(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and you're listening to a weekly podcast about books and life, not necessarily in that order. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, and you can find past episodes, get on our email list, and make a donation to the show at our website, chimeraobscura.com/vm. You can also find us on Twitter @vmspod at facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow and at virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com. Now, I say this is a podcast about books and life, but lately it's been about work too. I have to admit it. I'm just starting my second week of independence right now, which is what a pal of mine told me to call it rather than unemployment. Speaking of which, I wanna thank before we get any further, listener Fred Kleech, who made a very generous donation to the show via our PayPal tip jar. I can't thank him enough. It's really wonderful when somebody comes through like that. Fred, you're the best. I also wanna thank our listener Brian Samuel for writing me a few weeks ago to clue me in on the passage from William Gaddis' book, The Recognitions that I mentioned during my interview with Mark Feltzkog. It was literally a day after I posted the episode and he nailed exactly the elusive passage I was thinking of, I really have some wonderful listeners. Brian, thanks very much. Anyway, about unemployment. This week and next, I'm gonna be taking a ton of meetings to recruit companies to join the trade association that I'm launching and I'm not exactly filled with anxiety about it. I mean, I'm, well, I'm worried, I guess, or at least I'm uncertain about how it's gonna go, obviously, but I feel like I've got a lot of the bases covered. I think I'm really prepared for the questions that are gonna be asked. It's more gonna be a point of really being able to elucidate the vision that I have for this thing and what the business model's going to be around it. But if there's no episode next week, you'll know things went poorly. But enough about me, or at least enough about work. I do have one more me part to share with you before we get to the show, so bear with me. Last week, I spent a lot of time working on materials for the meetings that I was talking about, but I took Thursday off so I could go to New York to record this week's interview and also attend a really special event. The event was the opening reception at the Society of Illustrators for Drew Friedman's Gallery Show of Old Jewish Comedians. Last September, I interviewed Drew about the paintings comprising his three Old Jewish Comedians books. And we also talked about a ton of other stuff. And he was kind enough to invite me to the reception for the show last week. Now, if you're interested in Old Jewish Comedians, the books or the very concept of Old Jewish Comedians, as well as the art of semi-sort of caricature, you really ought to get to the Society of Illustrators building on East 63rd Street in New York to check this show out. It takes up two floors of the Society space and there's a write up about each of Drew's subjects. Some of the paintings have the sketches from which Drew started on them. There's also a collection of his ephemera relating to these guys. It was really a wonderful exhibition. But the thing was, the reception was even better. I mean, who else do you know who could say he went to a party where he got to meet Robert Klein, Gilbert Gottfried, Al Jaffe, Joe Franklin, and Abe Vigoda? But seriously, Abe Vigoda, the place blew up when he arrived. What sort of party gets thrilled when Abe Vigoda shows up? Everybody had to get their pictures taken with them. It was a wonderful time. Lots of entertaining guests besides the, well, the aforementioned celebrities, at least celebrities in my book. Even those of us who aren't Old Jewish Comedians started doing shtick as the evening went along. It's like it was catching. Anyway, I want to thank Drew again for the invite. You should check out his episode from last fall, the guy who drew the liver spots, as well as the interviews I did with his brother's kip and Josh Allen Friedman, as well as their dad, Bruce J. Friedman, who was also at the reception, at the end of which something else kind of neat happened. I was going upstairs to get my coat and bag, and a gentleman stopped me on the stairs and said, "Excuse me, are you Gil Roth?" Now, I used to serve warrants and papers, and I should have just pretended I had no idea and run off, but stupidly, I said, "Yes, yes I am." In that instant, afraid I was gonna get hit with legal papers of some kind, but he said he was a big fan of the show, of this podcast that he started listening right after the one I did with Drew Friedman, and went on to tell me all these wonderful little, sort of inside observations about what I've been doing over the last couple of months with the show. It was really just sort of wonderful and gratifying. I mean, it's nice when somebody I know tells me about the show, but to talk to somebody I'd never met before who really listens to this, enjoys the interviews, but also gets something of the personality that I project. Well, that's pretty rewarding. So, Judd, thank you for stopping me on the stairs. I appreciate that. Once again, I really have wonderful listeners, and that is enough about me. Now, we're gonna talk about dogs. Now, some of you know, I own a couple of retired Greyhounds. They brought an awful lot of joy into my life and make for just adorably goofy photos. Other people have pictures of their kids on their phones. I have this shot of Otis just dead asleep with his head prop against a mattress and his tongue hanging three inches down to the floor. They're my fur kids, except, you know, they don't go to college and I can't embarrass them before the prom with baby pictures, but. So anyway, I had the opportunity to interview the writer and artist behind the YA graphic novel, Dogs of War. So, I walked in a circle three times. I scratched the ground a little bit. I barked and I said, "Yes, I wanna treat!" And then I sat down to interview them. Dogs of War is, like I said, a YA graphic novel. It's about the use of dogs by the military. It's about 200 pages long this book, and it has three stories covering World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. They're fiction, but they're very, very well researched. And the stories are both touching and pretty intense. Not having kids, I'm not exactly sure what the age range is for Dogs of War, but it got heady praise from the likes of Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and the Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books. It also made School Library Journal's list of top 10 graphic novels for 2013, and got a YALSA top 10 great graphic novels mentioned, as well as an ALA quick pick for reluctant young adult readers. Now, I met the writer of Dogs of War, Sheila Keenan, during my interview last October with Peter Trachtenberg, who had written a book about cats, weirdly enough. Sheila mentioned a new graphic novel, and I said, oh, we should sit down and record. She said, why don't we wait until March, because March 13th is Keenan Veterans Day. Surprise, I had no idea, but lo and behold, a number of states are at the union. I don't think it's federal yet. They celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Keenan Corps in 1942. Now, the use of dogs in war goes way back before that, but it's pretty wonderful that states are working to recognize the role that these guys have played in protecting people over the years. And sure, you know, my Greyhounds run away and hide whenever they hear thunder, so they probably wouldn't be very useful on a battlefield, but Dogs of War shows readers how the relationship between people and dogs can transcend even the horrors of battle. Like I said, the stories are very touching, but also kind of thrilling. On top of that, the