When I was invited by filmmaker Megan Durnford to participate in the documentary film “I Am Still Your Child”, one of the unique aspects of the film is that Megan wanted to include some of my artwork from my first graphic novel “the road to god knows…”, originally published in 2009. I’m proud of that book, but the artwork is rough. Megan’s request made me pretty damn nervous but we worked out a solution that we were both happy with.

This interview with CBC Ottawa’s Alan Neal on the drive-home radio program “All In A Day” delves into all of that and more.
You can listen to the interview by clicking here, playing it using the audio player below, or you can read the lightly edited transcript of the interview just below the audio player.

Lightly Edited Transcript

Alan Neal: A new documentary called “I Am Still Your Child” opens with two powerful statistics. One in five Canadians experience mental illness. 60% of them have children. It kind of sets up the film telling the story of children with parents who’ve struggled with mental illness. Local comic book artist Von Allan is one of the people featured in the film.

Von Allan (Excerpt from the Documentary Film): “We came to Ottawa, I think, for my mom to try to get more education and sort of change her circumstances. My mom was very ill, mentally ill, which is something I didn’t quite realize when I was very small. But we were struggling with poverty. She just declared bankruptcy and was going through bankruptcy. So, welfare, bankruptcy, schizophrenia, all of that together. This was tough stuff. Later on, I started to realize that I wanted to draw. And I really felt that drawing something that was close to me would be a good way to start.”

Alan Neal: And he did draw something very close to him, a graphic novel that drew from his childhood experiences titled “the road to god knows…”, which we talked about here on the program back in 2009, I believe. Years later, this documentary has given Von Allan the opportunity to revisit both that artwork and his story.

He’s with me now in studio. Hi there.

Von Allan: Hey.

Alan Neal: Obviously you were familiar with telling your story when “the road to god knows…” came out. You were very open about it then, too. Was this something different once a documentary filmmaker comes in and says, “now will you retell your story with me being in control of it?”

Von Allan: Yeah, it really was. It took a while to get used to it. And it was a strange experience to do. I had moved on. So I had done the graphic novel, it was fine. And it was my first book so it’s kind of rough. I had moved on to other projects. I think it was about a six year gap, between when Megan, the director, first contacted me to when the book was actually published. So at that point, I was like, “Whoa.” And then when she said, “we want to talk to you about your story about the situation,” everything you just described. And we want to use some of the artwork in the documentary. I kind of went, “I’m not so sure about that. It’s kind of scary for me.” So to make a long story short, they chose images that they wanted to use and they allowed me to redraw them.

Alan Neal: And was that what was scary? I mean, people may hear that and think, “Oh, what was scary? He doesn’t like his artwork as much from 2009. Was that really… what was scary?”

Von Allan: In some ways, yeah, because I’ve had such an up and down experience with art. Certainly talking about my mom, and talking about my childhood and what have you is not something I find all that easy to do. And it is weird when there’s cameras in your house, sound recorders in your house, and everybody’s great. And I have talked to Megan quite a bit about this since particularly now that the film is out. I’m not in control of it, I had to put a lot of faith and trust in her that I’m not going to look like an idiot. I’m not going to look insensitive, that it’s going to come across well. And it’s also going to work because there’s two other young women involved in the film as well. So it’s going to intercut everything really well. But I find it always tough. I was poor and, you know, my mom died at 48. So she died pretty young. I have a lot of wistful “what ifs,” that maybe she could have beaten it and she didn’t and sort of gotten herself into a better place. And the reality is, as she had gotten older, things got worse, mainly because — and one of the things with mental illness for a lot of people is — the illness itself is a struggle. And then, if you’re younger, your body… you have these physical situations that make it tough, too. So my mom’s health, physical health deteriorated on top of all the mental stuff, the schizophrenia that she was dealing with. And my feeling to this day is that that all sort of became a perfect storm that caught up with her. I’ll never know exactly what happened, but it was probably a simple heart attack. And that was it.

But too young to die and talking about it on camera is not an easy thing. That combination of, you know, visiting the artwork, revisiting the artwork, wondering “what if the graphic novel had been a bit stronger?” It did fine. But I mean, you know, I am a very different artist than I [am] now. How I approach things is different. So there are some wistful “what ifs” on that. And the story itself.

Alan Neal: I’ll come back to artwork in a moment, but were there elements of the story that you found yourself telling on film that you were not able to address back in 2009? Were there ‘pieces’ that you found coming to the surface that had not come to the surface before?

Von Allan: Yeah, in some ways, for sure. Because one of the major differences between me doing the book and the film experience is Megan had questions. And she had questions and she was pretty specific about it. So it wasn’t just me rambling or me in control of the script. She wanted to talk about very specific things. And that was new for me.

