It was a great inspiration, but I knew nothing about graphic novels. I went home and got to work. The first experts I consulted were my 18-year-old daughter and my 22-year-old son. Yunhee guided me through manga (Japanese comics) from her extensive collection. Perry directed me to the book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud, which I had given him years earlier. McCloud's book is a brilliant analysis of the art of comics from its earliest appearances in Egyptian paintings, Mayan picture manuscripts, and French tapestries, to the limitless possibilities of today's graphic novels. Best of all, the entire book is in comic book form.

McCloud defines comics as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer." Or, in shorthand, sequential art. He examines the impact of icons or picture representations — the vocabulary of comics — and closure, "the phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole," which is its grammar. Understanding Comics is a mind-bending trip through every aspect of the creation and appreciation of comics, and a terrific introduction to the journey I had set out on.

GRAPHIC NOVELS IN COMIC FORM

Pouring over Yunhee's manga, McCloud's book, and other work I found such as the sophisticated comics collection Drawn & Quarterly, I familiarized myself with the form. I learned about breaking the story into panels of images with balloons and narration boxes of text. I discovered that the action-filled manuscript I was trying to retell was a natural for a graphic novel.

In "Graphic Novels 101: FAQ," which appeared in the March/April 2006 issue of The Horn Book, Robin Brenner poses the question, "What's the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel?" She replied, "Most simply, length. A comic and a graphic novel are told via the same format, officially called sequential art: the combination of text, panels, and images. Comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels are in this sense all the same thing, but comic books stretch a story out to about thirty pages, whereas graphic novels can be as long as six hundred pages." (At 48 pages, I guess mine just barely makes the cut. Because it's a children's book for nine and up, I often call it a "picture book in graphic novel form.")

BRUSH PAINTING

I had the right form for my story. Now, what about medium? I grew up in South Korea, and spent my junior year abroad at a Korean university where I had studied tong-yang-hwa, East Asian brush painting. It seemed the perfect medium for a story from traditional Korea. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was returning to more than my own roots. The Japanese painter, Hokusai, is considered to be the inventor of manga, which was done in Asian brush painting (see the gorgeous children's book The Old Man Mad about Drawing by Francois Place, David Godine, 2004).

I first painted the entire book — panels, balloons, and images — in black ink on watercolor paper. Then I photocopied the black line pieces onto Arches 90# watercolor paper. This gave me as many copies as I needed of the final line work, so that I could experiment with watercolor washes without having to redo the lines. (The only exceptions were the double-page spreads. Because they were too large for any copy machine I could find in Portland, Maine, I had to do the color directly onto the original line paintings.)

My editor, art director, and I worked in close collaboration throughout the entire process. None of us had ever worked in the comics form, so we were all making it up as we went along. It was full of discovery and full of challenges to negotiate: Where did editorial end and art begin and vice versa? Who should be in on which discussions, and who should have the final say?

NEED FOR MORE VISUAL RESEARCH

As my art director observed, each page of a graphic novel is the equivalent of several picture book pages. Though a single panel may be simpler than a fully rendered illustration, you still have all the same considerations: point of view, composition, content, etc. One of the demands of the form was the need to expand my visual research. If I had been making a picture book, I could have limited my illustrations to details that were easy to research. But using the graphic novel form, I was creating an entire world. Though I had grown up in Korea, there were many things I didn't know about traditional life, such as court etiquette for an audience with the king. I put together an extensive network of Korean sources and experts to check every detail. (In several panels, I had to re-draw all the characters' eyes looking eyes down, even though they were the subject of the frame, because no one looks directly at the king!)

My journey into comics has just begun. I don't expect to use it for most of my picture book work, but if another story seems like a great fit, I'll be eager to try it again. It's exciting to explore a form that is on the cutting edge and has such instant appeal for young readers. There hasn't been time for reviews to come in yet, but I did get one response I treasure. Nathaniel, age 11, whom I met at a writers' conference, read the book proofs from beginning to end and pronounced it "sick awesome." Eureka!

Published in newsletter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
(Reproduced with permission.)