artwork by Nathan Fox is fantastic. He captures both the action of the scenes and the physicality and expressiveness of the dogs in really impressive ways. I recommend Dogs of War for Kids, but it's also a neat read for an alleged grownup like me. Now, Sheila Keenan's an established author of books for young people, as she says, including As the Crow Flies, a picture book she did in collaboration with her husband, the artist Kevin Dugan, and Animals in the House, a history of pets and people. Dogs of War is her first graphic novel, but probably not her last. And Nathan Fox is an artist, illustrator, and cartoonist who serves as chair for the School of Visual Arts MFA Visual Narrative Program in New York City. His works appeared in The New York Times, both at the paper and the magazine interview, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Wired, ESPN Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Mother Jones, Spin, Mad Magazines, and a variety of comics companies, including DC Vertigo, Dark Horse, and Marvel. And 2001, Nathan designed the curriculum for the new Low-Residency Graduate Program in Visual Storytelling, and that's where he serves as chair. And now, the virtual memories conversation with Sheila Keenan and Nathan Fox, the artist and writer behind Dogs of War. (upbeat music) So let's talk about Dogs of War. Where did it come from? Actually, it came out of the garbage, I have this neighbor who recycles on a, you know, 30-year basis, and there was this enormous pile of magazines in our hallway while I was waiting for the elevator. And I just started flipping through it idly, and I saw this beautiful photograph of a dog in almost a complete arc over the head of a soldier in a World War I trench, and the caption was really simple. It was something like off with a messenger for his master. And I didn't know anything about dogs in war. And, but I was so captivated by this picture, I just had to know more. So I started looking into it and found out that basically dogs have been going to war as long as human beings have, and that in World War I, thousands of them were used. I think the Germans used something like 30,000, the Brit used 20,000, and I was already interested in the intersection of human species and other species. I'd written a book called Animals in the House, which was about a history of pets and people, how animals became our pets, and all the cultural information that went along with that. So I was already headed that way, and I'd always been interested in war, because when I was a kid, the Vietnam War was raging, and it just infused everything. But as a girl, you know, that wasn't anything that I was part of or ever showed women part of, even though, of course, nurses were there. So it was like this, war was like this big mystery to me. So that picture was basically the intersection of both those things, and off I went. - It's interesting, because of the three short stories that are in Dogs of War, the Vietnam one is clearly the most complex, though the war is portrayed the most complexly, and the way it's told is much more involved and difficult. Did you see that in terms, as you were working on the progression of the stories, as to how they were, along with the 20th century, growing more and more muddied? - Well, I actually worked on them out of order, because I knew that the Vietnam one would be the hardest one for me, because, as I said, it was a war that was going on when I was growing up, and it was a complex war, and it remains a complex war in our history. So I actually did the World War I story first, because I was so intrigued by that idea of soldiers on their own, deciding they weren't going to fight. They were going to take a day off. And then I did the Vietnam story, and then I saved the World War II story for last, because of all the war stories in there, the goals were the clearest in World War II, I think. And the story was easier to tell in a more traditional, heroic war adventure story, because the goals were clearer. The enemies were more clearly defined. The war itself was battles and all kinds of traditional warfare, whereas Vietnam was far more complex on every possible level. So I didn't really do them in order. I did them in emotional order, I guess. - Understood. Now, why do it in the form of a comic? I prefer comic over graphic novel. I apologize, it's just a term of use for me. But why comic over prose? - Well, I had been working as an editor of graphic novels, slash comics, first scholastic graphics, and I was just interested in the format overall. I myself had, at that point, only written nonfiction with a couple of beginning readers. And because I was working so hard as an editor, I felt like I was really learning a lot about the structure of these books, and I just wanted to try it myself. I had been thinking about trying fiction overall, and the format was just so appealing to me that once I saw that dog picture, it all just clicked, and I thought, I'm just gonna try this. - Let's ask the artist. How did you guys get paired up? - By chance meeting the art director that was on the book, I ended up meeting Phil Falco at, I think a Society of Illustrators event, and we just started talking, and he had known about my work, and I just started getting into comics at the time, and had just gotten a big graphic novel. Gig launched with Heavy Metal, and was working on a bunch of stuff, and we had a lot of stuff in common, and he said, "I have this project." The dogs in war, "Would you be interested?" And I said, "Of course." I wouldn't need to read the script first, but of course. I grew up with dogs, it was a big part of my childhood, easily like one of my best friends. Definitely my childhood, and kidhood, kind of growing up with this bosom buddy I could play with and kind of have around. It was great, I grew up with a full collie, and it was a great experience and memory. So the idea of this, as well as the first time getting into young adult slash kids' books, especially with Scholastic and Scholastic Graphics, which I've become a fan of, everything kind of came together for it. And then reading the script and talking to Sheila, we had an awful lot in common, and I think creatively, working with the script and kind of laying everything out, and getting the stories just right, just became a labor of love and process. - And what was a collaborative process like? Were you working on a pretty detailed full script, or did you have more leeway in terms of laying it out and getting an idea of how to tell the story that was there? - Yeah, I mean, Sheila did a great job of laying the script out, and then we just kind of worked out nuances of pace and progression and kind of how she had written the scripts and scenes that I saw and scenes that she saw and the way that this needed to work out, or what shots or details should be in there, the things that we need to show and we don't. I think it was a great back and forth, especially with layouts and pencils, once we got started and then kind of double checking on things here and there as needed in order to kind of tell the story we wanted to tell. - I mean, I wrote full script because, again, I was coming from writing a nonfiction prose background, and that was the only way I could do it in order to know whether or not I was keeping myself under control and not because if you're a wordsmith, it can be hard to keep yourself checked. - There's a great Alan Moore script for the first page of the watchman. - Frightening, frightening. I don't know how you can hand that over to an artist and have them not run screaming out of the room, but when Phil showed me Nathan's work, I already knew Nathan's work, but when Phil sent over the samples and I was like, "Yeah, this guy is it," because what I feel is so powerful about the way you illustrated the book is that the lines and the inking is so dark and really powerful, and