Expected publication:
September 10th 2013
by Candlewick Press
by Chris A. Bolton and Kylie Bolton. As a middle school teacher, I have lots of students who love graphic novels and lets face it... adults do too! In this adventure packed graphic novel, Andrew can only dream of fulfilling his dream as the Defender's sidekick and then one day his dream come true... sort of. The art work, plot and pure fun of this novel will keep you turning the page to see what happens and will definitely leave you wanting for more at the end! I can't wait to see the next novel!
Since this is the start of the blog tour for the book, I asked if we could hear more about how this graphic novel came to be. As a teacher, this is definitely something I want to share with my students and as a reader, I just want to know! So now, I will turn it over to Chris A. Bolton to let us all know "How A Webcomic Becomes A Book"!
To start with, it's important to
note that we'd always wanted Smash to
be a book. My younger brother, Kyle, and I had a stroke of inspiration to
create the sort of all-ages comic we would have loved when we were kids. That was the birth of Smash, our series about a 10-year-old boy who unexpectedly gains
the powers of his superhero idol -- along with his villains. It took many years
to develop the idea, and we submitted it to numerous comic publishers, who all
politely rejected it, mainly on the grounds that "kids' comics don't
sell."
A few years can make a big
difference, however. The success of kids' graphic novels like Bone, Amulet, and Diary of a Wimpy
Kid (a fellow webcomic-to-book convert) showed the book publishing industry
that there is a big audience for kids' comics. We'd started publishing Smash as a free online webcomic to find
a readership, but we never stopped wanting to see it as a book. Eventually, we
were fortunate enough to interest the world's greatest literary agent,
Bernadette Baker-Baughman, who managed to entice Candlewick Press, home of Kate
DiCamillo, Waldo, Judy Moody, and other superstars of children's books.
And now, PRESTO! We're a book! Fast
and easy, end of story. Good night!
Whoa, hang on a minute! Actually, it wasn't that easy. Not even close.
I had worked for the online
bookseller Powells.com for many years, so I was familiar with most of the
promotional aspects of the book industry. I also wrote Powell's daily book news
blog posts, so I was aware of the long gap between the announcement of a book
sale and the actual arrival of the finished book in stores.
My family, however, had no idea
about any of that. In the three years since Kyle and I signed our book contract
with Candlewick, I was often met with concerned looks and questions like,
"Is the book still happening?"
We signed the contract in August,
2010. A lot of people we knew expected to see the book hit stores that fall. I
would chuckle and tell them publishing doesn't move that quickly.
They replied, "But the comic
is already done, so what's the hold-up?"
To start with, our terrific editor
at Candlewick, Mary Lee Donovan, had lots of notes for us, as any good editor
should. On our website, we'd posted the entire first season of our webcomic,
all 120 or so pages, with only ourselves and our small-but-dedicated readership
for editorial input. Sometimes we bumped up against deadlines and had to take
shortcuts, or rush parts of the story or art. I'd finished plotting the last
four episodes of season one (at that time, we published ten-page
"episodes" every two weeks) when Kyle informed me he was worn out by
the constant grind (along with his nine-to-five day job), and how quickly could
we wrap this season up? I condensed 40 pages into 20, and in doing so, had to
throw away a lot of story beats I really liked.
For the Candlewick book, I was
eager to put many of those missing parts back and expand on scenes I felt we'd
rushed or that hadn't worked out the way I'd hoped. I also wanted to add some
new plot beats and scenes that made sense to me on reflection. Kyle's artwork
had improved in leaps and bounds since we'd started posting the webcomic, so he
was particularly eager to redraw various panels, even entire pages.
Basically, the webcomic ended up
being just a rough draft. After talking with Mary Lee, who shared her own feedback
and ideas for changes -- along with her palpable enthusiasm for all the many
parts she loved and didn't want us to touch -- Kyle and I decided to add 30
brand-new pages and revise so much of the rest that Kyle ended up redrawing
more than 50% of the book.
So much for fall 2011 -- we had a
lot of work to do! And, although some of it was difficult, it all feels worth
it.
We went back and forth on changes
and suggestions. Kyle doesn't like drawing thumbnails, so he put together rough
sketches of new pages and panels. Sometimes Mary Lee and our book designer,
Nathan Pyritz, weren't sure what they were looking at; a few panels had to be
redone entirely to make the idea clearer for the reader. Many other times, we
were all delighted by the fixes and how the storytelling was improving in every
way.
This process continued until
September 2011, when Kyle was given the thumbs-up to start drawing the finished
pages.
