Hindsight

A lot of my readers are not aware that the hardcover editions of The Odyssey and The Iliad have art in them that does not appear in the paperback editions.

At the beginning and end of a hardcover book is something called the Endpapers (or simply “ends”). These are usually separate sheets of paper that are used to bind the inside pages to the cover.

Here are the endpapers I created for The Odyssey (click to see larger!)

These are all actual vase paintings from classical Greece. Some of them are explicitly scenes from The Odyssey, others I just found thematically appropriate to allude to the story of Odysseus. In some cases I changed what kind of vessel they are painted on — in real life some are tiny and some are huge, and I wanted them to be more uniform in size.

For The Iliad, I chose a different approach. Here I use shields to tell the story of the lead-up to The Iliad. Again, you will only get these if you get the hardcover; but now at least you can see what you’re missing. In the book they’re printed in blue.

The designs on Greek shields tend to be much less narrative than the vase paintings, so in this case I didn’t use real historical ones. (Quite a few of the shield designs inside the book are real, though not necessarily from the Bronze Age — but these I made up to tell the story, stylizing them in a way I think is reasonably consistent with Greek shield painting.)

They summarize the story of the beginnings of the Trojan War, as follows: (1) the founding of Troy, (2) Thetis and Peleus, (3) the Apple of Discord, (4) the abduction of Helen, (5) invoking the oath of the Achaean Kings, (6) Odysseus and Achilles being tricked into revealing themselves (as, respectively, sane and not a girl), (7) the fleet launching, (8) the sacrifice of Iphegenia at Aulis, (9) the archer Philoctetes bitten by a serpent, (10) the beginning of the war, (11) Chryses’ appeal to Agamemnon, and (12) the plague-arrows sent by Apollo.

Those, by the way, are all cool stories you should look up if you don’t know them 😉

Not all of my books have bonus artwork on the endpapers of the hardcover. If you’re wondering why that is, continue to Part 2, In Which the Author Geeks Out About Bookbinding.

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I’ve been crunching hard on Macbeth (I delivered the line work last week), so I’ve got a backlog of things to post. But here’s one I wanted to get up right away. The Folger Shakespeare Library was kind enough to invite me to their very powerful new production of Romeo & Juliet. I drew a bunch, but the house was very dark, so I was drawing completely blind — hence the rather dada-esque nature of most of these sketches.

The show is directed by Aaron Posner, and stars Michael Goldsmith as Romeo and Erin Weaver as Juliet, plus Aaron Bliden, Rex Daugherty, Brian Dykstra, Sherri Edelen, Eric Hissom, Brad Koed, Shannon Koob, Joe Mallon, Allen McCullough, Matthew McGee, and Michele Osherow.

Later in the season they are doing Richard III and Two Gentlemen of Verona.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m enjoying a lovely, serendipitous cross-promotion with Actors’ Shakespeare Project and their new production of Romeo & Juliet, which opens this week. The timing didn’t work out for me to see the whole show, but I caught a couple of hours of their tech rehearsal on Sunday night. I only got to see the last few scenes, but it looks really good! Here are a few sketches I did. They ran through each bit a couple of times, so in some cases I got multiple drawings of the same thing.

A big thank-you to Adele and Allyn for arranging logistics, and Maurice for giving me a ride back to Cambridge. The show is directed by Allyn Burrows and Bobbie Steinbach, and stars Jason Bowen and Julie Ann Earls as R&J. Also shown are Ben Rosenblatt (Paris), Ken Baltin (Capulet), Miranda Craigwell (Lady Capulet), and Maurice Emmanuel Parent (Mercutio/Apothecary).

My book launch events this weekend went really well, I think. Of special note was the event at Porter Square Books, where I did a slideshow illustrating the development of the concepts and designs for my R&J, and showed pages from the book, highlighting a few of my favorite passages. When I got the balcony scene, two teenagers who were “planted” among the audience popped up and surprised everyone (else) with a really beautiful live performance of the scene. They were Frank and Natasha, two talented young actors who recently starred in Actor’s Shakespeare Project’s Youth Program production of R&J. I want to thank them again for doing such a fantastic job — and also ASP resident actor Mara Sidmore, for working with them, helping to figure out the cuing and blocking, playing Mercutio and the Nurse, and generally helping make it all work really smoothly. Thanks also to David and Carol at Porter Square Books, and Adele and Allyn at ASP, who all helped to arrange the whole thing.

Readers of this blog will already be familiar with ASP from the sketches I’ve been doing at their dress rehearsals for several years. I love this group! I am thrilled to report that, by happy coincidence, they are staging Romeo & Juliet starting this week at the Strand theater in Dorchester, and besides participating in my launch party they are also going to be selling my book at their concession stand. I got to sit on the end of a tech rehearsal Sunday night, and it looks excellent. (I’ll be posting a couple of sketches from that in the next day or two.)

Like I said, it’s a wonderful coincidence that they’re doing the show now. But they aren’t the only ones! For those who may not be aware, there are several other high-profile stagings of R&J this month on the East Coast. Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad star in a Broadway production that has tons of buzz. Competing with them off-Broadway is this production with Elizabeth Olsen. And here in my new hometown, The Folger Shakespeare Library has a production starting in two weeks.

