Just published is the graphic novel of
David Gemmell's groundbreaking fantasy Legend.
David J Howe spoke to the perpetrators.
The task of turning David Gemmell's classic book into a
graphic novel was the job of the original author along with the combined
talents of Stan Nicholls, who provided the words, and Chris Baker - otherwise
known as Fangorn - who provided the pictures.
Stan Nicholls is perhaps better known as a journalist,
interviewer and reviewer. His book review column can be found in The
Dark Side magazine, and recent projects include the novelisation of
the Tom and Jerry film, and the autobiography of William Roache who
plays Ken Barlow in Coronation Street.
'My involvement with Legend: A Graphic Novel came
about because David Gemmell had singlehandedly revitalised my interest in
fantasy fiction,' explains Stan. 'I had gone completely off it because I
thought it was a very moribund genre. The opportunity to interview Dave came up
and I thought I'd better read his books. I was enormously impressed with Legend
for its pace, its vitality and particularly for its characterization as good
characterization is very rare in fantasy. Dave's books are full of human stuff,
stuff you can relate to, almost domestic detail mixed in with all the battle
and epic goings on. I then sat down to do an hour-long interview and were still
there five hours later. I subsequently read the rest of his books and found
them all to be immensely enjoyable.
'Then about two, maybe three years ago, we were talking
about graphic novels. In fact we were talking about films. I'd always
maintained that Legend, given a huge budget, would make a great movie
and that kind of mutated into talking about how we could visualize it, and we
decided to do a graphic novel. That's how it began. I wasn't given the job
because I was Dave's mate, I had to audition like anybody else and he was good
enough to trust me with it. Legend was Dave's first book, it was written
under very peculiar, very dramatic circumstances - he thought he was dying of
cancer at the time - and then he had a lot of trouble getting it published.
Despite this it remains Dave's best selling book, and of course the one for
which he feels the most affection. So to hand it to me and say do what you want
with it was an act of great faith.
'At no point has Dave ever said "I don't like what
you're doing." He's made suggestions but he's never made demands. I've
found him very good to work with and very trusting. I think his attitude is, if
you own a dog you don't bark yourself.'
Along with the artist, Chris Baker, David Gemmell and
Stan Nicholls have formed a company called Waylander Enterprises in order to
package more of Gemmell's books as Graphic Novels.
'One of Dave's books is called Waylander,'
explains Stan, 'and what we are doing is creating the books to then be sold on
to publishers. Legend is Waylander Enterprises' first title, Wolf in
Shadow is the second and all being well we want to do not only more of
Dave's books but also books by other people: fantasy, science fiction, and
perhaps some horror.
'We want to do quality graphic novels. That's what we're
hoping for and that's why Legend took a long time to develop. The
intention to produce something of quality grew out of the realisation of what
an adaptation is. It isn't taking the book, nailing it to a piece of wood and
passing it to the artist to paint. What I realised very quickly were, first of
all, the nearest medium you can compare a graphic novel to is movies. The
script is very similar, the way you look at it is very visual, you use some of
the same terminology: jump-cut, fade-to-black and so on. The other slightly
deeper realization is that you don't just take a book and turn it into a comic.
It's essentially a process of deconstruction and reconstruction, in other
words, you have to absorb yourself in the original and read it many, many
times, then you attempt to capture the essence and then you retell the story. I
think that's how you have to adapt.
'What I produce first of all is a script, just the
words, but it's structured like film shooting script. It might say: "Page
One, Panel One. Three men ride into a town with guns blazing, people running
out of the way..." Sometimes this can be a very long and detailed description,
just for the first panel.
'I can't draw a straight line, but I made myself up a
dummy book corresponding to the finished product and in that dummy I worked out
the flow and where the spreads were. It's very important to remember that you
don't look at single pages in isolation, you look at two-page spreads, left and
right, so every page of the script will have a reminder of this for the artist
at the top. You also try to end a right hand page with a revelation, a
close-up, something to get people to turn over and keep reading.
'We gained confidence with the format as we went
through. If you look at Legend: A Graphic Novel closely, you'll see that
the experimentation with the panel sizes and shapes becomes more radical as the
book progresses. We also put a lot of thought into what happens to the
colouring as the story unfolds. You'll find that it is more vivid towards the
end than at the beginning and that in scenes of despair the colour hues are, as
it were, despairing. The book is a synthesis of Chris's vision and my vision
and ultimately Dave's vision, because he was the ultimate referee.
'I hope it works. It took us eighteen months to do the
actual work, probably two years from the point of conception, but I hope it has
all been worth it.'
DAVID GEMMELL
'I was raised on Marvel and DC Comics and I've always
wanted to see a graphic novel of Legend done well. I didn't have the
time to break the script down which is where Stan came in. He's a tremendous
professional, you can always rely on Stan to do what he says he'll do and he's
not a prima donna. You need people you can rely on to give the thing some
heart. So having decided on Stan to do the breakdowns, we then had to find a
really good artist. Initially, we were looking at some of the biggest guys in
the field but they are mostly booked up years ahead, men like John Bolton and
Simon Bisley. We then decided to find a new talent and we saw quite a few
artists' work until we were introduced to Chris Baker. He came down to see us
and produced some pages of art which just knocked us out so we signed Chris
there and then.
