Springing Forward, Looking Back (to the Future), and Launching The Never Weres

First, a quick health update: My next PMH check-up, originally scheduled for April, has been postponed by the hospital twice. I'll now be seeing Dr. O'Sullivan in late June. Fortunately, I have not been experiencing any problems (hooray!) so there's no rush.

Meanwhile, school has continued to dominate my attention these past few months. I'm happy to report that after surviving the dizzying intensity of the first six months, I am finally starting to feel more on top of things. Check out my "But I'm a Teacher!" blog for more details.

Being more organized at school means I've been able to emerge from my lesson-planning cocoon and venture out into world more often -- ah, the rebirth of spring!  Alfredo accompanied me on two of these excursions to the Toronto International Film Festival's new Bell Lightbox cinemas in Toronto's theatre district downtown. The good folks at TIFF were hosting a Back to the 80s mini-film festival and we took in The Princess Bride and Back to the Future on separate Saturdays. Alfredo was seeing both films for the first time, but for me it definitely felt like stepping into that famous DeLorean and going back a few decades to see those films on the big screen again.

Film nostalgia was not my only time-traveling experience this spring. March also saw the publication of Annick Press's science-fiction graphic novel The Never Weres, written and drawn by Fiona Smyth and set many years in the future. This work marks my first time as an editor on a comic book and I loved the experience. I've always felt that working on picture books meshed well with my filmmaking background, and comics are an even tighter fit. Indeed, the conventions of visual story-telling in comics predate motion picture technology, and when film eventually came along, early filmmakers lifted many of the editing devices wholesale from that older medium.

This comfort and delight I felt working in comics helped make up for the fact that I had limited experience editing in this medium. I suspect mere gusto wouldn't have been enough to build a project from scratch, but fortunately I was working with Fiona, who has volumes of experience drawing comics; in fact, she teaches a course on "sequential narrative" at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her panel-to-panel storytelling instincts are astounding (as is her ability to liberate that narrative from traditional panels). This level of expertise at the page level allowed me to focus on supporting the bigger-picture, so to speak, elements of overall story and pacing. The result is a sweeping dystopian epic that is nevertheless anchored in the personal and emotional stories of three teenaged friends.

Of all the amazing projects on which I've worked as editor, The Never Weres is the one of which I'm the proudest to have been involved. So I was thrilled to be a part of the official launch at Toronto's Gladstone Hotel in March as part of This is Not a Reading Series (TINARS). I had the chance to sing Fiona's praises before a packed crowd before they were treated to a dramatic reading of the first chapter by a cast of actors. 

The comic pages were projected at the back of the stage as the actors read the dialogue and narration. "Not a reading series" indeed! It was an engaging and effective way to give a "reading" from a graphic novel. Following the presentation, Fiona sat down with Globe & Mail arts columnist R.M. Vaughn for a conversation about her career and how she went about creating a graphic novel for young adults. 

After the interview, Fiona sat down to sign books at the sales table. The line was long and the book supply eventually dwindled, but I managed to sneak in at the end and get my copy signed.  

I hope so too, Fiona! Who knows what the future will bring?