Then there’s this new R&J film, which may be good or truly terrible, and which may or may not be in theaters near you next week.

(Or perhaps you’d prefer this lesbian Romeo & Juliet starting next week in Philly?)

I mean, come on, it’s a Romeo & Juliet bonanza! If you live in one of those cities, grab some tickets!

It’s not exactly a full-on tour, but I have to say, this is the closest I’ve ever come to an actual tour for a book launch. I hope you can make it to one of these events!

– Sept. 28 (Saturday) 7pm Porter Square Books event and signing, Cambridge MA.

– Sept. 29th (Sunday) 2:30pm panel, w/signing 30 min before and after, at MICE (Massachusetts Independent Comic Expo), Cambridge MA.

– Sept. 29th (Sunday) 5:30pm Signing at The Million Year Picnic (+other authors TBD), Cambridge MA.

– Nov. 7th 7:30pm Event and signing at Takoma Park Library, Takoma Park MD.

– Nov 16th 2:30pm Event and signing at Bank Street Books, New York NY.

– Nov. 22-24 Multiple appearances at National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention in Boston MA. Email for details if you are attending NCTE.

I’m also looking into the possibility of an online launch event for those who can’t make any of the events above. Stay tuned.

Kirkus makes me very happy today with a lovely starred review — unfortunately it’s subscription-only until 8/27, but among other things they called it a “spellbinding graphic-novel production. As thrilling and riveting as any staging,” and said I “expertly abridged the original text while embellishing it with modern sensibilities.”

I have updated the main Romeo & Juliet page with sample images and a link to pre-order signed copies, so please check that out. Plus I will soon be announcing several launch events in DC, NY, Boston, and online.

At one point I was thinking about setting Romeo & Juliet in the Harlem Renaissance, and I watched some fun documentaries about it. I had a lot of fun sketching some of the great lindy routines they were doing in the dance scenes.

I did a short interview with the fabulous Jenn Dowell at Audiofile magazine, and I’m featured in a very brief spot in the October issue.

In preparation I looked up what audiobooks I listened to for the 14 months I was working on Romeo & Juliet (previously: what I was listening to while drawing The Odyssey). Here they are, in no particular order:

11-22-63 (Stephen King) – good, but WAY too long.
A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula LeGuin) – still great, but too short.
Out of the Silent Planet (C.S. Lewis) – still fun, but WAY too short.
Apprentice Adept (Piers Anthony) – I’ve long since outgrown his writing, but this series is still fun and I think it’s high time we made “The Game” in real life. Who’s with me?
SEAL team Six (Howard Wasdin) – I don’t quite know what possessed me to read this. It’s not bad, but pretty much just what you’d expect.
Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson) – good, but repetitive. Needed better editing. The ubiquitous cover photo has caused numerous people to tell me I look like Steve Jobs.
Ready Player One (Ernest Cline, read by Will Wheaton) – fantastic! The perfect audiobook, at least for a child of the ’80s.
Divergent (Veronica Roth) – at times I enjoyed this, but found it ultimately unconvincing, and I have a pretty strong feeling “the intellectuals are the bad guys” is not just a convenient plot device, it’s something she believes.
David Copperfield (Dickens) – couldn’t finish. It was bad enough when the protagonist was a non-character, but when he turned into a debauched twerp I couldn’t take it any more.
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson) – holy exposition Batman! Couldn’t finish. Tried the film, and still don’t understand why so many people like it. I found it to be a weak mystery with weak writing and chockablock with horrible gratuitous unpleasantness.
Winter’s Tale (Mark Helprin) – pretty interesting, but I couldn’t finish. I think the reader killed it for me.
The Bluest Eye (Tony Morrison) – brilliant, and oh so unpleasant.
The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway) – ditto, but in a different way.
A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway) – even more depressing.
Snuff (Terry Pratchett) – not his best, but quite good.
The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorn) – I enjoyed this way more than I was expecting based on my very vague memories of it.
Soon I Will Be Invincible (Austin Grossman) – I enjoyed this more in print, I think. The readers are mediocre.
The Ring of Solomon (Jonathan Stroud) – Awesome, awesome, awesome.
The Wake of the Lorelei Lee (L.A. Meyer) – as with the rest of the series, highly enjoyable, thanks mostly to the fabulous reading of Katherine Kellgren.
Three Cups of Tea (Greg Mortenson) – good.
Better (Atul Gawande) – Complications was better than Better. I was hoping for more insight on how surgeons stay on the top of their game, especially with the long hours that seem to come with that job.

…
and of course my favorite audio series, which I constantly revisit, Sherlock Holmes.

I haven’t been posting much as I have my nose to the grindstone coloring Romeo & Juliet. But for some reason this partially colored page demanded to be scanned and posted.

(Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio on their way to the party at the Capulet mansion, just after the Queen Mab speech.)

Here’s a little holiday present: my first making-of video for Romeo & Juliet, showing how I inked the double-page party spread using Manga Studio.

There was an export problem I couldn’t figure out how to fix, so the audio is a little out of sync at the end.

Warm holiday wishes to everyone!