Daytime Ottawa on Rogers TV

Here's an interview I recently did on the Rogers Television program "Daytime Ottawa." Co-host Derick Fage and I chat about the Lulu Awards controversy, my graphic novel the road to god knows... and the launch of my new graphic novel Stargazer at Ottawa's Perfect Books in November 2010.

Lightly-Edited Transcript

TL Rader: Alright, the second half of the show coming up is jam-packed.

Derick Fage: It is.

TL Rader: You’re having an interesting conversation with Von Allan.

Derick Fage: Oh, this is great.

TL Rader: This is going to be neat. I can’t wait to hear you guys have your chat.

Derick Fage: He is a Lulu Award nominee. He’s actually been nominated for three of these awards. And these awards, as a matter of fact, are for books, graphic novels, books by women, for women. Von Allan is a man.

TL Rader: I know!

Derick Fage: So you can imagine there’s a bit of controversy around these nominations. And it’s a wonderful book. As you can see, my bookmark, I’m three-quarters of the way through. It talks about a very important topic. The main character, of course, is a woman.

TL Rader: Yeah, he was nominated in like three categories, right?

Derick Fage: That’s right. One of them being Best Newcomer. And I think that’s really the biggest, most controversial nomination so far.

TL Rader: Yeah, because one was for the character or something. So that’s, you know, but the fact that it’s Newcomer, but it’s a man.

Derick Fage: Yes.

TL Rader: Yeah, yeah, that’s interesting.

Derick Fage: So it’s going to be a great conversation. I’m looking forward to it.

[Transition Break]

Derick Fage: Welcome back to the show. I want you to imagine there’s a set of awards for comics for women by women. And you happen to be a man who writes a graphic novel, a comic, and is nominated for three of those awards. Well, there is some controversy involved. And Von Allan, the author of “the road to god knows…,” joins us on the show. First of all, congratulations on the book.

Von Allan: Thank you.

Derick Fage: And congratulations on the nominations.

Von Allan: Thank you very much.

Derick Fage: Let’s jump into the nominations.

Von Allan: Sure.

Derick Fage: Right off the bat, before we get into the book, because it must have… Did it come as a surprise to you when you found out? Because you were nominated for three awards, correct?

Von Allan: Oh, yeah. I was aware they… It’s all by popular vote. So I was aware that they were happening, and I mentioned to a couple of people online in like early August that, hey, you know, there’s a chance. Go nominate me. You know, what the hell. I suggested to people that, like, best book and maybe best character. I never thought that it would even necessarily be eligible for any of the other categories. So I’m still a bit stunned how it made the other category that’s the contentious one.

Derick Fage: Well, what’s the contentious one? What’s that other category?

Von Allan: Okay. It’s called the Kim Yale Award, and it’s in honour of a female writer named Kim Yale who died of breast cancer when she was 43, I believe. And it’s been around for a while, around 15 years as far as I know, and no man had ever been shortlisted in that category, I guess. So how I got shortlisted in that, I’m not sure, but as it’s turned out, I guess there was never anything in the statutes of that category that forbid it. It just never happened before.

Derick Fage: Okay. So if you win that award, then we could probably see this explode into even more controversy.

Von Allan: Yes.

Derick Fage: Well, let’s talk about the book itself. I had a chance to read it, and you really tackle an important issue that I think is taboo for a lot of people, but you decided to tackle mental illness. Why did you choose that particular topic?

Von Allan: Well, it was a couple of things. The really pragmatic choice is when you’re nobody and you’re trying to do a first book, you either… in comics, it’s primarily superheroes in North America, so you either do your riff on superheroes. Nobody’s ever heard of you. Why would they read it?

Derick Fage: Right.

Von Allan: Or you do something that’s personal. I used to run a bookstore. I know, regardless of subject matter, regardless of, you know, graphic novel or prose or what have you, how hard first-time books struggle with sales. So you might as well do something you believe in.

My mom was diagnosed schizophrenic when I was a kid. It meant my upbringing, I was a sort of single child — my mom and dad split up when I was pretty young — so it meant my upbringing was kind of unique compared to some other people I knew.

Derick Fage: Right.

Von Allan: And I looked around and I just didn’t see really any other graphic novels or comics tackling this subject matter. So I thought it was important. I thought I could maybe bring a bit of — maybe ‘insight’ is too strong of a word — but I had something to say about it. That’s why I did it.

Derick Fage: Yeah, you can share your personal story. I think what’s really intriguing is that you chose to do it from a female perspective.