I have been interviewed a lot. But being in a situation where somebody is asking fairly probing, pretty sensitive, but pretty probing questions about aspects of my childhood. A good example is “how did I find dealing with friends and what have you?” Well, I fictionalized a lot of that in the story. But the reality of it was, I was a pretty shy kid. I was pretty ashamed of our living situation and my mom’s situation. I didn’t understand my mom’s situation all that well. So talking about that and getting into that, and some of that didn’t make it into the film completely. But that was hard.

And they filmed a lot. I mean, one of the amazing things about this is my screen time is like 12 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever. But the reality is they were at my place twice on two separate filming occasions for probably six hours each time. So 11 or 12 hours of film. So we talked about a lot of different things. And it was also interesting to see in the final screening; I hadn’t seen it until just Friday night, this past Friday night. What made it in, what wasn’t in, you know, and how it all came together. It’s a very unique experience.

Alan Neal: Is there any part of it that you’re not comfortable with how it was edited? Obviously, editing choices have to be made.

Von Allan: Absolutely.

Alan Neal: Sometimes, though, editing choices are made to form a narrative, too. Were there things where you’re like, “oh, that’s not quite what I meant?”

Von Allan: It’s hard. I think the only thing I was sensitive to is I can babble and I can talk quite a bit about it. It’s a shorter film. It’s 45 minutes. So certainly, there are times where I wish we could have gone into more. More context. I think one of my takeaways — and it’s certainly a part of the film — is poverty and how that affects you. Dealing with mental illness, dealing with trying to pay bills. But for my life, and I think for some of the other people involved, and particularly a lot of other people in general who are dealing with this stuff and kids, that’s a huge aspect of it. And if I had a very mild criticism is it would have been awesome for more of that to be [covered in the film]. But it might have been a different film if it was done. It would have had a different focus. All of a sudden, you’re bringing these financial things into it. So, no, I think they did an amazing job with it.

I probably can’t even stress the financial aspects. With my mom, the welfare stuff, I wonder sometimes as an adult — because I was a kid — is what was it like to have the self-awareness and said, “I can’t make it? I need help.” And I have to go to the government. I have to do this. And I know that in terms of our extended family — that I’m not close to — that was a major sore spot.

One of the things that’s not in the film that I remember vividly is my mom having to ask family for financial help. And instead of trusting my mom and going, “here, Judy, here’s 100 bucks, here’s whatever you need.” They made decisions for her. They were like, “no, no, no, we don’t trust you with money. We’re gonna… if you need money, you must need groceries. We’ll buy you groceries.”

We had bills to pay. Actually food at that time might not have been an issue. That kind of thing. And what that does to somebody’s dignity. She also had to explain it to me. “This is why you don’t have the greatest school clothes. This is why you don’t have all the great supplies that other kids have.” I went to Glebe [Collegiate Institute]. I went to Mutchmor [Public School] and Glashan [Public School] in Ottawa. So there were some relatively affluent kids. It was very apparent to me that I wasn’t one of them. And for my mom… I’m a stupid kid. You are just sort of aware of what you don’t have or what other people have. And if it was now, I would love to know… I think it would have been very tough on my mom to have to make those types of sacrifices and choices.

Alan Neal: Before I let you go, you mentioned redoing the art. And I still remember elements of “the road to god knows…”, where the scene where the main character is floating in the sky and all these things are swirling around her, conveying how her brain works at that point, or how she’s dealing with what she’s been going through.¹ Were there major changes to the artwork? Or was it just a matter of — did you change the actual way you portrayed an image like that?

Von Allan: It’s a tricky. It’s hard to answer is because Megan had chosen what images she wanted to use. So she said “page 30,” “this panel on page 35.” So I knew what she wanted and I felt I was obligated to maintain that. So what I tried to do was use the page as a thumbnail and basically not change the compositional approach, not change anything like that, but just approach the page, the redrawn page, with better craftsmanship.

And it was kind of freaky because I hadn’t really revisited the book at all. I sort of put it aside. And I think a lot of artists might pull out an old sketch book, sort of flip [through it], but you don’t get an opportunity to compare the art literally side by side. And that, particularly after I had done it and started looking at them side by side was pretty remarkable. I wanted to keep the tone of it the same. I wanted to keep most of the composition the same, but I wanted to approach it with better craft. And I think that’s what I was able to do. But it was weird.

Alan Neal: I’m encouraging people to check this out. The documentary aired over the weekend, but you can still stream it online. It’s called “I Am Still Your Child” by Megan Durnford. We will tweet out the link from CBC All In A Day. Von Allan is one of the people featured in it. Thanks so much for coming.

Von Allan: That’s fantastic. Thank you.

Alan Neal: Von Allan, comic book artist based here in Ottawa. Once again, the documentary, “I Am Still Your Child” is streaming online right now. And we will tweet out that link from CBC All In A Day.

