How long?
How long does it take to create a graphic novel? Too long is generally the answer. It's a lot of work to create a world on paper and form a narrative through a series of words and images. Especially so if it's the work of a sole author rather than the product of a creative team taking on separate parts of the process. Writer, artist, letterer, colourist etc.
So, let's go back, way back, back in time to before I was the haggard wreck of a man I am today. Before I was a father. Back to the days of my attending San Diego Comic Con where, before the turn of the millennium, I checked out the Last Gasp booth and picked up this slightly shabby-looking tome.
It's a brick and it took me several minutes to decide whether I could be bothered to haul it all the way back to England. Several hundred pages of black and white photos of Paris from a century before. There's a book in there, I thought. I just didn't know what book, what story, which characters or plot. Over the following decade or so I'd occasionally take it down off the shelf and flick through it and put it back. There was still a book in there, but I was no closer to discovering out what it was.
Fast forward to somewhere around 2015 and I had an idea for a story involving an author on a book tour. I'd racked up a few experiences of my own over the years and thought it would be a good source of black comedy.
I scribbled a pile of notes on the backs of my pile of scrap paper that looked something like this (the original scrawlings have long since been recycled).
I had the beginnings of a story. I had a setting, thanks to the book of Atget's Paris, but I didn't know what it would look like.
Setting aside the scrap paper I hit the sketchbook in search of the right visual approach to this story. For a graphic novel to work (for me) I have to marry the story and the art. Having one without the other means I don't have a book. The two need to work in concert to succeed. I spent some time experimenting with pens and an ink pad and sponges to create grey tones.
It had a kind of Woodhousian feel, but it wasn't right for this story. In literary terms I was thinking more of Evelyn Waugh than Jeeves and Wooster. It was a failed experiment. I hadn't been able to meld art and story and so put it in a drawer and moved on to other projects.
Fast forward to 2017 and I took my notes back out of the drawer and returned to my story. I revised some of my previous ideas and got stuck into scripting and thumb nailing. I was determined to complete this book, even if it was going to be my last graphic novel. I'd previously written and drawn an entire book that hadn't found a publisher. I had no expectation that this one would be published either, but if I was going to crash out of the game then I was going to make the book I wanted the way I wanted to make it.
I was still stuck on the visual approach until I started to play around with using pen on watercolour paper. The tooth of the paper broke the line and gave the art a nervous, anxious energy. This was the perfect style for this story about a character called Fretwell. I finally had the story and art working together.
I started drawing the book. I edited as I went, printing out pages, re-writing scenes and rearranging panels.
It took a year to draw the 250+ pages. But I still wasn't finished. The early design of the lead character Fretwell had changed somewhat over the 200+ preceding pages of drawing him. The very early pages were the most noticeably 'off model'. I went back and redrew many of the heads.
After reading through the book a few times I needed to re-write dialogue in places and that required re-lettering entire scenes.
Finally, after spending 2017 working on The Book Tour I was ready to try and find a publisher at the beginning of 2018. That's a story in and of itself, but my French publisher released it as La Tournée in February 2019. Thanks to the hard work of çà et là it has been published around the world. In August 2022 it was optioned by a Hollywood studio.
So, how long does it take to make a graphic novel? In one sense an entire year of intense full-time work. In another, a mere couple of decades.
Distressed Beeping is a mere two years of labour and the results are available in a handsome A5 hardback. It's available from me and from Page 45. 108 pages, 120gsm uncoated paper. Matt laminated cover.
Punycorn!
My next middle grade books is coming out later this year. Please pre-order from anywhere you pre-order your books. They are the key to the success of any new release.
Out November 14th from HarperCollins
Blackwells/ WHSmith/ B&N/ BAM!/ Bookshop.org/ Hudson/ Target/ Walmart/ Amazon/ AmazonUK
Publisher : Clarion Books (November 14, 2023)
Hardcover : 224 pages
ISBN-10 : 0358571995
ISBN-13 : 978-0358571995
Reading age : 8 - 12 years
I now have a bunch of my books on Kindle. Dumped, Breakfast After Noon, The City Never Sleeps (short story sampler), Super Hero Pink(previously Gum Girl...it's a long story), Glister and Princess Decomposia.
I have DRM-free PDF versions of more of my backlist on Ko-fi and Gumroad
I have a patreon which I update regularly. Tuesdays and Saturdays I post process and behind the scenes stuff such as Punycorn colour pages. Thursdays I post a one page comic story.
I still have books out in the world: Sunburn, Paris, Kerry and the Knight of the Forest & the awards nominated The Book Tour. Support my efforts through my store – digital comics – patreon or by leaving a positive review online.fraphic novel?