{Hey, gang! The following was created for an Amazon.com blog post about Donner Dinner Party, a Kindle Content Nomination for the Month of January!}
The first time I did historical research for a graphic novel
wasn’t for a Hazardous Tales book—it
was for a fairy tale: Rapunzel’s Revenge,
written by Newbery Honor author Shannon Hale and her husband Dean. This wasn’t
a standard re-telling of the fairy tale; it was a re-boot—heavy on the boot, because it took place in the Old
West.
Even though our Old West was a fantasy kingdom, I wanted it
to look and feel authentic. I looked at costumes, buildings, carts, firearms,
and scenery, and then incorporated that visual research into the drawings. That
dash of period-correct detail went a long way towards making the world of Rapunzel’s Revenge feel like a real
place.
The sequel, Calamity Jack, required even more visual research. That book was set in a
turn-of-the-century American city that had been destroyed by giants. Now,
obviously, I didn’t have access to any cities destroyed by giants. I did,
however, find a wealth of amazing photos of turn-of-the-century American cities
in ruins. Giants? No--fire: the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, or earthquake: the
San Francisco Quake of 1906. These photos were fascinating. One book in
particular, The Earth Shook Sky Burned:A Photographic Record of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, by
William Bronson, became my go-to book for Calamity
Jack scenery.
San Francisco was nearly wiped off the map in 1906.
3,000 people died! I would stop drawing for hours and get lost in the photos
and accounts. This was where the idea of doing historical non-fiction graphic
novels first started to appeal to me.
What I didn’t realize was just how much research would be
required. When researching a historical graphic novel: you have to research
your subject matter twice, once for
the facts, then again for the visuals.
Amulet, the publisher of the Hazardous Tales series, employs a very strict fact-checker. This guy
is serious. If he sees an error in my manuscript, he lets me know--in angry red
pen. I go back and double-check my sources, re-write the offending passages,
and fix, fix, fix, until that fact-checker is happy. But that’s just the first
half. Then I have to draw all of
these historical scenes. So it’s back to the research.
In some ways, One Dead Spy, the first Hazardous Tales book,
was the easiest for visual research, because it was pre-photography. I was able
to just make up what many of the key characters looked like. Nathan Hale
himself (the hero of that book, and the narrator of the series) had no official
portrait. The images and statues we see of him today are romanticized versions
of written accounts.
The Reeds, the main characters of Donner Dinner Party, have remarkable portraits. My cartoon versions
of them had to match the photos. Researching the scenery of the Donner journey
was easy for me. I live in Utah, close to the original route.
I just finished the fourth Hazardous Tales book: Treaties,Trenches, Mud, and Blood, a World War One tale. That one was the most
difficult research assignment yet. Getting all of the uniforms, guns, tanks,
helmets, etc. for each of the countries involved was a monster. I spent a day
making sure each army’s shovels were the right
shovels. That book comes out this May.
The books may look cartoony, the facts may be interrupted by
jokes, but everything in a Hazardous
Tales book has been researched, fact-checked, then researched again. Double
the research, double the fun!
