For kids of many generations now, The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine has been a right of passage film. Mixing animation, silliness, amazing music, and the four (actors providing the voices of) Beatles, Yellow Submarine is a surrealistic fairy-tale that parents and kids often enjoy together. For the first time ever, Titan Comics has produced a graphic novel adaptation of the film. Written and illustrated by Bill Morrison (co-founder Bongo Comics, current editor of MAD Magazine), the book takes the film and reshapes it into a compelling, fun, and gorgeous graphic novel. I spoke with Bill last week about his relationship to the work, the choices he made, creatively, and whether or not he had more Beatles work up his sleeve.
“Yellow Submarine” hits shelves on on August 28th.
Written and penciled by Bill MorrisonCover by Bill Morrison
Inked by Andrew Pepoy
Colored by Nathan Kane
Lettered by Aditya BidikarCelebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine comes this fully authorized graphic novel adaptation.
The music-loving, underwater paradise of Pepperland has been overrun by the music-hating Blue Meanies and their leader, Chief Blue Meanie.
They turn the people of Pepperland into living statues by dropping apples on them and imprison the Pepperland’s guardians, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band inside a soundproof blue glass globe, before confiscating all the music instruments in the land. Pepperland’s mayor sends aging sailor, Young Fred out in the fabled Yellow Submarine to find help. He travels to our world where he stumbles across the Beatles and begs them to help him free his world. They agree and head back to Pepperland, teaming up with Jeremy The Nowhere Man along the way to help overthrow the evil Blue Meanies through the power of music and love.
I’m a little curious what your history with Yellow Submarine is. I was raised in a household of Beatles fans and so I saw Yellow Submarine at a young age. It’s one of those sort of indelible movies from my childhood. I wasn’t sure what you were bringing to the project. What was your first exposure to Yellow Submarine? Do you hold it high esteem?
Bill Morrison: Yeah, I do hold it in very high esteem. I didn’t see it in the theater when it came out. The first time I saw it would’ve been in the ’70s probably, the first time they showed it on television. I don’t recall exactly what year that would’ve been.
My first Beatles exposure goes all the way back to the very beginning when they came to America. I saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show as just a very little kid because my two older sisters and older brother were both big Beatles fans from the get go. We had it on TV and I remember sitting there watching it. I was so young I probably thought I don’t know what the excitement’s about. Why is everybody screaming?
I also remember going to the drive in. My father took my older sisters and my brother and me to the drive in to see A Hard Day’s Night when it first came out. I remember seeing Help!. I think I saw that on television as well, on an afternoon movie.
For some reason I didn’t see Yellow Submarine in the theaters, which seems odd to me in retrospect because I know my mom used to take me to see all the animated Disney films. I remember seeing A Man Called Flintstone and Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear!, and pretty much every animated cartoon that came out. Maybe she through the Beatles was a little too old for me. I don’t know.
I do remember seeing all the merchandise and everything, posters. I was really aware of Yellow Submarine even though I hadn’t seen the movie as a kid.
It’s kind of a weird movie in the Beatles canon because it is obviously a story about the Beatles and there are characters in it that are playing the Beatles but they’re not the Beatles.
BM: Right.
I remember as a kid being very confused by George Harrison’s voice in the movie because it didn’t sound at all like the George Harrison that I knew. I thought the film did a really nice job of capturing little bits of the personalities of the various Beatles.
Continued belowI was interested in when you’re adapting the film into a comic how much of it are you trying to adapt the Yellow Submarine film with it’s interpretation of the Beatles versus the adaptation of the Yellow Submarine film but trying to give a maybe more accurate or just a more nuanced understanding of the Beatles. Basically, how close to the film’s characterizations were you trying to get with your characterizations?
BM: I was trying to stay as faithful to the film as I could possibly get, so I had the film transcribed. Actually my wife and I transcribed a great deal of it and then I got some help from the people at Titan. They sent me just a script of dialogue from the film. Some of it was correct, but some of it I looked at it and I thought, “That doesn’t seem to read the way I remember hearing the line.” I would go back and listen to it again and sometimes eventually decide that it was neither what I remembered or what they came up with. It was something completely different.
I tried to stay really close, but in doing a translation from film to comic there were areas where I had to create dialogue just to keep the story moving and kind of fill in where the songs [would go]. We were not able to use the song lyrics so the sequences where the songs take place are, for the most part, not in the graphic novel. In order to bridge those areas I had to create little bits of dialogue just to keep things going forward.
For that I really, I sort of feel like for the film they did a really good job of picking up on the characters that the Beatles had established in those first two movies, A Hard Day’s Night and Help!. They were doing the same kind of puns and tatter that the Beatles had in those movies. I was referencing those as well. Whenever I had to create dialogue I was thinking not only about Yellow Submarine but also about Help! and A Hard Day’s Night and how John would say something or what kind of a joke would Ringo make here, that kind of thing.
You mentioned that you weren’t able to use the Beatles lyrics and so therefore you weren’t doing the songs in the graphic novel. I’m wondering if given the option would you have wanted to attempt to illustrate those songs sections or do you feel that it works better without the songs?
BM: I think as a comic it works great without the songs. Obviously, visually, there’s a lot of stuff that’s not in the graphic novel that would’ve been fun to illustrate, but there was no reason to do it, like the Beatles spinning around on the record, if you remember that scene. That would’ve been a lot of fun to play with visually, but I would’ve had to create a lot of dialogue that would just be superfluous in order to cover that. I kind of feel like what we ended up with really tells a good story and the story keeps moving all the way through. You really don’t miss the songs.