yet there's this intimacy that's so necessary to these stories because, for me, people locked in war, you're in this huge landscape that's literally exploding around you, but you have this intimate story going on of how to survive and also what's going on between you and the other men, generally, and dogs, in this case, in that landscape, and I really felt that your artwork reflected that tension between the dominating, powerful image and then the intimacy of the action. I think you did a great job on that. - Oh, thanks. You also work, the three stories take on three very different tones. You have a very great, expansive world for World War I, blinding white for the World War II scene near the Arctic Circle, and then Vietnam/North Carolina. Were you thinking along those lines in terms of, you know, drawing in different tones or what to set up in terms of how the colors for the book itself are going to look and how things are going to appear for the reader? - Yeah, I mean, we talked a lot about the characters and the dogs, I mean, they're individuals, you know, obviously different species, different landscapes, different, you know, lands, wars, locations, factions, you know, I mean, everything was so specific to every story that, you know, at least for me, creatively, you know, either in terms of art direction or just, you know, storytelling approach. You know, as a storyteller, I want everything to be engaging. I want those characters to matter, to matter. Everybody has their own individual voice and the same thing reigns true with the actual characters and players within the battle and the war and the soldiers, as well as the handlers, the key main characters and the dogs themselves. So every dog had their own personality. You know, bouncer worked and functioned within the story completely differently than Shiva. But at the same time, neither of those animals or that their place in those stories and times had anything to do with boots. It was completely different. So, you know, really trying to get my head and hand into the idea of what it would be to be in World War I, you know, like really doing the research and kind of listening to, you know, the music of the time and researching and the history of the time and details of, you know, outfits and what was happening and reading up on, you know, the research of what that location was like, and especially with the armistice, you know, in that location and then, you know, what was it like during World War II and what was it like during Vietnam and then even in '68 kind of coming out of that into, you know, back into the U.S. and then that kind of conflict of returning, you know, to the states and then kind of the objections and a lot of the politics and emotions and things that were going on and just kind of being isolated like that, you know, and my father served during Vietnam but in D.C. as a topographic analyzer and worked on maps and some other intelligence stuff. Unfortunately, he never was able to talk about it. But, you know, like the tension that when I did kind of Quizam and Pressam on it, even though he didn't talk about it, you know, it was obvious that it was a very charged and very kind of heavy time for him and, you know, some of the stuff that he did end up kind of talking to me about, you know, it was all very, it was all very emotionally driven. So, you know, I kind of had an idea based on my own, you know, my own art history and, you know, protest poster things that I had researched in the past and, you know, other friends who've had, you know, fathers that were in the war and their issues. And I'm really trying to kind of call those things up and kind of remember what that was like back then for them and kind of the stories they used to tell about their, you know, their father and their relationship with them and kind of what was going on and, you know, trying to find a way to build that into it. >> And for me, as a word person, of course, I mean, I had to do a tremendous amount of research to write these stories. >> It's a very extensive bibliography. >> Yeah, and that's just part of it is. Which is, it can be very depressing to spend over a year in all war or all the time. But I approached it in a very sensory and verbal kind of way. I mean, I can't really hook into my characters unless everybody's named. People, dogs, the whole shebang. If I don't have the right name, I just don't know them yet. But once I do, that's it, I'm clicking. And I've also, in my research, came across various visuals, pictures of soldiers, dogs, and stuff. And I would just print them out and tape them up all over my office because I liked looking at them. And it made, especially looking in the eyes of the soldiers because a lot of these formal photographs of soldiers from the early wars, they're almost like those Civil War photographs where everybody's staring straight ahead. And you just feel like you're looking into the eyes of the about to be dead, it's kind of eerie. But, so I did a lot of that kind of work. And then the sensory part of war really captured my imagination because I spent a lot of time thinking about what's it like to wear those scratchy outfits of World War I and to be wet all the time and not to be able to stand up completely and to never be dry. And then, of course, that's kind of the same in Vietnam. And you're in this jungle where something's always biting you or scratching you and you're always kind of humid. And, you know, I really thought about those kind of details a lot because I just thought this is what gives you a picture of what war is. I mean, there are the battles and the bravery and all of that. But then there's this daily accumulation of these small, horrible details that are what you have to deal with that and also the slang. I was very invested in the slang of the various times, like I loved knowing that these soldiers in World War I called sausage barker or they called a small wound a blighty and that, you know, World War II people said things like whoa, Josephine, you know, that kind of stuff. I just think that that adds a richness of detail especially when you're writing for young people because you don't know what their full context is about these wars, how much they know or they don't know. And what I was trying to do was not just show you what war was, but also show you what the price of war is and so that you can make a good decision about whether it's worth it to pay those prices. But I think the way you do that is that you make all of your characters, including the dog, which Nathan's captured beautifully, you make them as human as possible. You make them real characters, not just people who have gone and have a, you know, form on. - Well, what sort of challenges did you face in particularly for the young audience you're writing for, obviously language has to be adjusted, but knowing your audience, you know, how did that impact what you were putting on the page? - Well, I think one thing is that, as I was saying before, context. Do you don't know how much your readers know about these wars to begin with? Like when they were or why they were started or who was even in them. - Oh, I'm still learning World War I now from the local complex. - Right, it's a complex, right? And the anniversary is coming up, so everybody will be all World War I all the time. But, so that was a challenge because you want to give your readers enough information so that they know where they are and when this story is happening, but you don't want to bog down your story with constantly explaining what's going on, where. So that was a challenge to make that come through. And again, I tried to use the language of dialogue between soldiers themselves to let you know what you needed to know about how this was working. Like, for example, in World War I, the soldiers have to go out on a wiring party. So I don't sit there and say, "Gee, a wiring party is