'The process of producing a graphic novel is very
involved. Somebody once said the Devil was the first lawyer and if that's true,
it was a publisher who hired him. But when you look at what Random House have
put into this project, knowing nothing about graphic novels, I've only got the
highest praise for them. Random agreed that it should be printed on the finest
quality paper, at one of the best places in Europe and that it would be
stitched, not glued. I'm fed up with buying graphic novels that I read twice
and a page falls out. The care that the publishers took is evidenced by the
fact that they flew Chris out to Milan where it was printed to judge the colour
balance.
'Legend is a nice, tight story centering around a
fortress under siege and a small group of heroes. There is a lot about valour,
bravery, courage and nobility that made it ideal for graphic novel. It also has
a central hero, an old man called Druss. Druss the Axeman is absolutely made to
be painted. Chris Baker put his heart into this, it's his first graphic novel
and the reaction to it has been fabulous.
'My actual involvement was as an arbiter. Chris is a
great artist and he's very intense about his work. Stan knew what he felt the
script should say and how the story should flow in visual terms. I basically
resolved any disputes between them. The biggest problem facing Stan was the
size of the novel. There's something like ninety characters in Legend,
and Stan decided that we just couldn't have all the sub plots. In that respect,
Chris and Stan were both against me because I'd suggest including aspects that
had been dropped and they would both say "No".
'As to the future, when we were halfway through this
project, Random commissioned a second graphic novel from the three of us. Chris
and Stan are currently working on Wolf in Shadow which is another book
of mine. Chris has produced about twenty two pages so far and his work is just
getting better and better.
'Chris is an astounding artist. We sent the artwork for Legend
round to John Bolton and asked him for an honest opinion. "Chris is a real
find, a real talent, hang on to him," he told me. "He's done some
spectacular work here; I can see some of his influences but the most important
thing is that what's coming through is pure Baker, he's got his own individual
voice." Coming from John Bolton, that is a great compliment.'
FANGORN - CHRIS BAKER
'I got involved through a friend. Dave and Stan were
looking for an artist and a friend just mentioned my name to Dave. I had a chat
with Dave, sent a couple of samples of artwork - I didn't have any comic work -
and it went on from there.
'The funny thing is, I've only ever had two pages of
comic work published before, and that was in the second issue of
<I>Starburst<D>. After Dave asked me to produce something from Legend
to show the publishers, I took a scene from the book and painted some pages,
they liked them and I got the job.
'I've been painting professionally since I was at school
I suppose, because I was selling stuff even then. I did a little freelancing at
college, then I worked for an advertising agency for twelve years doing
illustration, design and layout. In the meantime I was still freelancing. I've
done a lot of games work for German companies and stuff for Waddingtons, as
well as some book jackets.
'The easiest way for me to think of Legend was in
terms of a film and to try and tell the story in relatively simple terms.
Because Legend is rooted in a kind of reality, you can't be overly fancy
with your page layouts. First and foremost you're telling a story about people
and the layout and design must reflect that. I would like to be given the
opportunity to come up with an original story to tell in comic terms but with Legend
you are restricted in how you design a page by the story.
'I did read Dave's book, but Stan's script was the basis
for the Graphic Novel. It was a watered down version of the book unfortunately,
because there are a lot of scenes that I wished I could have painted. When
working on something like this you quickly realise how short 96 pages is and we
had problems trying to tell the story visually within that. Traditional comics
are sequential art, and with Legend we had to lose some of that aspect.
The action runs across the page from the first panel to the last panel and it
couldn't be overly sequential because you would be trying to fit too much
information into a single panel. I think that was about the only real problem I
had with it: cramming the story into 96 pages.
'It must have taken me about nine months to complete the
paintings. Some of them just flowed off my pen: things like people sitting at a
table - they're always much easier to paint than action scenes. Because with
action you really have to start thinking about the figures and the movement.
'Anything really physical I pose for myself, I tend to
either use a mirror - I've got one in front of my drawing board - or
photographs. There's nothing taken direct from these sources however, things
just don't work out that way, I don't look anything like those people! My wife
posed for a couple of things, but she doesn't look anything like the finished
pictures. Part of the problem I had with Legend was that I didn't
originally want to portray it that realistically. I wanted to go for a much
more "from the hip" look, where you just drew from the heart but the
story didn't come across that way, it wasn't abstract in any way whatsoever.
'One of my heroes is an artist called Alex Nino, and he
was very much more expressionistic. You don't really hear a lot about him these
days but he was very popular in the early eighties. He was a real master of
comic art, of laying out pages, coming up with incredible page designs and this
kind of thing, pulling the medium to its limits. That's the way I would really
like to do comics.
'Currently I'm working on Wolf in Shadow which is
quite different. Instead of swords and axes there's guns and rifles. There's no
dramatic swinging of weapons above the head; you find yourself asking how many
ways are there of showing someone being shot without getting boring? Or how
many ways can you show someone actually shooting a gun? Thankfully it hasn't
been a problem.