Von Allan: Well, that was for a couple of reasons. One is I was really sure that if I did it from, if the main character had been a boy, then it would have been very clear, like, ‘hey, he’s talking about himself. Look, it’s right there. That’s him.’

Derick Fage: Right.

Von Allan: So I didn’t want to do that. The other thing is, as soon as I made the main character, Marie, female, it’s fiction. I could play with time. I could take elements that did happen in my life, but I could compress them into a narrative that actually worked for a pacing of the story. In real life, some of the stuff, really all the stuff happened in the book to me, but it would have happened over a number of years. So trying to make the narrative work just over about a month or so was a big deal when I was writing the script.

Derick Fage: Well, and her character has a best friend throughout this.

Von Allan: Yes.

Derick Fage: That’s a great support to her. Is that something that you had in your life? In your life? In your situation?

Von Allan: I did, but not so much through one person.

Derick Fage: Okay.

Von Allan: So Kelly, her friend, is sort of an amalgam of a number of different people. And that’s actually one of the other reasons why I didn’t want to do it as pure autobiographical material, because I’d have to okay this with people.

Derick Fage: Right.

Von Allan: Like, are you okay? Really? Oh, I didn’t represent you? Well, somebody’s coming at me with a knife, you know, or what have you.

Derick Fage: Right.

Von Allan: So fiction just opens up everything. It allows you to play with stuff. I was able to take some of the best elements, what I would consider the best elements of friends I had. And I didn’t have a large number of friends when I was a kid, and I was a pretty shy kid. But it allowed me to say, you know, these people actually did matter. They do help.

And when you’re going through some of this stuff, and you’re going through it alone, it’s very isolating. So just being able to hang out with a friend, blow off steam on a Saturday, or what have you, in hindsight, I had no idea how much that helped go through some of this stuff.

Derick Fage: Right. The character, obviously the main character, Marie, shows great strength throughout this book.

Von Allan: I think so.

Derick Fage: I mean, she really is a heroine. Did you find that you had that kind of strength when you were going through this?

Von Allan: No, but I mean, I think one of the things I tried to do with the book is, to my mind, the sort of the driving force is Marie’s growing up. She’s around 13 in the story. And the awareness she has, and it’s implied in the story, I don’t come out and say it, is she realizes that her mom’s messed up. She can’t solve that problem for her mom. She loves her mom, her mom loves her, but she can’t fix it for her. So Marie has to learn to let go. And in letting go, she’s learning to stand on her own two feet. And that, to my mind, is underlying everything, is the full narrative. It’s her awakening as becoming an adult.

Derick Fage: Right.

Von Allan: And it’s huge. So I mean, the strength is, it’s that awareness. And that she comes to that, I think is, to my mind, is the best part of the story.

Derick Fage: We’re obviously going to follow this story about the Lulu Award nominations and looking forward to that. You also have another book coming out called “Stargazer.” Which is very different from this one that you did. Tell us about the book coming out in November.

Von Allan: It’s about three young girls. It’s a fantasy. So it’s very, very different. “Road” is very much a slice of life story. So it’s about three girls who find themselves, younger girls, who find themselves magically transported to another planet.

And it’s funny because I wanted to do a story that was very different than “road” that actually still sort of hit on some of the same themes. So actually, what I was just saying, letting go is a huge part. These girls want to get home. Marnie, the main character in that story, is dealing with the death of her grandmother. And her inability to let go is a huge part of that story.

So when I came up with the idea, it sort of echoes “road,” but in a completely different way with a very, very different subject matter.

Derick Fage: Yeah, and I can see it too. Because being in that situation where you’ve got, you know, a family member suffering from mental illness and you’re young, you probably got away from it all by fantasizing, right? And going somewhere else.

Von Allan: I think people underestimate the power of escapism. You know, it doesn’t really matter what it is. Even if it’s crap, you know, it doesn’t really matter. Being able to, you know, on a Saturday evening, curl up with comics or watch a movie or something like that. Or as in “road,” you know, watch wrestling or something. Just to be able to take a break from stuff, take a break from your life and pull back is, I think, incredibly therapeutic.

Derick Fage: Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. The book launch coming up in November, tell us when and where.

Von Allan: It’s on November 7th at Perfect Books. It’s a Sunday. And Perfect Books on Elgin Street, 258A Elgin Street at about four o’clock and then we’ll see how long it goes. You know, hopefully lots of people, so it’ll go for a while.

Derick Fage: Well, congratulations. Real pleasure having you on the show. Really appreciate it. If you want to find out more information or follow the story on the Lulu Award nominations, you can visit Von Allan’s website at www.vonallan.com.

Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back right after the break.

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.