when you repair the barbed wire." I just have them talking about, well, do you have the hammer or are they muffled? Are they this and that? And if you read all of it and then you're looking at Nathan's fantastic pictures, you get what a wiring party is and how scary and dangerous that might be. So that was my biggest challenge was to do that. And then I think also to keep in mind that when these wars took place, we didn't live in the same kind of globally conscious world that we live in now. I didn't want anybody reading this book to think that they were the enemy portrayed as the enemy in this book. So I think you need to keep that in mind too when you're looking at wars too, because some of the people reading your book might be looking like some of the people in your book. - Do you test on young readers at all? Do you have any, does tell me if this makes sense or any sort of barometer along those lines? - No, well, at least when it came to the visuals, I'd working in a lot of kind of adults show everything as relative to the story, kind of creativity and sequential narrative. Coming to this book, I knew A, that's not really part of what's going on. And B, I wanted to do it in a very respectful way, like really consider the readers. But at the same time, the fact that this is based in historical fact, I wanted this to be much like what I wished my knowledge and education at this age would have been about wars. I really wanted to, obviously it should be entertaining. Obviously, the script is exceedingly solid. I really wanted to kind of do all of that justice, but at the same time, I don't wanna preach to the reader. I don't wanna kind of force anything to kids, quote unquote. These young adults, I want them to do the work. I want this to house in their mind. Not only is it the wars that existed, but this is also a very entertaining, very engaging story. So in order to do that, there's things that you just don't need to show. You can allude to a lot of things. You can allow the reader kind of that empowering of making it their own. So through that, I really tried to allude to these violent things are there, all of this stuff is happening. It's really uncomfortable. There's certain details I need, certain moods and atmospheres I need to set. And then based on how that story progression happens visually in the panel structure and page turn and kind of the action that's going on, that story gets told in the reader's experience and the experience of the book, as opposed to kind of the same thing, sitting down and explaining it visuals. This is what's happening, somebody got shot, and they're gonna die and the wound looks like this. And there's really no need for that. It's more about the story, the information and the experience is king. And so that really applied to this and trying to kind of juggle those sensitive times, and visually representing people of different cultures without having to hit them over the head or be preachy. - Right, I wanted these stories to be really authentic in every possible way, in terms of the experience, in terms of the behavior, in terms of the small details, the big details, everything. But I wanted the story to dominate. I didn't want it to devolve into a visual slaughter festival. Next thing you know, you've lost track of, wow, who's intestines are those? Anyhow, because that's not what mattered. It's as Nathan was saying, it was the experience that matters. And it was the emotional connection between the dog and the soldier, which I think is a great way to talk about war with younger people, because younger people are naturally empathetic towards animals. And war is a really complicated thing to talk about, but everybody understands how a person would love a dog, and how a dog might protect you, and how you would want to then protect a dog. So using that relationship to tell this story, I think was really, really key, and I didn't want that to get lost. And yet, I was really happy when various people who were in the military said that they found this authentic. I mean, to the people that did blurbs are both writers and former military people. So that was a really good thing. I've also heard from some war dog associations that they founded moving as well. That was very important to me, especially because being who I am, it's pretty obvious that I am not a veteran, that I was not in these wars. You know, the characters in the third story are African American, and I don't even own a dog on top of all of that. So, you know, you really have to make sure that when you are writing about something, you are coming from the deepest possible place, and the way I did that was through a lot of research. - Did you either face a challenge in terms of over and through-up amorphizing the dogs? In my experience reading it, I didn't get that much, one or two facial expressions of them. You know, I see that on my Greyhounds also, you know, that's very quizzical, but dogs will actually do that. Did either of you find that an issue to make sure they're still dogs, you know, not people? - Yeah, I wanted to make sure that when I would represent them that they remained, you know, they were made true to the story. You know, I didn't want any talking dogs, I didn't want any, you know, barking yeses and barking nose. And, you know, like I wanted to have, I wanted to release kind of stick to the realities of that relationship and hopefully, through what I read and what I was able to find, you know, through that research, you know, to represent them in a realistic way that would be true to the story and true to that relationship that actually existed. So it was something I was keenly aware of, 'cause I would have not been on this if it was a talking dog book, you know, which is why when- - The first draft of the script you had to- - Yeah, no, which is why when Phil pitched it up, like I, you know, the dogs don't talk to they, and he's like, no, I was like, all right, I don't know, I'm totally rated. You know, so I wanted, I really wanted to make sure that that kind of, you know, came through. - And I mean, I saw the dogs, the soldier handler and his dog, I saw them as a partnership, as equal characters, and the dog was literally a character. So I, they were, the dogs were never anthropomorphized in my mind, just another species that doesn't speak in our language. I mean, that's basically how I see animals in general. And it's what interests me about writing about this intersection of humans and other species is, you know, we just, we move through this human centric world as if that is reality, but in actual fact, we are surrounded by other species, and their species is centric in their world. I'm interested in how that works together. I'm not that interested in trying to humanize other animals and then say, oh look, they're cute, they're just like us. So I worked very hard to think about, what would that relationship be like? Because here you have a human, you have a dog, the human is in charge, but the human is bringing the dog into this world of peril. What does that mean? What are the responsibilities that the human has? What about the dog that doesn't really have the same understanding of why it's there and yet is operating like a soldier? What does that mean too? The same animal that is dependent upon you is the same animal that could save your life. I mean, that's kind of a complex relationship that I didn't think would be served by making pooch dogs. - Yeah, but that's also, I think a good thing to mention in terms of the partnership and that relationship is that the soldiers did the communication. - Yeah. - Like the vehicle or the emotive projection. - Yeah, projection and everything. I mean, the dogs had some exaggeration from time to time, but it was really that relationship between the partner. They were each other's sidekick, they were each other's leader. I mean, it was a real kind of give and take. And