One of the first artists I worked with as an author was Christopher Baldwin, who drew the web comic "Bruno" from 1996 to 2007. There was a period when Bruno's dark musings on life began to match my own and I decided to take a break from her, but I got over myself at some point and came back because the strip was so literate and occasionally, as in the case of this favorite, awfully funny.
In 2001, I began to create my first children's serial story, "The Legend of Perseus," and the first artist I thought to approach was Christopher.
My first reason was simply that I liked his work, but what I particularly liked was his attention to detail and his practice of using real backgrounds in "Bruno," working from photographs of places he had visited in Europe or wherever her constant wanderings took her in the United States.
However, my second reason for wanting to work with Chris -- listen up, young artists -- was that, in the four years he had been doing "Bruno" to that point, I don't know that he had ever missed a day. As obsessive as he was about getting every detail right, he was equally obsessive about hitting his deadlines.
There were plenty of artists out there who could do a good job, but I knew Chris would do it on time, and the newspaper business is based on deadlines.
"The Legend of Perseus" was a success, not just in my own paper but in papers throughout the country and even overseas; when Australia hosted the Olympics, a paper there ran the story as part of their coverage for kids.
From there, we've gone on to collaborate on a serialized biography, "Woman of the World: The Story of Nellie Bly;" a collection of Chippewa, Blackfoot and Cree stories I edited from the original source, "Old Man Stories;" a Horatio-Alger style story of life in the mean streets of 1890s New York, "Tommy and the Guttersnipe;" its sequel about a homeless girl of the period, "Anna's Story;" and our most recent piece, a story about the Prohibition Era which will run in New York State newspapers this spring, "Hooch."
In the ten years we've worked together, we have spoken on the phone fewer than a dozen times, and we have never met. That will change this weekend, as I am headed down to Easthampton, Mass., for the New England Webcomics Weekend. Chris lives in the state of Washington, but is originally from Western Mass., so he'll be around for a little while and we're also going to have lunch later this week, which will allow for more conversation, since I expect he'll be busy at his booth during NEWW. He's done several other strips since "Bruno" and is well-known in that corner of the world.
And, as a bonus, I'll also get to meet an artist I've worked with very pleasantly in the past, Dylan Meconis, a friend of Chris's who collaborated with me on "Tales of the Ancient World," a collection of myths from the Roman tradition, and "Stores in the Stars," a combination of astronomy and myth. At the time I did "Tales," my plans to work with a particular artist had fallen through and I asked Chris to bail me out.
As it happened, Dylan had been working on a graphic novel based on myth as a senior project in college, and so she not only did terrific work, but was able to start pondering each piece based on my telling her which stories I was doing, since she already knew them all. By the time I had a text for her to work on, she was halfway there and things moved very quickly. "Stories in the Stars" was a natural next project for us and, again, I couldn't have asked for more. She has also built a good reputation, and I hope will be very busy selling books and chatting with fans.
There will be some other people at NEWW whom I have corresponded with or at least been on the same forums with over the years. I'll post some reports when I get back.
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