Footnote

1 This is fascinating, because I don’t know what Alan is referencing, but this scene wasn’t in “the road to god knows…”. I would love to know what the source is, so if anyone reading this knows, please contact me! 2026 UDPATE: By chance, I stumbled across a March 2010 interview with Alan Neal that resolves this! It's now posted online at this very website.

CBC Radio Interview All In A Day with Alan Neal and Von Allan

2025 Introduction: Way back in September 2010, there was some controversy regarding my first graphic novel “the road to god knows…” being nominated for the Lulu Awards. Alan Neal, host of the CBC Ottawa “drive home” radio program “All In A Day,” was kind enough to have me on to discuss the situation. It’s such a shame that the Friends of Lulu as an organization imploded as a result of this situation. I felt (and still feel) that organizations like this are quite important in the industry and the absence of an organization is deeply felt, especially as the comics industry in North America continues to undergo a great deal of change.

Interestingly, I suspect this situation might have been worse if it had happened 7 or 8 years later. Why? Well, PEN America covered it pretty well in their report “BookLash”. As that report notes, “Yet amid these necessary shifts, some readers, writers, and critics are pushing to draw new lines around what types of books, tropes, and narrative conventions should be seen as permissible and who has the legitimacy, authority, or “right” to write certain stories. At one extreme, some critics are calling for an identity-essentialist approach to literature, holding that writers can only responsibly tell the stories that relate to their own identity and experiences. This approach is incompatible with the freedom to imagine that is essential to the creation of literature, and it denies readers the opportunity to experience stories through the eyes of writers offering varied and distinctive lenses.”

For those interested, I also discussed this on the Rogers television program “Daytime Ottawa”.

You can listen by clicking right here or by clicking play on the player below. In addition, a lightly-edited transcript of our discussion is provided below.

Lightly Edited Transcript

Alan Neal: So I guess you could say one of the most famous gender divides in comic book history is that of Wonder Woman’s home island. And on that island, as you may be aware, men are not allowed. And the all-female Amazon’s rule supreme and Wonder Woman heads off to man’s world as an ambassador. And the constant debate, is the Amazon’s all-woman policy making them stronger or more isolated?

Well, Ottawa’s Von Allan may have stumbled upon the real-life version of the Paradise Island dilemma. The comic book artist’s first book, “the road to god knows…”, has been nominated for three Lulu Awards. Now the Lulu’s are prestigious awards in the comic book industry, based in the United States, that focus on women in the comic book and graphic novel industry, with awards like the Women of Distinction Award or you get inducted into the Women Cartoonists Hall of Fame.

But Von Allan is a man. And his nominations haven’t necessarily sit well with all women in the industry. Von Allan is with me in the studio. Hello there.

Von Allan: Hi.

Alan Neal: Congratulations on the nominations.

Von Allan: Thank you very much.

Alan Neal: We should clarify what you’ve been nominated for. It’s not for being a woman of distinction.

Von Allan: No, no.

Alan Neal: What are you nominated for?

Von Allan: I think I’m nominated... See, I actually wrote this down, because I was having a hard time remembering it. It’s been a very wild 24 hours. I am nominated for Best Female Character — for Marie, from “the road to god knows…” — Let me see… For “the road to god knows…” itself. My wife has been nominated — in a separate award, for Women of Distinction — because she was editing the book and what have you. And the contentious one seems to be the Kim Yale Award for Best Newcomer. And I’ve been shortlisted in that, and no man, as far as I understand it, has ever been shortlisted in that category.

Alan Neal: And from what I understand this, it actually used to not be called Best Newcomer. The term ‘Female’ or ‘Woman’ used to be in the title.

Von Allan: I think! I’m not positive, but this has been part of the problem; finding out exactly what the criteria is. And Valerie, who’s the current president of Friends of Lulu, the organization, couldn’t find anything that specified gender for this award. I believe she took over the organization just a couple of years ago, so she would be ‘in the know.’ And I don’t think they were expecting anything quite like what happened.

Alan Neal: When did you first start to hear that people were upset about you being nominated?

Von Allan: Yesterday morning. I think. It all happened really quickly. I was literally getting a cup of coffee and checking email, and I got a Google alert saying the shortlist was out. And I was like, “yay!” I woke up Sam and was like, “hey, look at this, this is really neat. You’re nominated, too. That’s awesome!” And then I sort of casually looked at Twitter and did a couple of key phrase searches, and then all of a sudden I was starting to realize that, “hey, some people aren’t happy about this. Some people are actually really cranky about this.”

Alan Neal: What were they saying?

