Von Allan's art, comics and graphic novels: CCKC

This is a radio interview I did with Erin Ashley on CCKC radio in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in the fall of 2009. We discuss my graphic novel “the road to god knows…” and how Children of Parents with a Mental Illness (or COPMI) cope. Or at least how I did. 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

Erin Ashley: My name is Erin Ashley. I am about to kick out the jams, but I got one little thing left to share with you. And that is about graphic novel “the road to god knows…”, which introduces the reader to teenage Marie. She’s trying to adjust to her mother’s recent mental health diagnosis. Now, schizophrenia is a lonely disease, and graphic novelist Von Allan is one unfortunate soul who knows all about it. Growing up, Von and his mother suffered through her mental illness, but the experience wasn’t completely negative. After all, he was inspired to write “the road to god knows…”, a semi-autobiographical comic which he hopes will help others living with the disease. I got a hold of him via telephone, and this is what he had to say.

I’m curious about the circumstances around publishing this novel. Is this something you put out yourself, or did you have to shop it around a little bit?

Von Allan: I actually put it out by myself. I did shop it around a little bit. It’s a first book, and I’m an unknown creator, so it’s hard right now in publishing to get people to pay attention to you. And I didn’t shop it around to too many publishers, but I decided, you know, you sort of go through the rejection process and what have you, and it’s pretty difficult for any author, no matter how successful they are. And I just went, “it’s a pretty personal book for me. I’d like to be able to control it.” Aside from anything else, it’s pretty autobiographical. So choosing this route, doing the self-publishing route, seemed to fit it really well. And so far the reception is pretty good. Nobody seems to care all that much that I self-published it. So, “yay” for that!

Erin Ashley: Now, you’ve written “the road to god knows…” to create a dialogue about mental illness. Why do you feel a graphic novel was the best way to achieve this?

Von Allan: Well, I love comics. I’ve loved comics since I was about seven or eight years old. And I think comics have a unique power as a medium to actually communicate a little differently than how prose does and how film does. There’s been a lot of different discussion in the past about why comics work the way they do. Some people do “right brain, left brain” theory, that there’s something about the combination of words and pictures, and how they sort of just get right into your head that’s remarkably powerful.

And more pragmatically, too, is when I was sort of trying to figure out what story I wanted to do for my first one, it seemed to be something that not very many other people have tackled. So, as opposed to doing another superhero story or something like that that’s been pretty well done to death in comics, doing something more personal, doing something that not very many other people have tried to tackle, seemed to be a really good way to go.

Erin Ashley: Yeah, definitely. I know it says in your bio that you kind of dealt with a lot of the same things that Marie deals with in the graphic novel. And you actually took solace and refuge in basically the land of make-believe, like wrestling and comic books, like you were saying earlier. So what was so comforting about that land of make-believe?

Von Allan: I think the big thing is that it’s escape. I mean, one of the things when you’re going through something like this — I’m saying this now that I know this. I’m an adult and I can look back on it and what have you, but the story is really autobiographical, aside from the fact that the main character is a girl. Things are really confusing. My mom wasn’t well. I didn’t know why. My mom had went through a lot of nervous breakdowns while I was growing up. And a lot of things didn’t make sense to me. And that confusion is scary. I was scared a lot. I remember being really terrified a lot. Not so much of my mom, but I didn’t understand what would trigger things. I didn’t understand why these things were happening to her. And I was totally powerless.

You know, it’s my mom. I love her. And this stuff is happening and I can’t help. I don’t have the tools to help her. And nobody’s talking to me either. Nobody in the healthcare profession or what have you at the time was able to really communicate with me — sort of push me aside or pull me aside — and explain what was happening.

So, what do you do? You know, you’re going to school. You’re trying to do this stuff and you try to live your life. And I found a sort of happiness and joy in escapism. And I think a lot of kids probably do. So, for me, it was comics. I was lucky enough to meet up with friends who were really into comics and I just fell in love with them. Stuff as silly as pro wrestling like the book talks about. Also science fiction and what have you. It was just things where what was going on was really confusing in my own life. So being able to just sort of stop thinking about it, stop worrying about it, even if it’s only for a couple of hours, did me a lot of good.

Erin Ashley: Okay. So what’s next for Von Allan?

Von Allan: Well, I mean, I’m trying to get this book out there now. And at the same time, I’m working on my next story. So this is going to be very different. It’s called “Stargazer.” And it’s going to be more of a kid’s story with adult themes. So I’m a little this way, you know. I always like doing stories that have reasonably heavy subject matter. So it deals with a lot of themes of death and letting go of things because that’s part of life, too.

It’s funny. When I tried to figure out what to do, I was thinking, ‘what could I follow up “the road to god knows…” with?’ And I wanted to do something at least thematically similar, if not exactly the same thing. So “Stargazer” is a fantasy. But ironically, it does actually tie into that, you know, how “road” works as well. It’s just I had some more things to say.

Erin Ashley: And so when “Stargazer” going to hit shelves, do you think?

Von Allan: I don’t know. I’m 60 pages in. It’s going to start as a webcomic; barring anything weird happening, it will start as a webcomic first. So for free online. And people can find more about that in my website. And that should actually happen in the next month or so. And then we’ll see if it’s popular enough. Then it’ll become a book, as well.

Erin Ashley: Thanks a lot for joining me today, Von Allan.

Von Allan: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thanks for giving me your time.