Translator: Barbara Caudill Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Hi there.
It is very exciting to be here today.
I'm going to talk to you
about why we should be taking comics more seriously.
As my introduction just mentioned, I am a comic creator,
which means that I write and draw graphic novels,
comic strips, like you find in newspapers.
I even do, like, comic articles
and even make comic sculptures and digital comics.
As you can tell, I am a bit of a comic fanatic.
What I'm going to do today is do a talk using the medium of comics
that will attempt to reset your mind and awaken you to the power and potential
of one of the most exciting mediums around.
Or rather, I am going to attempt to convert you to the dork side.
So, I am going to take a look at three aspects of the power of comics,
and then show you how I used it, finally, as a force for good
in a graphic story I did in collaboration with the British Red Cross
and an amazingly inspiring 15-year-old Iranian refugee
called Ebrahim.
The first aspect of the power of comics, for me,
is that everyone can draw comics and create worlds.
As children, I think we all inherently understand
the power of the mighty pen.
When I was a child, I would sit on the floor,
like I am sure many of you have,
surrounded by toys, and pens, and papers,
and I would draw stories and imagine worlds.
I'd imagine myself as a megalomaniac mad woman,
who could create and destroy entire armies of characters
and whole kingdoms inside my head.
There is something incredibly important about telling stories in pictures;
about organizing our messy and complicated lives
into panels, and frames, and scenes
and displaying them sequentially across the page;
to kind of make sense and create our own narratives -
much like the cavemen used to take moments of their time
and display them sequentially across the cave wall.
Visual stories and comics are incredibly accessible,
there's no barriers to entry,
anybody can create their own, all you need is a pen and paper.
It's not like with film or photography, which is quite expensive.
I think that it's this kind of primitive and primal nature of visual storytelling
which has caused some people
to mistake comics as a kind of childlike medium.
Secondly, comics allow you to see other people's worlds.
I fell in love with my first graphic novel about 15 year ago,
and I ventured to my very first comic convention
in a church hall in London.
I don't know if any of you have ever been to a comic convention,
but you really have to go - it's the most exciting place.
Comic creators sit behind tables ladened with their own graphic story.
It's as if each one of them
is a kind of unadulterated world view of that particular artist.
As you pick up their comics and leaf through them,
it's as if you are picking up a pair of goggles,
allowing you to see the world through different artists' eyes.
From MK Czerwiec, a comic nurse, who drew an oral history, a graphic story,
about her experiences working on an HIV ward
during the outbreak in the '80s in America;
to Nicola Streeten, who wrote an amazing graphic novel
about the loss of her two-year-old son;
or Joumana Medlej, who grew up in war-torn Lebanon
and created a female superhero who could bring peace to her country.
One of the joys of the comic medium is that there are very few words
and often, sometimes, no words at all.
So it allows comics to be translated
in a way which is, kind of, still what the artist intended.
I've read that only 2.5 % of traditional text-based books in the UK
are actually translated, which really saddens me;
it's as if we're closing our eyes off to a world of different viewpoints.
But for graphic novels,
I've read a huge amount of international comics
because they are so accessible.
I've read comics from Columbia, Argentina, South Africa, Bangladesh, Korea,
and of course from Japan,
as there's a huge rise in the popularity of Manga,
which is bringing a whole different culture over to the west.
Thirdly,
comics communicate with the world.
Several years ago, I was lucky enough to be involved in an amazing project
which was part of the KomMissia Festival in Russia.
I was invited alongside several different comic artists from all over Europe -
from Turkey, Finland, Germany, and the Ukraine, Russia of course -
and we all would excitedly converse during mealtimes,
using the help of an incredibly patient translator.
However,
when the translator's meal arrived,
all the chattering comic artists fell into silence,
until slowly, slowly the sounds of knives and forks scratching on plates
was replaced with the sounds of pens scratching on pads,
as we began to communicate with each other using the medium of comic.
It was an incredibly exciting and magical moment,
as if we'd gone back to before the tower of Babel.
Not only do comics ...
kind of surpass boundaries of linguistics and global boundaries,
but they also can cross boundaries created by class,
education, and even age.
I've witnessed this myself
as I run workshops for people from all different walks of life -
from university academics to homeless adults,
vulnerable youth, and art students, and families from all over the world.
And it's so exciting to witness these vast array of people
picking up the same comics,
getting excited by the same ideas,
and then picking up their own pens and drawing their own world views.
The power of comics to reach a mass audience
is even apparent to the CIA, who created two propaganda comics,
the first distributed in Vietnam in the '60s,
and the second in Grenada in the '80s.