Von Allan: I think it was a combination of “why are men being nominated at all?” and then “why am I being nominated in particular?”. A couple of people I know raised an eyebrow at ‘Newcomer,’ “well, he’s not a newcomer. He’s been talking about comics for a long time,” which is totally true, but I hadn’t published. I was trying to show portfolios and what have you. So in terms of self-publishing…

Alan Neal: That part, it’s easy to prove and say, “look, you know, this is actually my first book and so on.” The male-female part, whether men should be included, is a more challenging debate.

Von Allan: It is. It’s tough. I mean, the problem is most cartoonists, most writers, most artists in comics are male. And that’s traditionally been the case. It’s not right. I mean, I personally wish it was way more like 50-50. But you could also argue the same thing about the genres of stories, as comics can be of any genre, but it’s primarily — in North America and in English — superheroes.

So the Friends of Lulu, as an organization, was set up to try to showcase more women in comics, more female-friendly titles in comics. And really to showcase that, “hey, there are a lot of fantastic women working.” And that, to me, is what the award is really all about. Female-friendly comics and creators doing good work.

Getting into the specifics of should any of the awards be open to men at all? Any of the categories? Or, you know, should some be segregated out? I don’t know. I mean, I think in some ways the problem when you do that is the argument then becomes about those choices — who to exclude, who to include, and it mitigates the focus on the awards and the actual books themselves.

Alan Neal: I was following some of these comments that were going on on Twitter. I tried contacting some of the women who had raised concerns and I hadn’t heard back yet. But I did hear back from the head of the Lulu’s, Valerie Dorazio, who you mentioned today. And here’s some of what she had to say.

She said, “I received emails from prominent former members of Friends of Lulu that said, ‘The Best Newcomer Award? A man? And next year, definitely panels.’ And what she meant by the panel’s comment is that a panel of judges, rather than nominations open to the public, would have kept a man out of that category. And I wrote back that the official rules, as far as I knew, didn’t specify a female-only award recipient. And even if it did, that might be illegal because non-profits can’t discriminate according to gender. And further, that I had no big personal preference whether Von was on the ballot or not. He did a comic about strong female characters and our official description of the Lulu Awards as a whole is that the Lulu Awards recognizes the people and projects that helped to open eyes and minds to the amazing comic and cartooning work by and/or about women. So I thought, ‘well, Von was covered.’ Then later that day, I got an email from another person who wrote that the consensus from several of the women that they’d talked to since the nominations was announced was that the category should be for women only. And I guess they wanted an executive decision for me to take Von off the ballot, and I wasn’t going to do it. The furor all just increased from there.”

In fact, and today, Valerie has announced that she’s leaving the Lulu’s.

Von Allan: Yup, she’s resigning as of January 1st, as far as I know. And she’s going to start up a new organization that will be, I believe, “comics are for everyone” for exactly that. Again, part of the problem with this, to my mind, is there are some fantastic cartoonists that are shortlisted. And I’m happy to get some attention of my work, but it really should be everybody getting attention. And that it’s become this, I find very peculiar.

The other thing I find perplexing about is that it’s not like this has suddenly come out of left field, really. The nomination process was open for, I think, about a month. If people had had any quibbles — or even before that — then was the time to do it. There is a board of directors in place, underneath Valerie, as far as I understand it. I could be wrong about that. But it’s not just her with her hand on the tiller holding on to power. And it should be about the art. If there was any type of cry or concerns about this stuff, raise them then. Raising them now just seems kind of odd and defeatist.

Alan Neal: Just got a few seconds left. I just wondered, do you actually want to go to, is there an award ceremony?

Von Allan: I’m not sure. I know the organization had some problems. I believe it used to be tied directly to the San Diego Comic Con.

Alan Neal: Right.

Von Allan: And now that’s already happened this year. So I’m not sure exactly where they’re going to be. I think it’s in California still. So…

Alan Neal: But would you want to go into a room after this?

Von Allan: Sure. I think that would be interesting. I was sort of expecting to get hate mail too, and that hasn’t happened. So I think people are more upset about my gender than the work itself. And I’m not so sure how many of them have even looked at the work itself.

Alan Neal: All right. Von Allan, thanks very much for coming in.

Von Allan: Thank you.

Alan Neal: And congratulations again.

Von Allan: Thanks very much.

Alan Neal: Von Allan’s graphic novel “the road to god knows…” has been nominated for three Lulu Awards. Any thoughts on this? allinaday@cbc.ca is our email address. And Von Allan will be back on our show a little bit later in the season to talk about his next graphic novel, “Stargazer,” coming out in November.

CBC Ottawa's All In A Day

Way back in 2007, I had a very nice chat with Adrian Harewood, then host of the CBC Ottawa radio program All In A Day. This was actually a very special moment for me; I had been a long-time fan of the show and I listened to it quite regularly while I was working away at my drawing board. Needless to say it was cool — and intimidating — to be invited on as a guest. I think I managed to over my nerves pretty quickly and we proceeded to discuss comics in Canada as well as my part in an art show at the Parkdale Gallery (owned and operated by artist James Robinson). The show was titled “Comic Book Chaos” and featured a number of Ottawa-area cartoonists and comic book artists. Sadly, the Parkdale Gallery has now closed; running a gallery is never easy, but I was quite disappointed when James was forced to shut it down.

