Today we’re excited to have a short interview with Raina Telgemeier, as part of the blog tour for Fairy Tale Comics, which we reviewed on Friday. Do you know how fun it was to be asked if we wanted to interview Raina? We dug her take on Rapunzel and we were excited to ask her more about it. If you want to see what other contributors to the book have had to say about their art, you can see who else is talking and where they’re talking here.
How did you become involved in the project? Were you approached by the editor and pitched a particular fairy tale, or did you select it yourself?
Editor Chris Duffy asked if I wanted to adapt Rapunzel for the book. It was a pretty easy decision.
What inspired you most with the source material of Rapunzel? When was the moment you knew how to approach the story?
One of the versions of Rapunzel I read included the detail about her mother being pregnant with her, and craving the rapunzel plant growing in a neighbor’s garden. That seemed very human. I like gardens and plants and vegetables (although I don’t have much of a green thumb myself), so weaving them into the story made sense. Logistically, the trickiest part was figuring out a way to avoid violence and death–which I realize is an important part of many fairy tales. But I just don’t have a taste for it.
Do you go for art first or story first? What’s your process?
For me they come together, as thumbnails. I knew I was working with an 8-page template, so I spent a few days reading over the various versions of the tale Chris sent, highlighting and rearranging my favorite elements from all of them, and then sat down and thumbnailed it all in a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon.
What challenges, if any, did you encounter writing such a short story compared with your long-form graphic novels?
With short stories, it’s all about compression. Most of the Rapunzel tales cover her birth, her childhood, and then the more dramatic events when she is a teenager. Some also jump ahead in time to Rapunzel living in the woods with the twins she and the prince have conceived. Distilling that all into a satisfying short was challenging, but I liked being able to strip away all the unnecessary components. Like most fairy tales, the story has a bone structure that works.
What fairy tale re-tellings or interpretations have you loved, in comics form or not?
We had various versions of fairy tale books and records and such around my house; my favorite thing was a German board game called Enchanted Forest, which had little game pieces shaped like pine trees, and each one had a tiny round illustration of a different fairy tale on the bottom.
I’m a Disney girl through and through, and with the exception of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, I love all the fairy tales they’ve adapted (those two leave me a little cold). However, I avoided re-watching Disney’s version of Rapunzel during this project, because I didn’t want to be too influenced by it.
If you were to create another fairy tale in comic style, which would you choose, why would you choose it, and what “twist” would you add to make it all your own?
Maybe Jack and the Beanstalk. Endlessly tall stalks and a castle in the clouds sound like fun to draw.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on a companion to my first graphic novel, Smile, called Sisters. That will be out in September of 2014.