Interviews Editor, Andrew Irvin, welcomes Theo Downes-Le Guin and artist Fred Fordham to discuss their efforts envisioning Ursula K. Le Guin's classic novel, A Wizard of Earthsea, in graphic novel format (available March 11th in publication through Harper Collins).
COMIC BOOK YETI: Theo and Fred, it is a rare opportunity to cover such a broadly beloved high fantasy masterwork that has inspired more than half a century of readers and writers. Thank you for stepping into the Yeti Cave today. How are things in your respective locales of Portland and London?
THEO DOWNES-LE GUIN: Thanks for having us. I woke up to rain coming horizontally into my window. Spring feels far away but it’s not.
FRED FORDHAM: Thanks for talking to us. All good here. London much the same as Portland by the sounds of it.
CBY: I hope you've battened down the hatches, Theo, and you're both staying dry in damp places. When I learned of the opportunity to cover A Wizard of Earthsea in its new graphic novel iteration, it prompted me to immediately read in preparation the copy of The Wind’s Twelve Quarters I’d picked up a few months back. As I’m working on my own sci-fi short story collection for my PhD., I figured the opportunity to digest the insights offered in the supplementary commentary across a decade of development in the form. While this isn’t the first adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s work, it is the first in comic form. With Fred equipped to adeptly handle literary adaptation, given all the stories available from her body of publications, including the novels of the Ekumen and standalone works of various lengths, what led to the decision to start with this story to explore the medium?
FF: Theo actually first got in touch about the possibility of adapting The Dispossessed. The issue as I recall was that it just felt too big a practical undertaking, likely taking many years, and we’d have struggled to get sufficient funding. Same went for The Left Hand of Darkness, which we also agreed could make a spectacular graphic novel. One factor to consider with adapting sci-fi and fantasy into a visual medium is the separate task of designing a convincing world. I only really realised how long this part of the process can take after Brave New World. Apparently, A Wizard of Earthsea had the perfect formula of being a wonderful story that was also relatively short, and sufficiently well-known as to be more appealing to publishers. But Earthsea has had a complicated relationship with adaptation in the past, and we weren’t initially sure about trifling with it. After much discussion we decided it really would be interesting to try to visualise the world as described, provided we stuck to the guiding principle that this wouldn’t be an attempt to reimagine or reinterpret Le Guin’s world or tone or themes.
TDL: Fred’s memories align with mine. Initially I was interested in adapting The Dispossessed because I felt that book is really useful at this moment in capitalism and nationalism, but it can be daunting for some readers. I was looking for new ways to get the book’s ideas out into the world. But as Fred says, the practical challenges to designing that visual world, and my crash course in how expensive and risky graphic novels can be for publishers, made A Wizard of Earthea a more appropriate place to start. Fortunately Wizard also includes a lot of useful ideas for our moment. And I haven’t let go of The Dispossessed as a potential graphic novel adaptation.
CBY: I am very glad to hear we may yet have an illustrated rendition forthcoming! Always in the interest of giving credit where it is due, named in the acknowledgements are the title’s editors, Chris Krones and Mary Wilcox. Can you share a bit about their contributions, and the roles of the others mentioned; Jenny Savill, Ginger Clark, Camille Johnston, and Ros Asquith? How have the efforts of others led to the realization of A Wizard of Earthsea in its graphic novel form?
FF: Mary Wilcox oversaw the script and storyboard stages of the project, and Chris Krones oversaw the production of the final art and edits. They were both great and happy to let us pursue a faithful adaptation. Ginger Clark is the agent for the Le Guin estate, and Jenny Savill is my agent. They’re both the sort of level-headed people you want around when trying to adapt a beloved classic without falling on your face. They helped get the practicalities moving and kept it on the rails. Camille is my partner and a great editor who offered several crucial insights - including the suggestion that I abandon a conventional line-art drawing style in favour of an entirely painterly look. Ros Asquith’s my mum, who also gave useful feedback.
TDL: I consulted periodically with my sisters, Caroline and Elisabeth, my dad Charles, my wife Nancy, our oldest kid India, and with my colleagues Molly Templeton and Stuart Perkins, mostly over matters of how to represent specific characters. Fred and I had a pretty intense and tight collaboration from the outset. The die was pretty well cast by the time I started soliciting feedback from others. So if you don’t like the result, you have only us to blame.
CBY: No blame merited, and Camille certainly didn't steer you wrong, Fred. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like a watercolor (and possibly gouache) was used on a cold press paper, based upon the strokes and textures shown in the panels. I see from your website you’ve taken a variety of approaches to your illustration and painting, so I presume this style was not a foregone conclusion. Can you both share some insight into how you decided upon the specific techniques or general aesthetic approach for the finished graphic novel?
TDL: Almost everyone I showed early drafts to thought that Fred was working entirely on paper, which I took as a really good sign. There is nothing digital feeling about this book to me, which was my goal, though it would be close to impossible to pull this project off without working digitally.