You can listen by clicking right here or by clicking play on the little player below. In addition, a lightly-edited transcript of our discussion is provided below.

Lightly Edited Transcript

Adrian Harewood: For decades it was seen as disposable art, but throughout December an Ottawa Art Gallery is celebrating comic book art. The Parkdale Gallery is holding an exhibit called “Comic Book Chaos.” An Ottawa artist, Eric Julien, is featured in the show. He’s the artist behind the graphic novel “the road to god knows…” and he draws under the pen name Von Allan. Eric joins us in our studio. Hi Eric.

Von Allan: Hi.

Adrian Harewood: Thanks so much for coming in.

Von Allan: Oh, my pleasure.

Adrian Harewood: Eric, you’ve been invited to exhibit as part of this show. Why do you think comic strips belong in art galleries?

Von Allan: I think for the longest time they weren’t — particularly the art form of comics — wasn’t really considered that important.

Adrian Harewood: Why?

Von Allan: I don’t know. I think, well, I think part of it is that one of the things — one of my picky points — has always been that a lot of people confuse comics as a medium and the genre. And the genre in North America has traditionally been superheroes. And not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that would be like saying all literature has to be romance novels. And there’s far more depth to the medium than that. And because of that disconnect, you’ve had, to my mind, people thinking that superheroes equal kids stuff. It’s not really relevant. So why would it ever be in a gallery? It doesn’t belong there. So it really has no place.

Adrian Harewood: It’s almost seen — perhaps in some quarters — as being too popular, as serving the masses.

It certainly is and was a populist medium, for sure. I mean, there was a time, not really that long ago, where comics were found on every corner newsstand. And that’s where people would go. I mean, the comic book shop as a retail store is really something that’s only come in through the mid to late 70s. And that sort of changed the purchasing arrangement of how comics were consumed. And it also meant that they became more collectible. And it’s the collectible part that kind of bugs me sometimes.

Adrian Harewood: How did you become a graphic novelist?

Von Allan: It’s a weird story. I used to run Perfect Books down on Elgin Street. I was sort of selling other people’s creativity, not my own. And I’ve always loved comics. They’ve always spoken to me. And I was kind of a lonely, insecure kid. They were good escapism for me. And it was totally superheroes I was escaping into. And I never thought I could do this. I never thought I could draw. And for a variety of happy circumstances, I took a shot at it. I just got over that hump and I took a shot. I sucked for a long time. But I started drawing and I got better. And I think I’ve gotten better now. And it was just the leap of faith.

Adrian Harewood: Was it an epiphany? Did you just wake up one morning and say, “I can do this as well.”

Von Allan: I thought I could write. I didn’t really think I could draw. And then I was lucky enough to start meeting a few people who were artists, partially through the bookstore. And I started getting an insight into the work involved, the bad days, the struggle, the struggle to get better, all that kind of stuff. And it sounds so naive. I sound so silly with it. But I really thought that artists of all stripes, not just comics, were kind of hit with a magic wand when they were born. And they were an artist and the talent was always there.

Adrian Harewood: They were made that way.

Von Allan: They were made that way. And if you didn’t have that, if you weren’t part of that secret society, you couldn’t do it. And that’s totally false.

Adrian Harewood: You’ve proved it. You have your your new novel part of your graphic novel, “the road to god knows…” is featured in this exhibit. And it was recently published online. Can you walk me through the story?

Von Allan: It’s about a teenage girl dealing with her mom’s schizophrenia.

Adrian Harewood: Her name is Marie.

Von Allan: Her name is Marie and she’s going through some tough times. The story set in Ottawa. And it’s, I guess you would call it is a “slice of life” story. And what I tried to do with it was tell a story that hopefully resonates, if I’ve done my job right, and doesn’t try to give any pat answers to what mental illness — or in this case — what schizophrenia is. In a way, I think the story might disappoint a few people who — by the time they end this, like they’ve closed the last page — they might be a little bit disappointed that there isn’t a happy resolution. Mental illness isn’t something you resolve in one fell swoop. There is a subplot. There is a subplot that keeps the story going that I think will give it some closure. It was something I thought was important to deal with. It speaks to me personally from some of my own experiences in my life. And it was different than a lot of stuff that’s out there.

Adrian Harewood: I was gonna ask you that question, because you call it a slice of life story. How much of it is a slice of your life?

