At New York Comic Con this past October, I was introduced to Jason Rodriguez by our mutual pal Joshua Hale Fialkov. Jason (editor on “Elk’s Run” and “Postcards”), was there talking about “Colonial Comics: 1620-1750,” an anthology he edited for Fulcrum Books that told many of the stories of the colonial era through sequential art. As a bit of a history buff, it instantly sounded like something I’d like to have on my shelf.
When I actually saw the physical product, I was blown away. The stories are presented in varying styles, but always with the emphasis on the storytelling. Each story was crafted out of a surprising amount of information, but never felt, forgive the term, “educational.” Sure, I learned a lot from reading the book, but it was presented in such an aesthetically pleasing way that it didn’t feel like I was being tricked into learning, the way so many educational comics do.
I spoke with Jason about his plans for the series going forward, what drew him to this type of comic, and how comics and education can work well together in the future. You can order the book via Amazon here.
What was the initial genesis behind this project? As a comics professional for quite some time, have you always wanted to explore the educational/non-fiction aspect of the medium, or did this come, somewhat, out of left field?
Jason Rodriguez: My friend Matt Dembicki put this book on my radar. He was working with Fulcrum Publishing on several non-fiction graphic novels and I contributed a story (illustrated by the amazing Charles Fetherolf) for Matt’s book “District Comics: An Unconventional History of Washington, DC” about the 1867 Washington Nationals. Sam Scinta, Fulcrum’s publisher, mentioned to Matt that he wanted to do an anthology about colonial America. I was recovering from knee surgery when Matt told me about the project. I was instantly into it, assembled the beginning of a team, and called Sam up. Over the course of several conversations we laid out the groundwork for three books plus some follow-on if the project did well. It just felt right – I was never really interested in super hero books or trying to work on some fiction comic that would easily get lost in the noise. I wanted to do something that would leave more of a lasting impact, and I’ve been turning more towards a young adult audience with my personal work. So it all just fell into place, and this is probably the most fun I’ve ever had doing comics. I can’t myself doing anything else at this point.
Once you decided on doing “Colonial Comics,” what was the first story you felt had to have an appearance in the book?
JR: The first story that popped into my head didn’t even appear in the book. I thought it would make sense to do the true story of the first Thanksgiving. But as other stories started coming in the book became less about tearing down known histories and more about introducing people to new histories altogether. We started putting together stories about whaling and printing presses and non-Plymouth/Boston settlements and it felt like a stronger book than saying, “Here’s what REALLY happened.” It became, “Here’s what you missed.”
How did you go about assembling the talent for the book?
JR: It was mostly curated. I started reaching out to well-known historians whose books I loved to see if they wouldn’t mind adapting their work. That’s how I hooked up with folks like Nick Bunker, Walter W. Woodward, and Virginia DeJohn Anderson. A lot of the creators were picked from my local comics group, the DC Conspiracy, and then I was introduced to our Boston-area equivalent, the Boston Comics Roundtable. Between those two groups and some folks in Philadelphia (primarily people associated with Locust Moon Comics) I managed to assemble about 80% of the creators. The rest were just people that I liked that were smart, good storytellers but also new to comics, like Christina Rice and Erika Swyler.
Was there a desire to approach the story with art that would be less experimental or stylized than we might see in other comics work? Did you feel that the art had to be relatively straight forward to benefit the young readers who might be using this as an educational text?
JR: The opposite, honestly. I think kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for and that they like to be challenged. I sure did as a kid. My first comics were things like “Muppet Babies,” “Spider-Ham,” and “Superman,” but at a pretty young age I transitioned to “Groo” which, despite Aragones’ easy-to-digest style, is a very complicated work. Very busy panels, lots of subtext – I would spend hours just staring at a fight scene to take it all in. With this book, I tried to find the RIGHT artist, without thinking much about how complicated it could be. Alexander Danner’s story about Anne Hutchinson went through two different artists (one of which went on to illustrate Christina Rice’s story about Ezekiel Cheever) before landing on Matt Rawson. Danner’s script was text-heavy and dark and I wanted someone who could bring a lot of black and cross-hatching to the piece to make it look like an old, early-1900s comic with modern scholarship. And the final piece is challenging to a young reader, but there’s enough there visually and story-wise to make them want to figure it out. That’s the hope, at least. Maybe I’m wrong…
That’s an interesting approach to pairing up talent – what story looks/feels the most different to you, from pitch to completion?
JR: That’s an easy one – Christina Rice and Steve Harrison’s story about Ezekiel Cheever on so many levels. For starters, I reached out to Christina to contribute to the book. She never wrote comics before so she originally thought I was asking for advice on how to position the book in libraries (she works in the LA library system). I asked her if she wanted to do a story about the Boston Public Library and, being a very smart person, instantly pointed out to me that the BPL is way out-of-scope for the timeline of the book and, instead pitched a story about the Boston Public School system that focused on Ezekiel Cheever, the celebrated headmaster in the Boston Latin School’s early years. So, right off the bat, way different than I envisioned. Her script was great. And then Steve…you sometimes take a chance on an artist. All I had from Steve’s past work was some mini-comics, many that weren’t in color, and a style that could have went in a variety of directions. But he was enthusiastic and up for the challenge so I signed him on. His final pages were extraordinary, better than anything I envisioned, and Jason Hanley did a great job with the letters. The final piece was just perfect. Christina has since go on to write “My Little Pony: Friends Forever,” and I don’t know what Steve is up to next but I will try and work with him whatever chance I get. And Jason Hanley is always in my stable, he’s the consummate professional.
