Graphic novel has direct line to Tintin
Jonathan King is a film-maker and comic creator. His debut feature, the comedy horror Black Sheep, remains one of New Zealand's biggest-selling feature films and received multiple international awards.
And now King can add children's book author to his resume with the release of The Inkberg Enigma.
It's a graphic-novel mystery adventure for 8- to 12-year-olds in which a girl and boy uncover the secret that has corrupted a town.
We asked him a few questions: Why is this a comic and not a film? This was only ever going to be a comic (which is not to say it couldn't one day be a film) and I approached it quite differently from any film I've made or hoped to make. I had the world of the story, the look of the characters, the feel of the story before I'd pinned down quite what the story was. I wanted to tell a story that came from the same places as the comics I lived growing up.
What did you enjoy about the process of drawing a comic in contrast to film?
What I love about drawing a comic is that the challenges (and it is challenging) are all your own. That is to say, you're not worried about budget, you're not worried about the weather (and, boy, do you worry about the weather when you make a film), you're not worrying about actors' performances. So the challenge is, can you make your hand draw what you want it to?
In fact, what is the process for making a graphic novel/comic? What medium/tools do you use?
It's a very slow process — certainly with my style. You can't rush it . You've. Got. To. Draw. Each. Thing. In. The. Book. I will thumbnail how the whole page will fit together, but then you have to take it panel by panel. It's not til the whole page is done that you can step back and see what you've got. I think a lot about how pages will face each other, and what each page turn gives you: surprises are good on a left hand page, so the reader doesn't see them coming; suspense is good to end at the bottom of a right hand page, to keep the reader turning the page for more.
Some things in the book I made 3D models of, so I could position them how I wanted. But even then, it was all drawn by hand — albeit with an electronic pencil into a digital tablet — mostly an iPad. I use software called Clip Studio, which has tools (like speech bubbles, panel borders) designed for comics, and sets of different ‘brushes' — all designed to emulate old fashioned analogue media. I love working digitally — for the flexibility and the cheats I can do behind the scenes.
There a definite sense of place in the book — are they imaginary or did you have particular places in mind?
The world in the book is largely based on a real harbour in the South Island called Lyttelton Harbour — where the town of Lyttelton faces the smaller settlement of Diamond Harbour, connected, as in the book, by a ferry. The town of Aurora is mostly based on Lyttelton, with a dash of a city in Oregon, USA, called Astoria and Cannery Row in Monterey, California. The castle is based on Larnach Castle in Dunedin, which has its own dark and troubled history.
How long did it take you to write and draw The Inkberg Enigma?
It took about three years — made longer by some digressions early on, when I started drawing before I'd written enough.
Your book is full of references to other books — are these particular books that influenced you or are important to this book in some way?
The biggest influence on the book in terms of visual style and tone is probably the Tintin books by Herge´ . Although my protagonists are very different from the legendary boy reporter, I loved the adventures he got into. These kids don't travel anything like Tintin does, rather journeying beneath the surface of their own town. Some other books name checked are absolutely influences on the kind of mystery and adventure I wanted to evoke, and were hugely important to me as a young reader: Tove Jansson's Moomin books, Robert Arthur's Three Investigators, Eric Ka¨ stner's Emil and the Detectives. Other books that fed directly into the book are John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, which has its own marine biologist ‘Doc', HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and the incredible story of Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition. Certainly Miro's compulsive book collecting is something I'm guilty of myself.
What/who are you comic/ graphic novel influences, and adventure book influences?
My first comic influence was Herge´ , whose careful ligne claire (clear line) style I've loved since I got my first Tintin book (The Black Island) when I was four. Since then I've been influenced by a French cartoonist, himself influenced by Herge´ called Yves Chaland and an American cartoonist called Darwyn Cooke — who has a very different, but very graphic and almost oldfashioned style. Sadly, all three of those amazing artists are no longer with us. Another big influence on my work was New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks, who loves Tintin as much as I do, and has been hugely encouraging to me (and many others) about making comics.
What cartoonists and storytellers today do you particularly admire?
Some of my favourite comics makers working today are Aaron Renier, whose book The Unsinkable Walker Bean is a terrific adventure. I love the work of New Zealand illustrators and cartoonists Sharon Murdoch and Giselle Clarkson and, as I said above, Dylan Horrocks. I adore the Mortal Engines series of books by Philip Reeve (though was disappointed by the film). I loved
The Murderer’s Ape, by Jakob Wegelius. My favourite filmmakers working today include Guillermo del Toro (who is every bit as nice a person as he is good a film-maker), Wes Anderson and Michel Gondry.