Von Allan: If you can imagine I’m a teenage girl, it’s pretty close. I drew a lot of my own experiences. Some comic book artists — like Seth and what have you, Chester Brown — have done a lot of autobiographical material. I was a little bit hesitant for a variety of reasons. The main one is that I find fiction lets you play with time a little bit. If it’s pure autobiography, you run into the pesky details of representing real human beings who may not be so keen on how you’re depicting them. With fiction, you can play with it. I made amalgams of different people. I think I made amalgams of myself in it. I don’t consider Marie myself. She’s one permutation of what I could have been or who I might have been. And it is a lot more freeing to write a script like that.

Adrian Harewood: Clearly, this is a story for people to read, to look at. But how much of it is therapy?

Von Allan: I don’t think… I don’t ever want to call it that, but it probably was therapeutic for me. I don’t want to be didactic and getting up on a soapbox, or anything like that with it. I don’t think there are any easy answers. I think in a way — again, if I’ve done my job right — I’m raising questions about mental illness, at least how one family copes with it. That’s probably as far as I’m willing to go. This is just one look at it.

Adrian Harewood: What do you think graphic novels can do that straight novels can’t?

Von Allan: They present visuals in a way that’s different than a film or TV or anything like that. And can be differently nuanced than fiction. I don’t think one medium is superior to the other or anything like that. I love novels and I’ve happily sold fantastic books that I strongly believe in. But I do think that it’s something about the combination of how words and pictures — if you get into “left brain, right brain” theory — works in a way that’s different fundamentally than what film and literature bring. It’s that very difference that makes comics and graphic novels so special.

Adrian Harewood: How did you go about selecting which pages you wanted to display in the gallery?

Von Allan: That was tricky. Partially because in a way it’s almost counter-intuitive to what the graphic novel is supposed to be. I mean, each page flows sequentially to try to tell a story. So taking some of those pages out of context kind of concerned me a little bit. Really, it came down to trying to find images that I thought worked on their own, kind of told a story in and of themselves. A lot of these were sort of splash pages, larger pages that I thought would work okay on a wall. It’s still a bit of a different experience. I’m hoping people like it. It is a little unusual, though, to do it. I think I picked well. We’ll see.

Adrian Harewood: This really seems to be the golden age in some ways for graphic novels. Even in this country, I’m thinking… you mentioned Chester Brown and his great novel “Louis Riel.” One person whom I love, Ho Che Anderson.

Von Allan: Yeah, Ho Che Anderson is amazing.

Adrian Harewood: What is it about? What’s going on in Canada right now that we’re producing so many fine graphic novelists?

Von Allan: Without sounding too trite, I think the medium is growing up. I think that, for a long time, it was that superhero — sort of dogmatic, bam, that’s what it was. People are now trying different things. Bookstores are way more approachable now with carrying them. Almost every bookstore at least has a couple of graphic novels in. There was a time if they were there at all, they were in the kids section. That certainly helped. The talent has gotten a lot better. It’s a lot more varied. We need more publishers pursuing it and trying to find good works, bringing that work to the public and showing it off.

Adrian Harewood: You’re trying to break into a pretty tough industry. What do you think you need to do to succeed?

Von Allan: I wish I had the answer for that. It has been a really tricky thing. And I ran a bookstore! I wish I had more insights than I do. You keep pushing, you stay optimistic. You hope the work resonates. Connections, you really you have no idea. I think sometimes it’s a crapshoot. I will say I wish sometimes there was a little bit more attention to graphic novels with some of the award categories. But that’s a pipe dream of mine right now. That’s not quite there yet.

Adrian Harewood: I want you to make your pitch right now. Why should people go and go and see this exhibit at the gallery?

Von Allan: There is amazing stuff. And it’s not just mine. If you want to see different artwork, artwork that will stick in your gut, artwork that is colorful, it’s bold, it’s doing different stuff. I mean, there’s Ottawa artists like Ronn Sutton, who people don’t even know that are there. You know, it’s magic. There’s some amazing work going on right there. And I think it’s not all just comics or anything like that. But I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised if you go. Take a look.

Adrian Harewood: Eric, great to talk to you. Nice to meet you. Thanks so much for coming in.

Von Allan: Thanks very much.

Adrian Harewood: Eric Julien also goes by his pen name Von Allan. You can check out his graphic novel “the road to god knows…” at www.girlamatic.com. Some of Eric’s work is also on display at the Parkdale Gallery as part of the “Comic Book Chaos” Exhibit. And the show runs until January 1st.

CBC Ottawa All In A Day Radio Interview with Alan Neal and Von Allan

On Friday, March 12, 2010, I sat down for an interview with Alan Neal, host of CBC Ottawa’s All In A Day radio program. We discuss the launch of my first graphic novel, “the road to god knows…”, at Perfect Books in downtown Ottawa and chat about my mom’s struggle with mental illness.

