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Return of the Dapper Men
Jim McCann is the writer of Marvel’s prominent Hawkeye & Mockingbird and the upcoming Chaos War: Alpha Flight. Janet Lee is a gallery artist. together they bring you Archaia’s Return of the Dapper Men, a fairy tale that appears like nothing you’ve seen before in comics. Westfield’s Roger Ash spoken to McCann and Lee to discover more about the book.
Westfield: how did Return of the Dapper guy come about?
Jim McCann: Janet and I have understood each other for 15 years now. She lives in Nashville and I online in new York, but I go back to Nashville every Christmas and a couple of times with the year. She is a book buyer by day and a gallery artist by every other hour of the day and night. two Christmases ago, in 2008, I was visiting and saw these three different pieces from different showings. One was a Christmas ornament, one was a little, 5”x8” maybe, framed picture, and then another was a six foot tall painting that she had done. They were three very, extremely different looking pieces. The ornament was a steampunk looking boy, the smaller painting was a robot girl flying in space, and the big painting had these extremely dapper looking guy raining down on a Victorian setting. It is extremely Magritte looking. I came back to new York after Christmas and couldn’t get those three pieces out of my head. I had actually brought two of them back with me and put the extremely big one on hold. To me they told a story. They all went together. I composed up the proposal and the first paragraph ended up being the introduction to what is now Return of the Dapper Men. I basically stated to Janet, “Hey, you want to do a graphic novel?” So I pulled one of Nashville’s most popular up and coming gallery artists off the market for the next year and a half. At San Diego Comic-Con in 2009, I brought a few printouts of a few of Janet’s work, went to Archaia and pitched it to them on the floor. They did something that seldom happens- stated indeed right away after hearing the story and seeing the artwork. We right away kicked it into gear and sat down and organized out the whole story and how Janet was going to go from gallery artist to telling a sequential story. Okay, Janet, your turn?
Janet Lee: [laughs] I’m supposed to take over from there? There’s not much else to tell. That’s quite much how it happened. Jim sent me an email that was amazing. It made me believe of Neil Gaiman and J.M. Barrie and Tim Burton all rolled into one, so of course I stated yes.
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Westfield: had you ever believed of doing a book before, Janet?
Lee: I’ve always wished to try my hand at book illustration. I kinda believed the first thing I’d end up doing would be a children’s book, but I’ve always liked comics so this was just an outstanding opportunity. I couldn’t potentially state no, and I’m so thankful I didn’t.
McCann: Me too!
Westfield: You have a unique art style. It’s something different than I believe people have seen in comics before. Can you talk about that a bit and was it difficult adapting it to the comic form?
Lee: I’m still completely amazed when I take my bit placards to conventions and everyone freaks out because they’re on wood. [laughs] It’s quite bizarre. For a number of years I’ve been working in decoupage, which is the extremely time-honored, 1970s custom of gluing layers of paper down on a specific object. I had been utilizing decoupage with the gallery art. Jim was calling the pieces that he saw “paintings”, but actually they were giant decoupage pieces that I had done.
I draw original illustrations and layer them onto wood or canvas or something like that. It wasn’t a difficult shift to sequential art: it was the method I envisioned doing the book to begin with. When he originally pitched the project, Jim took a bunch of the decoupage pictures to show Archaia and they stated they desired exactly that style, so it was a truly easy decision to do it that way. It is most likely a bit more complicated than doing pages the routine way, because I’m drawing several layers and gluing them down and kind of building up a photo from behind. but I believe it adds a truly nice depth and a nice structure to the page that you can’t just get on ordinary paper.
Initially I started building a few of the pages on paper, and it’s just not sturdy enough to withstand layers and layers being shellacked on top of it. I ended up taking a piece of wood that’s approximately trim size and I’ll draw out what I want to do for the page. then I’ll cut out the private elements and go back in and paint some aspects in the panels, perhaps do some layers of paper within the panels and then glue the whole thing together. After that, I take the piece to be scanned, and that becomes the page.
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Westfield: Jim, what can you tell us about the story?
McCann: It’s a fairy tale. It is extremely much in the spirit of the things that influenced us growing up which were the original texts of Peter pan and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and also Where the Wild things Are. A great deal of Maurice Sendak and Shel Silverstein, that type of whimsy. but then also the several layers of where an adult can checked out a story and get one meaning out of it and a child can checked out the story and get another layer out of it. In stating that it’s all ages, it is all ages in three ways. It’s all ages youngster appropriate. It’s all ages, an adult can checked out it. and it’s all ages in that ideally that it is something that is for all the ages.
It’s the story about a world where time has stopped and has been stopped for as long as anyone can remember. There are no adults and nobody to tell the youngsters to go to bed, so they have never grown up. They’ve grown wilder and wilder and the robots have become more and more human. It’s become a extremely segmented society and stagnant. up until 314 dapper looking gentlemen rain down from the sky and time starts back up again. They go about setting things right and getting things back on track. It’s told from the point of view of one of the Dapper Men, a robot girl, and a human boy. It takes location from when time starts back up again at 3:14 pm all the method to bed time. The people and the robots of Anorev have to discover what it is to grow up, to change, and to find destiny. It taps into that feeling and anxiety that kids have about going to bed and about changing and growing up. and also about what adults have about what it is that is their destiny or why they’re here; what they’re supposed to do. Plus, a bit bit of clockwork world theory where the world machine is wound up and has ground to a halt and our society needs to change and get back on course. and then a touch of steampunk just for fun.