FF: Yep, it’s digital. There are real watercolour and paper textures mixed in but the actual drawing/painting is almost all done on a tablet. I’ve developed a pretty elaborate process using various software (no AI), scanned washes and textures, and unusual digital brushes to make something that looks, I think, convincingly of the physical world. I like texture and roughness and liquid in drawings and paintings. And anything that looked plastic-y or vector-y just seemed to clash with this project. Le Guin made clear in her notes that she wanted Earthsea to feel like a real place. I burned quite a bit of fuel early on drawing pages in the conventional “draw lines, colour them in” way but it didn’t look quite right. Then, as I say, my partner Camille suggested I just scrap the lines entirely. This felt like a bit of a breakthrough moment for this project.
TDL: I remember the call when Fred told me he was removing all the contour lines. It was a great a-ha moment, creating a painterly feel that we had been chasing. So thank you, Camille.
CBY: You had me fully convinced, so I'd deem the approach a resounding success. Theo, you mentioned your concerns around the adaptation included adhering to the text, avoiding misrepresentation encountered in previous adaptations, and maintaining room for readers’ interpretations. Noting efforts of Charles Vess and David Lupton towards satisfactorily illustrating Le Guin’s work as envisioned in her mind’s eye, this Gizmodo article mentioned various adaptation efforts underway (back in 2018), so I thought I’d follow up - what ongoing adaptations can we expect, what lessons have you learned from this project together. and what differs between an adaptation led by those wishing to secure rights, and those instigated by your initial efforts such as A Wizard of Earthsea?
TDL: Producer Jennifer Fox is working with A24 on an Earthsea series for television, which Ursula approved in 2017. The environment in which we are working now is very different from when we started. Studios and networks are much more interested in genre, but Earthsea is not Game of Thrones. I’m confident there is a place for the series, but it takes time. By contrast, Fred and I collaborated actively for about three years to get this book done. The large group collaborations that television or film require are fascinating and thrilling and I, like Ursula, am drawn to them, perhaps like a moth to the flame. But there is something really satisfying about thinking up a project, finding your dream collaborator, and seeing the end result in people’s hands in four years.
FF: As far as lessons learned: 1. Designing a world and set of cultures takes much longer than I'd thought - or rather, failed to think. 2. Different styles of storytelling may require - or at least benefit from - different styles of artwork. This second lesson remains a bit vague but I do know that Le Guin's heavy emphasis on narration over dialogue (in Earthsea), the unusual pacing where entire journeys can take place in a paragraph and fleeting moments can take place over pages: these things I just couldn’t quite make work sequentially using line-and-colour illustrations.
CBY: In terms of subject matter on the page, there are a multitude of beautiful seascapes featured throughout this graphic novel; turbulent and placid, in turn, with a silent power permeating each page. Having spent a lot of time since moving to the islands looking across the water at seas and ships of all sorts, and getting acquainted with Herb Kāne’s paintings of Pacific voyaging traditions, I’m curious about your respective relationships with the ocean. The environment is a huge component of A Wizard of Earthsea - how did you both discuss capturing the emphasis on the sea throughout the story?
FF: I don’t think we discussed this. I do love the sea but not to any more profound or insightful extent than finding it beautiful and mysterious. I used to have a job which occasionally involved recreating old maritime paintings in oils so I got quite into that sub-genre for a while. I’m sure the influence stayed with me.
TDL: I don’t think we needed to discuss it. You can’t adapt Earthsea with any degree of fidelity if you don’t know how to capture the feeling of being in an archipelago, or being on deep water, or how weather behaves at sea. Fred just kind of did all of that, and I praised it, and it worked out great.
CBY: Implicitly delivered upon - it was a delight to see. More broadly in my work, I have been appraising the responsibility involved in instrumental fiction; stories intended to inspire change and motivate action. One quote within A Wizard of Earthsea speaks to the core of this impulse towards accountability, “And the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower. Until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do…” (p119). The interrelationship of knowledge, power, and responsibility becomes an imperative in this framing. Theo, to this end, I know you and your family run the Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation. What can you both share regarding your philosophy around artistic accountability, and efforts to create greater change through your creative pursuits?
TDL: I’m not sure I spend that much time thinking about artistic accountability, because I find artists to be among the most accountable people I know, if by accountability we mean moving through the world ethically, exercising whatever privilege or power we may have in ways that increase hope and understanding, and diminish harm for others. It’s people who work in other domains, especially at the intense nexuses of capital and political power, who I worry about in terms of accountability. They really need artists’ help. So a lot of my philosophy is to just create space for artists to be heard by non-artists, with as little interference as possible and with some form of practical sustenance. I think it was art dealer Ileana Sonnabend who said, whenever someone complimented one of her shows, “I just provide the walls.” When I owned a gallery, I used that line all the time. That is still how I see my role.
FF: I’m not sure I’m intelligent enough to do this question justice. I do love that quote though, it’s one of my favourites from the novel. Possibly in lieu of a useful answer, I would say that I don’t spend a great deal of time thinking about my philosophy of art. I appreciate the craft of storytelling, and drawing, and pacing. And, to the extent that it’s possible to quantify, I appreciate the craft of creating emotion. I am separately interested in philosophy and ethics and thematic narrative but I don’t actually have firm feelings about their broad relationship with art.