I actually thought this interview was lost, but I recently came across it through dumb luck. Kinda funny how that works! The audio quality isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly clear enough. You can listen by clicking right here or by clicking play on the player below. In addition, a lightly-edited transcript of our discussion is provided below.

Lightly-Edited Transcript

Alan Neal: There’s a point in Von Allan’s graphic novel, “the road to god knows…,” where the teenage character of Marie appears to be suspended in midair. Her desk sort of looks like it’s floating off the ground, hovering beside the classroom clock that ticks by, a classroom door that’s shut, a bookcase and chalkboard all hang around her without a wall attached to them. Now, unlike some comic heroines, Marie does not have any levitation powers. It’s Von Allan’s way of showing her headspace, that caught in a void off-the-ground moment.

And Marie is definitely not in the happiest of spaces in this book. Teenager dealing with poverty, unpopularity, and above all, her mother’s schizophrenia. And through the book, writer and artist Von Allan traces how Marie struggles with her circumstances. He’s releasing the now completely finished graphic novel on Sunday at the very bookstore he used to manage, Perfect Books, and Von Allan is with me in the studio. Hello there.

Von Allan: Hello.

Alan Neal: So I think there are a lot of teenagers who can relate to those two pages in the book, regardless of what their circumstances are. That feeling of time passing by in a classroom, not really being present. How much of this is like Von Allan in high school?

Von Allan: Some of it is. Some of it certainly is. I don’t know. I was playing with time. She’s about to go see her mom in the hospital shortly after that. So she’s in a place where… This certainly was me; the idea that “stuff” is happening in your personal life outside of school, but school is kind of this other reality with its own structure, and it’s not really real to her anymore, because there’s this other heavy stuff going on in her life. So that was very much me, particularly as I got older in high school. I was a decent enough student, but it just… “Why do I need to get my homework done by this date? Is the world gonna end just because I don’t have this done, you know? My marks are fine anyway, you know?” All that kind of stuff. And that type of unreality was something I was really trying to capture.

Alan Neal: That heaviness that you’re talking about, Marie tries to escape it through a number of different routes, whether it’s her fascination with wrestling, or even the TV show The Frantics, which you gotta respect as well. Which I think would also be tied into the life of Von Allan, as well. I realized you could have told the story as well from a boy’s point of view.

Von Allan: Yeah.

Alan Neal: What made you want to make Marie the main character?

Von Allan: Well, when I made the decision to do the story, I was kind of going, “do I want to do purely autobiographical stuff or not?” And if I went purely autobiographical, then yeah, the main character would have been a guy, would have been me. There’s so many autobiographical comics out there, but I was looking at it going, “I don’t know how to do it.” I just… I don’t. I don’t know how do you handle real people that I know. How do you fictionalize them or not fictionalize them? Would they be okay with it? Would they sue my ass off if I misportrayed them or if they felt they were misportrayed?

There was also elements of time. A lot of the things in the graphic novel are compressed; things that really did happen to me, but happened over slightly different periods of time. That kind of led to fiction. And then I just went, “if I go with a male protagonist, it’s just going to be, ‘he’s talking about himself. Look, it’s him. Yeah, it’s some guy named Fred or Mark or something, but it’s totally him.’” So going with a female protagonist, I thought, would be different. I could approach the story from a different point of view. There’d be more distance for me. All of this sort of came together at the script stage and I’m happy with the results.

Alan Neal: Another mode of distance, I guess you could say, that is different from Marie and yourself is that although your own mom was diagnosed, I believe when you were 11?

Von Allan: Yeah, 10 or 11, something like that.

Alan Neal: That’s younger than Marie in the book. Do you think it’s a different experience for an 11-year-old child to handle than a 15-year-old?

Von Allan: I don’t know. I’ve gone back and forth with this stuff. And the biggest thing is, I didn’t know that there was really anything… It’s so weird. I knew my mom wasn’t “right,” but I was an only child from a split family, and it was my mom and me and that was it. So trying to get a really big frame of reference to how other people live their lives was tough.

Now, I was a poor kid going to richer kids’ schools. I was at Glebe [Collegiate Institute] and at Mutchmor [Public School] and stuff like that, where there was more noticeable wealth around me. But it wasn’t until later on, when I was a teenager, that I really sort of became aware, as I was getting older and meeting new people, that the way I was growing up was different than the way a lot of experiences were for other people.

And I think the other thing is, I was a shy kid, and it was awkward to really sort of bring this stuff up. So, as a really good example of this, is a good friend of mine, Sterling Lynch, who’s a playwright in town, getting some acclaim himself. He and I were really good friends as kids. We never talked about this stuff. His mom also wasn’t well. He was also going through very similar things. But it’s only as adults that we’ve realized, in talking with each other, that we were going through very similar things. He lived across the street from me and then around the corner of the block from me and we never talked about it as kids.