What I would love to do at some point is say we’re able to allow me to use the lyrics, it would be nice to do an addendum and just take those songs and do illustrations based on what’s happening in the film in those moments and just let the lyrics kind of speak for themselves with those visual scenes. That would be a lot of fun, but I think that would be almost like an add on.
One of my favorite visual sequences in the film, is the “It’s Only a Northern Song” sequence where line drawings of the various Beatles, closely resembling photographs, would flash in various technicolor flourishes. As I was getting through the book I was saying, “Oh, what’s he going to do for that?” It wasn’t until I was a big chuck of the way through the book that I realized the songs aren’t present at all. I don’t think it hinders the enjoyment of the book even if you’re familiar with the film if the songs aren’t there. I think that you did a nice job, like you said, bridging those moments with some dialogue so it flows very naturally, whereas I think putting the songs in the middle might’ve pulled out some of that flow.
Continued belowBM: Thank you. That was my intention so I’m glad it landed that way for you at least. I think when people who have never seen the film read the book obviously they don’t know where the songs would’ve originally been so I think it’ll be a nice experience for them.
I think for people who have seen the film and especially have seen it a number of times, you will remember you’ll go, “Oh, this is where “All You Need is Love” is supposed to be.” I think the Beatles songs are so well known that you sort of hear them in your head anyway.
Absolutely, yeah.
BM: You sort of fill in that gap automatically with just your memory.
I want to talk about the art style in both the film and the book here. You do a really great job of bringing the reader into the world of the film. It’s really a stunning realization of the animation style. I was wondering from an artistic standpoint if that at all made you feel boxed in because you were so committed to recreating the look of the film, so you had to sacrifice some of your artistic ideas, or did you feel it just flowed naturally because you were so comfortable in that milieu?
BM: I think in the things I’ve done in my career, I’ve done a lot of, I’ve worked on a lot of projects and a lot of characters where I’m picking up off of something somebody else has done, a film or a TV show. I really enjoy … I always think about the reader and I think, “Okay, I’m doing The Simpsons here, and is a Simpsons fan going to necessarily want to see how Bill Morrison does The Simpsons or is the Simpsons fan going to want it to look like the TV show and be The Simpsons that they know and love?”
I’ve always sort of opted in that direction of making it very faithful. That part really comes naturally to me. I don’t have a lot of inclination to put my mark on it and make it this is Bill Morrison’s version of Yellow Submarine. I didn’t struggle with that at all.
What I really struggled with most is I started thinking, especially in this day and age when you can pickup a DVD or a blue ray of Yellow Submarine and watch it in an hour and a half. What reason would a fan have for reading the graphic novel when they could watch the movie? I wanted to bring something to it that the movie didn’t have. I started thinking about the strength of graphic design and the strength of the graphic novel medium.
I was really inspired by a lot of the posters that I used to have on my wall, the psychedelic black light posters that I had when I was a kid. I thought if I can bring some of that to this graphic novel in the way that I designed the pages and the panels and just have fun with that and sort of bring my own creativity to it that way then I think it’s going to be a more enjoyable experience for the reader then just seeing page after page of six square panels of the Beatles. I didn’t want it to look like a movie or a TV screen. I wanted the page to sort of speak about what was actually happening in the story.
If you look at the scenes in Liverpool when Ringo’s walking around and the yellow submarine is following him. Fred’s in the submarine kind of checking Ringo out. Those pages are very traditional and kind of boring. I wanted to show contrast between the real world that we live in and the technicolor psychedelic world of Pepperland. When you see those scenes that take place in our world and Liverpool they’re just standard comic frames. They’re just rectangular boxes. When you go into Pepperland it gets more crazy and imaginative.
That was really the way that I infused the story with my own creativity. I didn’t really feel the need to do it with drawing the characters in a different style or anything like that.
Continued belowIt’s interesting, a couple years ago I bought for my daughter a Yellow Submarine children’s book that was essentially just screen shots from the film. I was really interested and I actually pulled out her book the other day when I was going through this one and it’s like night and day. Even though you would think that the children’s book was taken just screen graphs from the film would evoke the film more, it certainly didn’t. Your book very much so evoked the tone of the film so much better than that book did. I think you definitely achieved that balance between being true to the source material but repurposing it in a way that was unique and different.
BM: That’s great to hear. Thank you. That was definitely intentional so I’m really glad it felt that way for you.
Would you have any interest in adapting something like A Hard Day’s Night or Help! into a graphic format and how you would approach taking another film like this but one that isn’t necessarily animated? How would your approach have changed with that? Does that interest you creatively at all?
BM: Not as much as Yellow Submarine does. I mean anything having to do with the Beatles would interest me creatively just because I’m a huge fan. I’m sure I would find a way to make it sort of a different experience than just watching the film. I don’t think I would necessarily be the right artist for it. My style I think lends itself well to animated characters. I think one of my specialties is putting things on model and making it look, like I said earlier, making the characters look the way people are used to seeing them look. I’m not a realistic artist in this sense of somebody like Alex Ross or Neal Adams where I could capture the likenesses on every page the way I would want to.
It’s something I could do, but I couldn’t do it quickly. It would probably take me several years to really feel happy with the results. I’d be spending a month on a page whereas most comic book schedules don’t allow for that. I think if I did pickup a project like that I would probably write it and then work with a different artist, somebody who is more appropriate for the job.