CBY: There is another quote that brings to mind the broader scope of Ursula K. Le Guin’s coining of the term, psychomyth; “All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree ’s root: They all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name” (p241). There is an open-ended agnostic eternalism achieved in operating outside of fantasy or sci-fi genre conventions, a nod to the application of Eriksonian psychohistory to fictitious scenarios, and it seems to readily evoke Jungian approaches to narrative deconstruction. That’s my lightly informed appraisal, so from both of your distinct perspectives, what sets her work apart from other writers, and what gives it such cross–cultural resonance?
TDL: She was a poet first and prose writer second. So she writes prose like a poet. You cannot separate the power of her language from the power of her ideas.
FF: Another beautiful quote. I think your "lightly informed appraisal" is a sight weightier than mine. Le Guin’s writing feels to me like it comes from a place of eternal skeptical curiosity. It’s full of striking imagery, thought-provoking premises and complex worlds, and profound thought experiments. She can articulate the numinous like a poet, the practical like a philosopher, and still tell a story like you’re sitting across a campfire.
CBY: Her words carry a timeless gravity, I would agree. Though in bringing things back to our present situation, this graphic novel is being released through HarperCollins Children’s Books. Given other titles recently in print through the Folio Society, Simon & Schuster, and other publishers, or imprints of HarperCollins such as Clarion Books, what went into putting together the publishing arrangements for this new graphic novel edition?
FF: I don’t know, I’m afraid. I’ll leave that to Theo.
TDL: HarperCollins is our “home” publisher for the first three books of Earthsea, so they were the natural place to go when we started this project. They’ve been very supportive partners, and the production quality of the book is excellent, which is so important when the artwork is so intricate.
CBY: On the note of children’s publishing, I didn’t realize until reading through all the material for this interview the extent of Ursula K. Le Guin’s work on illustrated children’s books, such as the Catwings series illustrated by S.D. Schindler and a variety of standalone titles. These illustrated children’s books were part of her effort from the 1970’s onward, so Theo, how did seeing her collaborative process with the various illustrators inform your approach with Fred? I’d also like to hear from both of you; which of her previously released titles holds the fondest place in your heart?
TDL: My mother’s basic approach to collaboration was to do as much as she could to ensure a sound choice of collaborator in the first place, then let the collaborator have complete freedom. Of course, if an illustrator asked her what was in her mind’s eye for a specific scene or character, she would tell them, and in detail. Her email exchanges with Charles Vess of the illustrated Earthsea get down to construction materials for buildings. But Charles wanted that, and loved it, and Ursula was very happy to give it. I’m sure I did this with Fred at a few points, but I do remember a moment when he told me to stop worrying about whether an outdoor forge made sense. Ursula understood that you can’t do first rate work as an artist if you are being treated as an order-taker.
As for favorite kid’s books, you really can’t beat Catwings for improbable charm, but I really love Tom Mouse, which is out of print. In a quiet and simple way, it holds a lot of my mother’s beliefs.
FF: To my shame I haven’t read those illustrated kid’s books. As for my favourite Le Guin title I have to say that, apart from the poetic prose Theo mentioned, they all do quite different things which makes it difficult to pick. I find myself recommending The Lathe of Heaven to people a lot. I loved The Word for World is Forest. And the longer Hainish novels were a bit of a revelation to me, having never really read much serious science fiction before... Total cop-out of an answer, apologies!
CBY: No apologies needed, as those responses give our readers even more to explore! We always provide creators who visit the Yeti Cave with an opportunity to make note of other, unrelated work that has been of inspiration lately. What have each of you been reading, watching, and listening to that our readers should check out once they give A Wizard of Earthsea their attention?
TDL: I’m going to dodge that a bit by saying that readers should check out the shortlists and prize recipients for the Ursula K Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which is now entering its fourth year. The mission of that program is oriented to the kinds of writers and fiction that my mother always tried to lift up. And yes, I read them too.
FF: I’ve been a bit in awe of Benjamin Flao for the last couple of years. I’m not sure how many of his books are available in English, but they’re worth looking at for anyone who appreciates this medium. I recently re-read Glynn Dillon’s graphic novel The Nao of Brown and wish he would do more comics. I’ve learned a lot from Daisuke Igarashi’s manga lately too.
CBY: Theo and Fred, thank you both for joining us today. I appreciate this unique opportunity to discuss the first graphic novel adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s library, and I hope we see more renditions of this calibre from her body of work going forward. If I missed any relevant portfolio, publication, or social media links, please feel free to share anything else our readers should give a look!
TDL: It was fun, thank you. I hope we see more renditions of this calibre, too. The only way that will happen is if this book does well in the marketplace. Graphic novels are costly and risky for publishers. So fingers crossed.
The website ursulakleguin.com is our hub for news and happenings. We are on the socials too, but these days I’m feeling more enthusiastic about finding ways to communicate outside of algorithmic control, like good old-fashioned websites and email newsletters.
FF: Thank you. I’m still completely absent from social media but do check out the website for Ursula K. Le Guin.
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