You mentioned reaching out to historians to inquire about adapting their work. I’m very curious to know how they felt about the project, and what their expectations were going in.
JR: I think their expectations were in-line with mine – to make history (and their own work) more accessible to younger kids. David McCullough gave this great interview with 60 Minutes about a year ago when he talked about how kids these days are growing up history illiterate, they really don’t seem to care much about the past and a lot of school systems aren’t doing enough to get them interested. I don’t think it’s that kids don’t CARE about history, rather they’ve been spoon-fed the same narratives for hundreds of years. Some folks came over here for a this vague concept of religious freedom, they landed on a rock, met this one Native American who strangely disappeared, burned some suspected witches, threw some tea in the water, and then went to war. That’s 150 years of history condensed into five kind-of boring bullet points. There are so many great stories, and so many people writing about these great stories, but the work that exists is all being presented to scholarly audiences. So why not introduce them to these narratives at a younger age? And, in the process, if someone wants to go on and read Anderson’s “Creatures of Empire” or Bunker’s “Making Haste From Babylon” they can…we direct them to those works in the reference section.
In a publishing landscape where kids aren’t buying comics the way they did in the past, do you think having comics as education tools could potentially help reignite the spark of comics reading in some of our young people?
JR: I hope so. Fulcrum has seen some success with this route – “Trickster” sold gangbusters and “District Comics” and “Strange Fruit” got some great press and sales are picking up. Outside of Fulcrum you have lots of other great books, like everything Jay Hosler is doing with his science comics, everything Ryan Dunlavey and Fred Van Lente are doing, and lots of great biographies like Fetter-Vorm’s “Trinity,” Ottavani and Myrick’s “Feynman,” and of course Rep. Lewis, Aydin, and Powell’s “March,” which has really become a model for this type of book. In the past, someone would say, “We need educational comics for kids – someone come up with a superhero called Math Man!” It didn’t work, because kids are smart and can tell when they’re being tricked into learning. Plus, kids don’t want Math Man, they want Spider-Man. But if you focus on the fact that history and science have some great stories that don’t require flash and superheroes, you can just serve up great work that’s beautifully illustrated, engaging, and timeless. And it works. Well, I hope it works.
This is obviously a nice fit for History and English as educational tools – as someone who has obviously given this a ton of thought, do you think there is an effective way to bring comics into the Science and Math side of education?
JR: Absolutely. Before I start to plug my own work in this area, I’d like to once again point out the work that Jay Hosler is doing in this arena. He wrote a great article on getting kids excited about science via comics for Boing-Boing. And Matt Dembicki’s conservation comics (“Wild Ocean,” “XOC,” and “Mr. Big”) are getting so popular that the State Department sent him to Peru and will soon be sending him to Mexico to teach conservation through comics. So people are already doing this work, and it’s being embraced by the community.
So much so, in fact, that I recently entered a partnership with AAAS (publisher of “Science” and the largest general science organization in the world) to do a science outreach program using comics. This started back in June, when my contact at AAAS (Maria Sosa) asked me about doing a gallery show on science and science fiction comic art. I came back with a bigger program focused on getting kids to make their own science and science fiction comics which will be centered around the gallery show. The grand plan is to team kids up with scientists, comic writers, and illustrators to mentor them in the process of going from science fact to science fiction concept. We’ll then help them make their own science comics which will be printing up, guerrilla mini-comics style, and helping them distribute at a kid-friendly comic book show like the Smudge Expo in Washington DC. This way, they can take ownership for their work and the science they learned, talk about it, and know what it’s like to promote and sell something that they created.
That really is the next step – reading comics is one thing but kids learn by applying what they’re learning. Kids like to build things. It’s why Lego is so popular, right – you start with these tiny bricks and after assembling them you have a diorama of Captain America fighting the Red Skull. Same concept here – we start them off with an idea and, in the end, they have something that they created. And it’s a great story and it’s based on real science.
Matt Dembicki and I are true believers in the cause. We’re currently putting together our own company that focuses on packaging non-fiction comics for publishers and have several books that we’re preparing that’ll fly under that banner. The company will also help organizations to do comics outreach to kids. So that’ll be coming soon, the website may even be live by the time this feature runs.
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I know you’ve said that this is a planned series – what can you tell us about the next installment?
JR: The next installment stays in New England, but focusing on 1750-1775 and ending on the Shot Heard Round The World. At its core, it’s a book about why we went to war with England, but it’s really about how the Revolutionary spirit trickled down to the common man and woman. So there are different views on some crucial pre-revolutionary moments (the Tea Party story, for interest, focuses on this five-year-old kid in Dorchester who collected tea leaves from the Boston harbor that are now on display at the American Antiquarian Society and Massachusetts Historical Society) but there’re also stories about revolutionary writers, counterfeiters, and alcohol distillers.
After that we swing down to the Mid-Atlantic region, which is going to be a very different volume (or maybe volumes) in tone. We’ll have stories about Philadelphia and Constitutional Conventions, sure, but we’ll also have stories about the invention of race for the purpose of justifying slavery and plantation life.
I’d love to do these books for a long time, to be honest. I’d love to revisit the region but focus entirely on the earliest interactions between Native Americans and Europeans, even tell some historic stories about before Europeans started showing up. I’d also love to do some books on Western Expansion and the Gold Rush – periods of history that really don’t get a lot of educational play in that 12+ set.
But…one book at a time.