Repeatedly, even Colonel Gaddafi created a propaganda biography.
So, it is quite interesting to see.
Since the 18th century,
comics have harnessed the power of the printed press
to bring visual stories out from elitist galleries,
like those of William Hogarth, and to the masses,
who can own them and distribute them very cheaply.
Today that move continues as comics very easily
go from beautiful, physical printed books
to online, interactive and visual narrative.
While comics are finding this movement very easily,
there are more traditional text-based books which are struggling
to move from paper to iPads, Kindles, and websites.
To summarize,
the three powers of comics is that firstly,
everyone can draw comics and create worlds;
there's no barriers to entry.
Secondly, comics allow you to see other people's worlds.
And thirdly, comics communicate with the world.
But my powers as a comic artist were about to be put to the test
in one of the most difficult comics I had ever drawn.
I received a phone call from Rosie Stewart
at the British Red Cross, back in February.
The British Red Cross wanted to tell the story
of one single, individual refugee, young refugee, under the age of 18.
This refugee was one of the 1,000 refugees under the age of 18
who arrive in the UK every year completely alone.
This is a small percentage of the 10,000 refugees
arriving in the UK each year.
This may sound as if the UK is opening the floodgates to refugees,
however, that is not the case,
as the UK hosts less than 1% of the world's refugees,
which is shockingly low.
So where did this assumption come from?
Well, the mainstream media and the newspapers
are often quite harsh in their representations of refugees,
and they very rarely give a voice to the refugees themselves.
So the British Red Cross wanted to try and use comics
to tell a new kind of story and reach a new kind of audience.
And that is how I found myself, in April,
sitting in the offices of the British Red Cross on a very grey day,
across from a remarkable and incredible refugee
called Ebrahim, from Iran.
I was, to be honest, fairly weary and nervous about meeting Ebrahim.
I'd done a lot of comic journalism before,
but Ebrahim was -
This was an incredible story he was offering up to us,
and an incredibly personal and traumatic story.
I was aware of the negative press surrounding refugees,
and wanted to, you know, do his story justice.
And Ebrahim was also incredibly weary
because, in fact, he'd shared this story more than 30 times
with asylum agencies and the home office.
You know, having to repeat the trauma of his story again and again,
and turning the rich colors and vivid emotions
of his odyssey-like journey
into facts, bureaucratic tick-boxes, and evidence in courts of law.
I listened to his incredible story about his journey,
from fleeing violence at his home in Iran,
being human trafficked across the world,
and finally arriving in the UK, where he thought he'd found safety,
but then being forced
to undergo four years of an incredibly grueling asylum process
with constantly the threat of being deported hanging over him.
I had tears in my eyes hearing the details of his story;
it was incredibly moving.
But far from feeling pity for him,
I thought he was one of the most remarkable young teenagers I'd ever met,
and I felt honored that the UK
had been able to provide him with a safe and secure home.
For the weeks that followed,
we battled to do his story justice,
and I really felt the pressure of getting this story right.
We went back and forth
between the British Red Cross, and Ebrahim, and myself,
and slowly, bit by bit, this story began to emerge,
until we finally finished our graphic story:
"Over Under Sideways Down".
Together, we created a new kind of narrative.
We turned victims into heroes,
and have rewritten a story which we were all so tired of hearing.
Ebrahim was able to show his view of the world
and share that with a mass audience,
and he was able to reclaim his story as his own again.
I don't have time to read you from the story today,
but you can read it at:
webapps.redcross.org.uk/Refugeeweekcomic/
or you can simply Google:
"Over Under Sideways Down comic", and read it online.
There are also copies available outside today, for you to take home.
After we'd finished, the comic started it's own journey.
It was shown in workshops run by the British Red Cross,
and refugees, who were not Ebrahim, came forward and said this is my story.
It was picked up in social media
and tweeted about by the likes of Neil Gaiman, Simon Pegg, Caroline Lucas
and written about in newspapers from The Guardian to the Daily Express.
It was even spotted being read by home office delegates
on a plane, following a conference.
So we're all delighted that it's reaching the right hands.
The British Red Cross gave comics a chance
and saw how they were able to create a new story
and spread their story to a new audience.
And it is my hope that more people
will start to take the medium of comics more seriously.
It's also my hope
that those of you in the audience today and listening online,
will create your own stories,
and be aware of the narratives which you see in the mainstream media,
and on tv, and in newspapers.
And that you'll start telling your own stories
and those of the voiceless,
and start harnessing the power of the mighty pen.
Thank you.
(Applause)