I think that the main characters, the soldiers themselves, kind of carried that extra emotive aspect to it that the dogs can't talk, but the soldiers can, and that is just enough. And to maintain that soldier aspect. I mean, the dogs were trained, but they were also friendships. Kind of that partnership between brothers in arms. Like that kind of solidity was something that we both wanted to have in the book between the dog and the handler. - Has that relationship or has that definition by the military change at all? Are dogs still essentially equipment? Or are they seen more as soldiers in some respect now by the U.S.? - Well, a canine memorial, a national canine memorial opened last October, I think, in San Antonio at Lackland Air Force Base where a lot of the dogs are trained. I mean, there still are a lot of dogs in the military, which is kind of interesting because the trajectory of dog use is parallel to military technology. So, well, because in World War I, you would have dogs doing a lot of jobs like messengers, things like that because you didn't have communications weren't at the level that they were by World War II. And you didn't need quite so many messenger dogs because you had far more sophisticated communications. The same, but however, in the current wars that were in, there's a lot of ground war and kind of guerrilla warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. So you have dogs back again, right? Snipping things out, having like night goggles on, stuff like that. I mean, there was a dog on the Bin Laden raid. So it's kind of gone back away, not all the way back, of course, 'cause military technology is very sophisticated, but dog use had fallen off a little bit, even by World War II and a little bit after that. So it's kind of interesting to see how the use of a dog actually goes with what's going on in war. And there's also a new movement now. I haven't researched this too much, but I'm going to look into it for another possible story. That dogs are being used in rehabilitation of contemporary veterans. In two ways, one, they're having soldiers who have post-traumatic stress actually work with dogs to train them because there are a lot of psychological studies, not just military studies, that back up the use of animals in combating depression. And they're having soldiers train the dogs, the soldiers themselves gain from working with the dogs, and those dogs are being trained to then worked with veterans who have severe injuries. So I think that's kind of an interesting link that again, I haven't looked at too much, but I want to. - Actually, the Greyhound group we adopted are dogs from. One of them was in the prison program in Central Jersey. They have a juvenile delinquent prison, and if the kids get good, they can get a dog to help train and take care of as they're taking off the track. - The dogs, not the kids. - Yeah, actually that came out of the 1970s. There was a psychologist who dealt with children that were abused, and he noticed that when he let his dog sit in the room with the child he was interviewing, the child tended to stroke the dog and be a lot calmer and be able to talk a little bit more. So he started doing studies into that, which of course people poo-poo'd at first, but it turned out to be true that pets in general are extremely helpful in psychological situations, whether it's people with dementia, people who are lonely, people who are depressed, people in prisons, younger children, I mean, they're used a lot. There's a lot of hospitals have visiting animals that go around, and there's just a big psychological benefit. - And this explains why so many people are nuts here in New York then, 'cause nobody has dogs, it all adds up now, it's starting to make sense to me. - Well, in full disclosure, I do have a B-ship-boo. - I was gonna ask if either of you are on the dog, didn't you say so, Mr. Truffles? I prefer Mr. T, he's the only other man in the house. So I live with three women, so I'm doing the best I can. - We'll have to get a picture of him for this. - He is my emotional support, I will have to say. - Oh, I say back when I had a job, you know, coming home and having these two enormous greyhounds standing at the top of the stairs wagging like maniacs to see me, was a lot of people are happy. Well, dogs are happy to see me, it's great. - Well, that's just it, and what we've been talking about with a lot with the experience with the characters, but also kind of the research we were talking about. Even relocating here, we happened to get Truffles right before we moved here, and he became a great anchor for our girls, in terms of the transition. When I was a kid, having a rough childhood, Stormy was it, when I came home, it was to see him, and then do my homework and go play, you know. And like, that was the me time, you know, so like that unconditional exchange and relationship, you know, it's not, there are no expectations, it's nothing but friendship and love. So to then take that relationship and drop it in war is kind of, you know, the challenge of that was exceedingly exciting to try and bring this story to life. Because of the relationships I've had with dogs, as well as, you know, not being in the military and kind of, you know, dealing with all these subjects and other projects I've done, but, you know, this history and these things that existed, you know, it must have been a very intense time, and these dogs must have been great emotional anchors, but, you know, when tragic things happened, it must have been exceedingly heart wrenching to have that loss or that distance. - I mean, and that's the genesis for that Vietnam story, because I had been researching the war in Vietnam, I had been thinking about, okay, what's my story outline, what's my hook going to be here? And then when I read that the dogs were treated as equipment and had to be left behind, I just thought, what could be more wrenching? You're like this young guy who's had a year in hell, and who knows what you've seen, who knows who's died around you, you're coming back at least in the '60s, which is when the story is set, '68, you're coming back to a country in complete turmoil, you have no idea how your last year's activity is going to be received, and you just had to leave your best friend and possible savior who might have kept you alive. You have to leave this dog here, and you have no idea what's going to happen to it, but it's probably not going to be good. I mean, that whole thing, that story clicked the minute I read that, because I could not imagine anything more wrenching. The only thing you had to hold on to, you had to let go. - So it's a good thing to teach young adults. (laughing) - I understand you didn't get them started early. - Well, I think that might be a very good point. Truth and jest, I mean, the loss of a dog is... - Oh, it's traumatizing for me when I was 16. - Yeah, yeah, me too. - When my dog passed. But I mean, something that, in terms of presenting this material to young adults, that is something equally identifiable that might give them a bit more insight into what these kinds of things might be like. So that was a kind of a, and also like a hard part to draw. So it was fun on a lot of levels. - Do you feel you caught the comics bug after this? Do you plan on working more in the form? - I do, I mean, I still edit graphic novels, and I have another proposal out for another book, which I hope somebody will do. We're hoping we get to do Dogs of War Vol. 2, right? - Yeah, it'd be great. - So there's that, yeah, I mean, I really like doing, I have to say, it is, even if you have read every book that Scott McLeod ever wrote, and you've edited a number of really great books, which I have for several years, it is still very difficult to do, and I think Nathan can attest to, you know, writers tend to overdo it on a page, don't they, Nathan, sometimes? - No