Kyle wasn't the only one who had
work to do. Although there were no significant changes to the plot, there were
scenes and moments I wanted to expand on, not to mention those 30 new pages
that had to be created from scratch.
It's important to note that none of
this was a drag. Mary Lee prefers handwritten notes to email, so she sent each
of us a print-out of the comic with her notes in the margins. We couldn't have
been more excited to receive that bulging package!
When I opened my copy and sat on
the couch to read, I paused for a deep breath, expecting at least some of the
notes to sting. Not at all. Instead, I was thrilled to find a ton of useful critiques
and suggestions, most of which had never even occurred to me.
While writing the scripts for the
webcomic, I had sometimes packed each page a little too full, so that Kyle was
trying to cram ten panels into a single page. (Nowadays, I wouldn't want him to
draw more than eight, although six is the norm.) I also over-wrote dialogue
balloons, sometimes to compensate for a detail that wasn't clear in the
artwork, and other times just because... well, I couldn't leave a panel BLANK!
C'mon, there had to be WORDS there! Even if the words were flavorless and
served no useful purpose, readers can't be trusted to just look at a PICTURE
and figure out what's happening, even with an artist as skilled as Kyle! I soon
learned the folly of that thinking.
It took Mary Lee's notes to help
Kyle fully appreciate the need for establishing shots to orient the reader with
their surroundings before cutting into the action. Frankly, Kyle never liked
drawing backgrounds; he wanted to jump right to the "good stuff." Now
he was finding out why it's important
to take the time to set the scene for the reader, clearly and skillfully. In
graphic storytelling, setting becomes as much a character as your hero or
villains.
With new pages added, a few from
the webcomic that were cut entirely, and the addition of a 12-page prelude --
which we'd planned to post online between seasons one and two, until
Bernadette, our ever-brilliant agent, mentioned it would be a nice addition to
the book -- the total page count ballooned to 160.
Of those 160, Kyle had to revise,
redraw, or draw from scratch about 110 pages. We were being ridiculously
optimistic when we told Candlewick he'd have that done by December, 2011.
When that deadline passed with Kyle
still plugging away, we aimed for the following February. Candlewick had initially
planned to publish the book in spring 2013, but now that was clearly an
impossible dream.
It's important to note that
Candlewick only publishes in fall and spring. So, if we missed a window of
time, it wouldn't set us back just a few weeks, but possibly months. When February blew past and Kyle
was still working feverishly on the pages (while also holding down a full-time
day job), the publication date had to be postponed to fall 2013.
It was around this time that our
friends and family began wondering out loud if there would ever really be a book. I reassured them the best I
could, but even Kyle was starting to worry that we might not make it. And me? I
just clung to blind faith.
By January 2012, we'd suspended of
Season 2 of the webcomic. On reflection, it wasn't the best idea to post two
comics per week while Kyle was simultaneously working on the book (and still
holding down his full-time job). The deadlines started to clash. We agreed the book
should take first priority, especially since we'd always hoped for Smash to be a book, first and foremost.
If nothing else, working on the
first book taught us the value of getting it right the first time. We were no
longer even comfortable having Season One online, knowing how much had already
been improved for the book. It felt an awful lot like having your mom post your
baby pictures online for all to see. So we took the whole comic offline and
determined that, going forward, Smash
would only be a traditional book series.
Kyle finished the revisions in May
of 2012. We went through a few more rounds of editorial changes and
suggestions, all of them for the better. By July, we were finally ready to
color the book, which was the last stage of the process from our end.
However, there was a problem. The
initial colored files we had used for the webcomic were too small for
publication. We tried stretching the files, but that didn't work. It soon
became painfully clear that all 160 pages of the book would have to be colored
entirely from scratch. For our hardworking colorists, Christina Mackin and
Sarah Barrie Fenton, that took a few more months.
The final colors were completed in
January 2013. We sent the last pages to Mary Lee and Nathan, feeling a sense of
pure relief. We'd had a lingering fear they would inform us, politely but
firmly, that these pages didn't pass muster and Candlewick was canceling the
book. When Mary Lee responded to the finished work with jubilation, Kyle and I
felt like... well, a lot like this:
Smash:
Trial by Fire will finally be published on September 10, 2013. As I write
these words, we've given finished, full-color hardcover copies to our friends
and family. They've all been delighted and agreed it was worth the wait.
Kyle and I couldn't be more
thrilled to see what had once been a vague idea and some rough sketches turned
into a real, live book! It's been an amazing ride, and we're eternally grateful
to Mary Lee, Nathan, Bernadette, and everyone else who supported us while we
worked to bring our dream to vivid life.