Lee: It’s all about layers. Decoupage layers. story layers. The style is layers.
McCann: Yeah! It is a extremely layered story but at its heart, it’s our version of a fairy tale.
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Westfield: It seems like Jim had the preliminary idea but the two of you worked out the story together.
Lee: It’s been incredibly collaborative. This being my first graphic novel, I don’t understand what I expected but Jim’s included me every step of the way. We feed off of each other’s ideas.
McCann: Janet’s art absolutely fuels my concepts as far as the story goes. I pictured Anorev and composed it down in the script, and then Janet took it to a whole other level just as she’s done with everything – the characters, all of the settings. When we were plotting things out, she was drawing character sketches and she drew a girl. I saw her and I instantaneously understood that was one of our antagonists. just as the preliminary three pieces influenced the story, I’ll look at things that she’ll just doodle and be completely inspired. Her art truly does speak to me. Not in an “I hear voices in my head” type of way. laughter I absolutely like working with her. I’ll throw something available and she’ll knock it out of the park. She’ll come back with something totally unique. Or she’ll draw something and it will add another layer to the story. I’ll go back in and say, “Oh! OK, no. We should totally have this.” At Christmas this past year she had drawn another doodle. Return of the Dapper guy is rather self-contained, however as soon as I saw this doodle that’s no bigger than your hand, I all of a unexpected understood how we could make this a trilogy. I understood exactly what the story was for two more books. It speaks a great deal to how collaborative a process this is and how much we continue to influence each other.
Lee: I believe I’m getting completely spoiled. Am I ever going to have a partner as good as Jim again? No. He’s stuck with me forever, obviously. laughter
McCann: and I don’t want to let her go either. I am lucky enough to have a partner like Janet.
Westfield: and you have Todd Klein designing the cover for you.
McCann: Yes. That was amazing. They had Todd come on and his sensibilities, going back to Sandman and all with the years, truly provides that other world type of feeling. He and Janet worked much closer, so Janet can talk about that.
Lee: Todd came in and his preliminary concepts were completely in the direction I wished to go and then he made one suggestion: he wished to add an organic element to the cover and it just clicked at that point. It was exactly like a turn of the century children’s book would be and that was perfect. I don’t understand if we would have gotten there without him. He is a genius.
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Westfield: Jim, you were telling me earlier that there are some announcements people should be watching for.
McCann: There are a number of announcements still to find between now and whenthe book hits that will attract both comic book visitors and I believe it’s risk-free to state that it’ll attract a great deal of attention from the general populace with the people that are involved. The support for this book has been overwhelming. Archaia’s been phenomenal, I have to say. They have been so terrific to Janet and I. They let us take these crazy concepts and this incredibly unique art style and they’re taking a substantial chance on a fairy tale and throwing their support right behind the book. We’ve found the exact same thing has occurred within the artistic community. There are a number of artists who have asked to, and have agreed to do, pin-ups. A great deal of names within the comic book market and outside of it that’ll surprise a great deal of people and will excite a great deal of people, in addition to some outstanding graphic artists. There have been a number of artists and writers within the community that have put their support behind the book by going on Twitter and going on Facebook and speaking about how excited they are. The person composing the intro, the foreword, is somebody that I can’t even believe stated yes, but I’m so honored and thrilled that we got a indeed and with as much enjoyment as we have for the book. The support from the whole community has been extremely lovely and extremely humbling.
Lee: I agree.
Westfield: Is there anything else either of you are working on that people can look forward to?
Hawkeye & Mockingbird #6
McCann: Hawkeye and Mockingbird, we’ve got a great deal of terrific things coming up. There’s been a great deal of support behind that book, both vital buzz and fan buzz. The action and drama is just going to keep accelerating.
Lee: and mouse Guard.
McCann: Yeah! David Petersen has asked Janet and I to do a story in mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard volume 2. then a couple of other things that Janet and I have organized that people have asked us about. So it appears like we’re starting to be a team. That’s awesome.
Lee: Yes. That’s exciting.
Westfield: any closing comments?
McCann: say thanks to you to everybody who’s supporting the book available in fandom. and supporting all our work. It means a great deal to us. and thanks to Archaia and Janet, to the experts and fans that have been spreading the word about it, in addition to all of the people that are included in the process doing pin-ups, the foreword, Todd Klein, Dave Lanphear who’s lettering it. everybody who’s been a part of team Dapper, we’re very, extremely thankful.
Lee: We are. and you know, I haven’t done comics work previously but I’ve gone to conventions and been a fan for ages. It’s truly outstanding to be on the other side. just satisfying people and getting to talk about the artwork — not just to people within the industry, but to people who come to the Archaia booth– has been wonderful. I truly couldn’t have requested anything more.