comment. - Okay, okay, that's not what you wrote, no, just kidding. - No, only because I finally started writing and realized you guys actually do work. - Yeah, isn't that amazing? - It's very hard work. - I know, you thought we just cut and pasted from somebody else's story online, right? (laughing) - Yeah, we actually write it. - Not at all, no, like, I've always appreciated what, right? I've, even before I started doing this as a kid, all I wanted to do was be a writer, but it's hard. - It's hard, it's very hard. - But it is so addictive, and in terms of organizing that, in all honesty, I think that was one of the joys of working on this project was working on the script and really collaborating on how to lay this out and like, what story do we really wanna tell of this scene? You know, how do we really wanna present this material? I mean, when I kind of made the comments I did in the front of the book, I mean, that's what I meant when it was an education. I mean, I learned so much on this project that it's, you know, it really has, you know, it really has assisted with, you know, my beginning to write as a writer. - Yeah, and I think as the writer, you need to stay flexible because, of course, every single one of your words is precious. But, you know, really, I mean, don't you want an artist who's going to come into this as a collaborator so that you can say, you know what? This is pretty much how I envision this story and some parts of it I really need in here in order for the scaffolding to work. But, you know, if you see a better way to do this, you're the artist and it really just enriches the book. If you think like that versus just asking somebody, just stick to that script, draw this. I mean, somebody will, I'm sure, but you're not going to get the rich's experience because, you know, when you're writing it, first of all, it's all clear to you because it's your world and your head. It's totally clear to you. But when someone else is reading it, if it's not so clear, you should listen to them because, you know, they're not in your head and the readers aren't going to be in your head either. And the artist is bringing a visual perspective that you just simply might not have. And why not go for it? That's how I say it. - Without naming names, this collaborative experience versus some of the other major comics companies you've worked with, you know, how do this differ from, say, working on a Vertigo book or something like that? - Yeah, well, I mean, obviously, the young adult aspect of it. But, you know, general scripts are kind of like, you know, laid out page by page, panel by panel per page. You know, things are dictated, you know, notes are made, details are given. You know, and you, you know, your job is kind of a work for a higher type, type situation when you're not on the kind of original content creator-owned things. - Sure. - Which is fun, I mean, I'm an illustrator and a storyteller from the beginning, so that was an education in and of itself. Just, you know, how do I bring this to life? You know, like, these are, you know, these are somebody else's characters. You know, I gotta get into the head of them and so on and so forth. But starting on something like this, and even other books where, you know, I am more of the creator. I am bringing these words to life for the first time. Nobody's seen this, you know, like I am the originator kind of thing. You know, that's when it becomes personal, it becomes a labor of love, and you really get your head into it a bit more. You know, and in all honesty, the first chance I got exposed to that was on another war book, which was DMZ, which was pretty much my first real stab at a complete story beyond just just 22 pages, working on the friendly fire with Brian Wood. And when he had me create Stevens for the first time that wasn't in there, who was, you know, completely gun shy and experienced and a complete flake and kind of lost boy. You know, I had never been in war, so I could easily identify with that. You know, I'd only been in a few fights and they weren't real fights. You know, like, there were only so many things that I'd kind of come across at that time. And so I really put that into that character and was able to dive into, you know, the world of DMZ, which was already licensed, much deeper than I would have if I had just been doing, you know, the main characters. You know, when it really is just kind of, you know, your storytelling chops on paper with somebody else's words. So with this, it was great to start from scratch and kind of get my mind in the full storytelling, you know, character mode of, you know, these are the words he's gonna say, these are the things that have to happen, but you know, how do I really want him to say it? You know, 'cause it hasn't been defined before. You know, so it really was a kind of a chance to create, be part of the creative process, you know, which I got a taste of for us in Black and a few other small things, but, you know, this is easily one of the largest, you know, endeavors with the greatest cast of characters, which we must talk about for the next one. - Right, especially. - But always with the sequel. - But yeah, but you know, it was just, it was a great opportunity to, you know, have an original voice and be the visual writer, you know, which was great, and then when we, you know, started talking about how things would be laid out in the flavor and tone and temperature of these stories, you know, that's when, you know, character comes into play, obviously, but so does color, atmosphere and mood and everything is specific and has a narrative purpose. If it doesn't, we get rid of it. - Lightering, everything, yeah. - Yeah, you know, extra dialogue, other ways that would be said, you know, how would they really say it, you know, well, this character has evolved so much in this story, you know, would they really say that anymore? And, you know, like little, little small tweaks, but I mean, the majority of the script is easily still here. - Yeah. - You know, and some things we had to show, other things we didn't, which was just in the background. - And we shared, you know, we shared research and images and stuff, and for me, it was almost the opposite of your experience because I'm used to writing nonfiction and prose books, and I just simply say, okay, get that photo, it goes with this, with what I'm writing, and it's just exactly as I put it out there, and here, while I wrote the full script, you know, there's other ways to look at things, and it's interesting to see how what you wrote actually translates to somebody else visually. You know, I think that's just a very interesting process for a writer, overall, because, you know, when I'm writing, I'm thinking visually too. It would be impossible not to, right? I mean, how could I possibly write a graphic novel unless I'm sort of seeing it as well, but I'm not the person visualizing it, and so that's just a whole different process, and even a lot of the graphic novels I edited, they were all a single creator. The person who was doing the story and the art, so you're dealing with one person, one vision. Here, it's like one vision, two people, almost, right? It would be a good way to describe it, and it's a really interesting process, I think, to go back and forth in discussing it, in looking at the sketches, and going, "Ah, yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking," or, "Wow, that's a different emphasis, that's cool," or, "Whoa, I'm missing my emphasis over here," that was there, what happens, needs to come back in. You know, that kind of back and forth is a really great process, I think. And it would be fun to do it again from the get-go, because here we, in this instance, I'd already done a script, and then you got to read it, and decide whether you want to do it or not do it, and then we got to talk together. But it would be more fun, I think, to