So I think when you’re younger, there’s a sense of embarrassment, of shyness that goes with it. And then when you mature a little bit as a teenager, you’re still very powerless and you’re kind of caught. And that’s really what I was trying to do with the story. Marie’s caught. She knows she can’t do anything. She just can’t. She doesn’t even have the tools to start to try to help her mom. All she can do is really love her mom and that’s about as far as it goes. So she has to live her own life. And the choices she makes; what I tried to do was sort of show that this was a person who, while she’ll never be able to necessarily fix all the things that are happening to her, she can take certain things under her control, like getting money together to go to a show, and all this stuff. And, in so doing, hopefully a little bit of happiness out of it.

Alan Neal: While you were experiencing all of this, did you ever try to work any of it out artistically? I know you weren’t drawing comics at that point yet, but was there any way of expressing what you were going through that you tried?

Von Allan: Not really. I got lucky in the sense that I, again, I was a lonely fat kid. I was 215 pounds when I was 13. I was a really big, shy, quiet kid. I was picked on. The whole ‘kit and caboodle’. So what changed for me wasn’t so much that I had a way of expressing myself, but I wound up lying about my age to get a job at a video store that no longer exists, that sort of got me out of the house. After that, I went to the Ottawa Public Library and was doing work outside [my home].

I remember the mathematical awareness that you only need 30 [school] credits at the time, plus OACs to graduate from high school. You didn’t need the 42 or whatever you would need to graduate, like you would have if you took a full course load every year. So I started cutting back my [school] schedule to give myself more free time. I escaped into reading. I escaped into movies. So for me, it was more a matter of things that would give me a break from some of the stuff that was happening, as opposed to trying to express it. Express it, as I learned to draw, came later. When my mom died, it certainly brought up a lot of stuff that I wound up placing at that point. But it wasn’t as a kid drawing away or anything.

Alan Neal: How old were you when she died?

Von Allan: 20.

Alan Neal: 20. So, I mean, I would imagine a lot of unfinished issues as well that when you’re writing something like this start to come up again.

Von Allan: Well, I think the tough thing is that my mom never saw me draw, right? I didn’t start learning to draw until I was 24. So, she never saw me express myself this way at all. And I never got to have an adult conversation with my mom. She was my mom, but, I mean, I was 20, so I was like a young adult. But we never had that sort of trying to figure things out. And it’s harder, too, in the sense that I was trying to get my own independence. So, I had actually moved out and was living on my own, in a little bachelor apartment on Metcalfe. And at the same time, things for her were getting worse, not better.

Part of the problem with mental illness is it’s not just one thing. So, my mom was diagnosed schizophrenic, but there were anxiety disorders that she had. She was medicated a lot of the time. So for somebody who used to be a teacher, who was very gregarious, very outgoing, but near the end of her life, and she only was 48 when she died, the world had become a very scary place. It was a place that there was a lot of nervousness around it. But it also meant dealing with her sometimes near the end became very, very tough.

So, I have a lot of… Regrets isn’t quite the right word. There’s a wistfulness of being able to go have a coffee, you know, or something like that. That death, unfortunately, takes away from you. At the same time, in terms of the story, I tried to put a lot of where I was at when I was younger into the story. So, I don’t think I’d ever do a sequel to it, but if I ever did, it would probably be post-death looking back on things as opposed to sort of continuing the narrative right from the time the first story ends.

Alan Neal: Because I wondered, I mean, as an adult, was it tempting at all? Tempting is the wrong word, but did you toy with the idea of doing it through the eyes of the adult in the story? Of doing it through the eyes of the mother?

Von Allan: I didn’t think I was qualified enough. What I felt very strongly about, that I was qualified to say, is that this is what at least one kid is going through and what their perceptions of mental illness are, from a teenager’s point of view. As an adult, I have a whack of my mom’s notes that are interesting and somewhat psychedelic to read, because they’re all over the place. My mom was, again, an English teacher. She was quite a literate person, quite a smart person. But how she was perceiving the world was fundamentally changing. That’s a difficult thing to try to approach when you’re not like that and try to sort of capture the experience of what somebody dealing with schizophrenia is really going through. I didn’t really feel qualified that I’d be the guy to do that and that I would do it well. But what I thought I could do really well is show these glimpses; of when you love somebody and you see them going through this. It’s unpredictable. You don’t know. There’s good days and bad days, and you don’t know what’s setting them off. Why are things weird one day and totally fine the next day? I was trying to capture that, and because that I’ve had a lot of experience with, I felt very confident about putting it into the story.

Alan Neal: You have done it really well.

Von Allan: Thank you.

Alan Neal: Thank you so much for coming in, and we want to remind people of Von Allan’s graphic novel “the road to god knows…” is going to be released at Perfect Books on Sunday [March 14, 2010] from 4 to 7 p.m.