your subconscious saying, hold on a second, something's not working right.

And sometimes, you need to take a break to let your brain solve the problems in the background while you do something else, whether it's walk the dog, empty the dishwasher, play guitar, something like that.

So as somebody who is writing and trying to put ideas down and meet deadlines, when you find yourself struggling a little bit to get that idea down, do you sometimes just give yourself that break to clear your mind and then come back and just trust that it's going to be there when you go sit back down?

- Yeah, 100%, because I mean, it's important work when you sit down at the laptop and actually do the actual writing that you're supposed to do, absolutely crucial to the process.

But for me, just as important and just as valuable use of time is when I'm nuts at the laptop, and I'm just having that dedicated time just to work on ideas in my imagination.

So there's having the kind of writing practice, but there's also having the imaginative practice.

And in learning how to be good at having a strong imaginative practice to work out those ideas is also finding what to actually do during that time.

And so for me, a lot of times it is walking, it's movement, it's being active.

I find that I do my best thinking and my best sorting out of ideas when I'm back in the woods on trails and I carry little back pocket notebooks with me.

Whether it's early stages of a book or whether it is hitting a point of writer's block and needing to come up with a new idea, what the next scene might be, a bit of dialogue, a lot of that work for me is done not sitting at the laptop, but is done out taking long walks, sorting out those ideas in my head so that when I come back and sit down at the laptop, the ideas are coming fast and furious and just can't seem to get my fingers to type fast enough to get them down on the page.

- If the folks watching at home wanted to find out more about you and your work, where can they find you on the web?

- JohnClaudeBemis.com, I'm there.

And I also am on Facebook, but in particular I'm on Instagram.

And with this book being so visual, if you wanna see what a lot of the images look like and what I'm doing, you can check it out there.

And that's, you know, social media is also a place that I share about when I'm doing events.

And I do a lot of teaching as well.

I'll do a lot of work with writers, leading writing workshops and retreats.

So that's where people can find out that sort of information.

- Well, John Claude, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

It's been a fun and fast half hour.

- Thank you so much, Terence.

It's been a pleasure being on.

- And I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching Comic Culture.

We will see you again soon.

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