start together for the get-go. - Yeah, it's a very interesting. - Now that we've worked together already on this book, it would be, I think it would be cool. - Yeah, I think there's, you know, for those with the patience and interest, I think that kind of collaboration has a much more expansive reach to, you know, how people engage, you know, like the quality and richness with which they kind of experience the stories, what gets put into the characters, like those things you can't describe, those little nuances that come out because you're kind of both involved in the creation of this thing. You know, those are the things that I've started to kind of covet and hold on to as precious, it's gonna sound cheesy, but precious moments are, you know, like great creative, welcome. - Yeah, yeah, like great inspiration. When these things are kind of brought to the surface and you realize that, you know, there's certain ways to present this, but because you've had this kind of collective experience, it's starting to generate itself. You know, that's when the work starts to speak to you and it becomes a dialogue as opposed to, you know, you're literally staring at a script and then, you know, just visualizing. - Draw this, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, which is something I never wanted to do. It's something I refuse to do in my illustrations, you know, for editorial or advertising, you know, it's just, I want to tell the story, you know, and to be fortunate enough to have worked with writers that, you know, allow for that freedom, but then, you know, much like this book and others, you know, where the opportunity is to work with the writer, you know, collectively, it has always been a greater experience and, you know, feels like a real story. - Sheila, what's your history with comics? I mean, you mentioned editing now, but how far back does your comics background go? - Well, not that far. I did not read comics as a kid. Okay, I want to confess the whole thing. I'm not, I don't have a comics background, really, in a way. - Well, you just don't have a geek childhood comics background. - I don't have a geek childhood, maybe other people my family did. Well, I did read, you know, some of Harkram's comics, but what happened was is that I was working and this guy wanted to impress me and he blew up a page from "Love and Rockets" and left it on my desk to get me to go out with him and now we've been married for over 20 years and I still have that. It's hanging up in our bedroom. - Which page is it? - It's, okay, never mind, never mind. - But anyhow, he introduced me to this whole world because he had all these comics and graphic novels and all this kind of stuff. I'm like, wow, what's all this stuff piled up in the corner of the room here? And that's how I got into it. And I just found it really intriguing and I was working at Scholastic at the time and it was right when people were beginning to buzz a little bit more about graphic novels and kids and you know, David Saylor over there were starting up an imprint. And I'm just like, let me in on this. I think this is really cool and I think it's just a cool way to tell stories and frankly, this generation of kids, they live in a far more integrated visual world than I did. I think it's a really great way to tell a story. Although, to be honest, there's still a lot of prejudice against this format. I mean, I just had a book fair somewhere and there was this kid and she was just like looking through dogs of war and she really wanted it so much and she said, oh, I really want to buy this book. I'm like, okay, she goes, but I don't think my mom sent me here to buy a comic book. And I just felt so bad for her because she just wanted I just, well, you know, if your mom's here I'll be happy to talk to her about it. But I think there's still some sort of preconceived notions in a few places that this isn't really reading or there aren't really enough words in it or whatever people think. I don't know. And in actual fact, this is great modeling for kids who don't read well because it's sequential. You read it sequentially. It's often visually sequential, right? You're modeling the act of literacy. Never mind telling power, sorry, and it looks really good. And kids just cannot resist picking up a book with pictures in it. - There's always been a bias even within comics. - Oh, yeah, sure. - The interview of Paul Gravatt a few weeks ago in London he has a book out of comic arts and it contains an anecdote about how Marvel tried not to page him, Storanko for a couple of pages of Nick Fury comic because there were no words. It was a four page action sequence and they felt that wasn't writing. So they weren't gonna pay him as a writer because he was just drawing and, you know, it's, so yeah, that bias has gone on a long time. It's a really wonderful book. You should check out it. - Oh, yeah. - But so that brought me into the comics world and I started editing graphic novels over at graphics. I also worked at Abrams comics arts. I got to meet Jerry Robinson who created The Joker and I edited a book with him about him which was just fascinating. He had so many stories about the beginning days of comics here. It was just priceless and I just kind of kept going in that world and I just really liked that world. I have to say that going to all the comic cons it's such an inclusive world, at least in the comics part of it. You know, all kinds of people will be turning you on to other people's art and suggesting you go and look at them. It's just a very supportive community and I wanted to be part of it. - Are there particular comics writers you find influential? I mean, you mentioned Scott McCloud earlier but, you know, in terms of actually writing and the way you work on the script? - Well, I just, I don't know if it would be influential in terms of how I work. I would say for this book, I was more influenced by novels and movies. You know, war movies like Caz of Glory or Joy Noel or, you know, Apocalypse Now. And because I've just always found it fascinating how war is visually presented. I mean, if you think about World War II, right, you can go from the best years of our lives which is a fantastic movie looking at the human relations to saving private Ryan where I'm watching it and I feel like the opening, the famous opening, I was kind of like, it's unimaginable to me, just simply unimaginable. So, and then you have MASH and then you have Hogan's heroes. I mean, you just have all this mishmash right of like, wow, what is war? And I just think that those were bigger influences for me on writing here. But there are so many great artists working right now. I love the work of Kazuki Buishi, who does Amulet. I love Charles Burns, Hernandez Brothers, all time favorites. And I was like speechless when I met them at Comic Con. I mean, there's just-- Oh, that's okay, it's great people. So for the page of tang in your bedroom, you don't have to say anything else about it, but is it Jaime or Beto? Jaime. Okay, that's all I needed. Now, Nathan, you're the chair of the low residency MFA program in the SVA's visual narrative department? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did that come about and how did you kind of develop a curriculum for what you're teaching here? I graduated from Marshall's MFA illustration as a visual essay upstairs on "12." And even in grad school, I knew that all I wanted to do was tell stories. And I had a great relationship here at SVA. I started teaching when I got out. That was one of the reasons why I got my MFA. I wanted to give back everything I had kind of reaped and stolen and sucked and taken away from all the educators that I'd ever been blessed with knowing and being taught by. And so I wanted to do that as well as kind of illustrate. And so I always kept in touch with Marshall and always came back for New York Comic-Con as much as I could. And on this one trip, I happened to be complaining about higher education experiences as things tend to do from time to time. But and really wanting to teach and always wanting to come back to New York. And Marshall mentioned that David, the president of the school, was looking for somebody to pitch a grad degree in story time. And I was like, oh my god, that would be amazing. Because people have these dreams and fantasies of being rich and never doing anything or traveling the world or going to the moon. And my dream is to start a grad program and do that and make a difference. So with my sick little dream, I was like, OK, what's the craziest thing that I would go back to school for? What is something that would really matter? Because everything out there pretty much exists. But the one thing that I realized never existed was what I said before about writing. What about creative writing and visual expression collectively? Because anything I do, I'm writing in my head. I'm making notes. I'm doing research. I do everything except write a full-on script. And I have for years. And even too, with my illustration and talking to peers, we basically shoot direct, stage set, art direct, like these illustrations in our heads and start to piece these things together. And then that's what becomes a editorial or advertising thing. And then when I kind of bit the bullet and took a chance at comics, that's what I was doing in my head. I was visualizing these scripts and these scenes and getting into these characters, much like I would imagine an actor actually would approaching a script for a film or a theater. So the idea of equally combining creative writing and visual art kind of became the impetus for what this is. And that became the goal, a taste of everything from both sides, regardless of medium. Because there are a lot of people out there that want original content, want to make original content, and have stories to tell. I mean, we are storytelling animals to quote a great book. And the idea that a degree doesn't exist out there that did that, or at least that I could find, outside of trying to have a dual degree somewhere, seemed like a great opportunity to put the two together. And it was something that I and current faculty and other people are kind of experiencing is that we're not necessarily being asked right now in kind of the contemporary professional applied and commercial arts to just illustrate something, to just bring an image or an installation or a sculpture or a movie to visualize text. We're being asked to go beyond that. And also too, in multiple media's and formats. So the opportunity for an MFA that would apply to working professionals and students alike, and utilizing the best of on-campus as well as online technology and learning platforms digitally, and kind of the future of storytelling, all that kind of wrapped into developing this curriculum. And I think some of what you're talking about, that marriage of literacy and visual storytelling, is what keeps me connected to this format. Because as I said, all this time I've been working in prose, but really, when I wanted to make a foray into fiction, I realized I saw the story in my head as I was thinking about it. And I really wanted to see-- I mean, ideally, I would love to be able to drop myself. That would be my dream that I could actually be the whole creator. But I can't. And so-- but it doesn't mean that I'm not completely intrigued by the format of visual storytelling, because it's so powerful. It's powerful in a way that's different from any other kind of storytelling, I think. And for me, it's almost oddly enough, akin to oral storytelling, because in oral storytelling, you have somebody with you, and you're all together as a group, and you're experiencing it in a very visceral kind of way. And I think that visual storytelling has some of that potency for me. And it's just exciting to work in this format. Well, that's why. And I think that's the magic of it is I love reading fiction and novels and things without words, because in my mind, my experience of that is completely mental. I'm visualizing everything. At least on my end, I can't stop drawing it in my head, which is usually the litmus test for accepting projects, which I was easily doing on this once I started reading boots. So that experience of visualizing while reading, that's the magic and power of storytelling when it comes to sequential narrative. That's a thing that got me hooked on comics. I didn't grow up with it either. I grew up with Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield, and there wasn't much of a leap from that. But that was a great primer for what I would eventually get into in college. And I started realizing that that white space in between panels, that's what I wanted. I want that power of time and imagination. If I can get the viewer to imagine what happens in that in-between, animate and visualize these things, that's where I want to be. These are the things I want to do. And that is really visual writing. And now there's just so many interesting hybrids, which I think blew open with Hugo Cabaret. Because that was just like a brilliant marriage of text and images for me a whole new way. And a novel that I'm thinking about now I'm working about, I'm trying to figure out how can I incorporate visuals into this novel? It's not a graphic novel. But because I just think, you know what? That's an interesting way to go. Because that's the way your brain works. Or at least that's the way my brain works. My brain seems to jump between words and pictures all the time. And why not create something that you can read that does the same thing? Because that's kind of how you move through time and space. You're walking down the street. And sometimes you're seeing and hearing everything that's going on around you. And other times, you're kind of mulling over something in your head and you're actually hearing what you're thinking in your head. But meanwhile, the din is still around you. I think a graphic novel in a way is the same as we move through time and space. And I would like to just kind of keep experimenting with that format and see where else we can go with it. Beyond panels, even. I will leave you to it. Sheila Keenan, Nathan Fox. Thank you so much for coming on The Virtual Memory Show. Thank you. Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING] And that was Sheila Keenan and Nathan Fox. Like I said, Dogs of War reads like a good YA book to me. It's entertaining, educational, thoughtful, and has some really great action scenes. If you've got a young adult in your life, give dogs a war look. It's published by Scholastic's Graphics Imprint, and that's graphics with an X. You can find more about our guests at their sites, Sheila Keenan.com and foxnathan.com. That's S-H-E-I-L-A-K-E-N-A-N and F-O-X-N-A-T-H-A-N. And that's it for this week's virtual memory show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week with a conversation with Maya Stein, a self-described ninja poet, writing guide, and creative adventurous. Until then, do me a favor and go to our iTunes page and post a review of the show and hit up our website, chimeraabscura.com/vm, and make a donation to this ad-free podcast. And try and knock Fred Kleech off the top donor perch and help me cover my web hosting and travel and equipment costs while I figure out how to make a living at this new gig. And if you've got ideas for guests, drop me a line at Groth, G-R-O-T-H, at chimeraabscura.com, VMS pod on Twitter, or at our Facebook page, facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow. Until next time, I am Gil Roth, and you are awesome. Keep it that way. (upbeat music) ♪ 'Cause I'll take that picture of my whole world ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'm standing there ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'm standing there ♪ [BLANK_AUDIO]
