I was absolutely blown away after reading the first two issues of Peter Taylor's "Wren". A historic based fantasy story set during the Black Plague and burning of London in the late 1600s. I took some time to chat to Peter about what it took to bring this book to life.
What made you decide to start writing comic books?
I actually wrote twelve pages of what became Wren issue one over thirty years ago (only the first three pages survived to the final version), but ‘life’ intervened, albeit in very positive ways, and I wasn’t able to make the time to progress it further. When my kids grew up, I thought about starting over but I was neck deep in my IT career and any spare time I was playing hockey and just enjoying my wife’s company (something you miss while bringing up 3 kids). But when the pandemic presented the opportunity (I was working from home and we couldn’t see our grandkids) the idea of writing ‘something’ sprang back to my mind … and given the story of Wren is essentially about a pandemic, I ‘took the hint’ and set in to write.
Initially the book was never intended to be published, but was simply a way to pass time and see IF I could actually create an entire 22 page book. But once I’d drafted the story and the B&W pages, I showed it to a few people and the idea of producing a ‘real’ book looked interesting – so I went online (I didn’t even have a FB account), found a colorist and some people who would give me a few pointers, then I found Kickstarter – and thought. I think I can do this!
This story is based off historic events, was it difficult for you to adapt it in to a comic book story?
The characters for the most part ‘exist’ and are fairly well documented … in very easy to access formats. Wikipedia is great for dates and places, Samuel Pepys diary (which I was made to read at school a million years ago) is full of fun/rich detail and basic ‘googling’ can take you quickly to sites written by far more knowledgable people than I. All I tried to do was make the characters act as I thought they might within that setting. The plot of Wren takes a ‘fantasy’ turn at the end of issue four (if I’m brave enough to go there) and from that point we’re in ‘uncharted territory’ story wise – which I think could be really fun.
Who is your biggest influence when it comes to comic books?
At my core I have just a few favourite characters .. Batman (although there's way too much to digest, so I tend to buy occasional classic graphic novels), Judge Dredd (I love picking up an occasional copy of 2000AD). But these days I buy quite a lot of indie books too and am spending a lot of time (and money!) supporting projects on Kickstarter. My real heroes though are artists (I consider myself an artist who writes, rather than a writer who draws) … ‘thoughtful’ artists like Frank Quitely, Brian Froud and Bernie Wrightson , all the way through to larger than life creators like Ian Gibson and Simon Bisley. When I draw a page, I imagine showing one those guys and if I can hear them saying ‘hmmmm… that’s OK’ … that’s a REALLY good day!
You've participated in two kickstarters, have the books performed as well as you expected?
Ouch! Tough question…given I’d never heard of Kickstarter before Christmas 2020, I had no expectations of the first issue and was VERY proud and humbled by the response to it. Over 70 backers – incredible. However since February I’ve worked hard on ’building an audience’ for issue two and I honestly hoped to reach 100-150 backers!…that absolutely DID NOT happen (the audience actually shrunk a bit) and as the campaign only finished a week or so ago, it's still pretty raw!
It is important to remember that Kickstarter doesn’t provide you an audience, just a platform. So I completely appreciated the need to build the audience prior to the second release – and I worked hard at it…so right now I don’t know what went wrong…are my emails and newsletter nestling in ‘junk folders’, did I just launch when the world was on summer holidays, or do people not really like the book? I’m girding myself to find out why – and as uncomfortable as the exercise is – I’ve got to go through it if I’m to progress. But I’m tenacious…and patient…I waited 30 years to finish my first book, I guess I can wait a little longer for my ‘overnight success’.
If there were something you could do differently throughout this process what would it be?
I made a pact with myself many years ago to never regret my decisions (I always think that given the same information I would have done the same thing anyway.. so where’s the value in regret). That said, I’m very much still learning. I’ve recently engaged an ‘editor’, which I’ve been told I should have done from the off…and if it improves issues three & four, then THAT can be the decision I wish I’d made earlier!
What research did you do before undertaking this project?
My ‘research’ is honestly pretty light, Wikipedia for dates and places, and some googling for interesting articles about characters and personalities (I’ve also spent quite a lot of time going through minutes of the meetings of the Royal Society, but I’m not sure how much of that made the book). For me its just adapting the story in my head to the characters I have.
Did the impact of COVID-19 effect this project in anyway?
Absolutely…firstly it presented the opportunity (working from home etc) to try and produce a book in the first place, but secondly; as the story is set during a pandemic, rather than just rying to think ‘how would that work?’, you really just have to open the window or turn on the TV to see how the world behaves in such situations.
Being very frank my mood has been fairly dark during the pandemic, and in some ways its been nice to have the positive experience of ‘creating a thing’ to divert and lift me from my particularly gloomy days!
If you could collaborate with any other artist (dead or alive) in the mainstream or indie industry, who would it be?
Terry Nation (the guy who invented Dr Who’s Daleks), he wrote a few kids books and they are brilliant (I recently found a copy of ‘Rebecca’s world’ that I remember from my childhood and can’t wait to read it to my granddaughter). Also Eric Thompson (Actor Emma Thompsons Dad), who wrote the Dougal / Magic Roundabout books my mum read me when I was a kid. To this day these are hands down the funniest books I’ve ever read … they cracked me up, they cracked up my kids and now my grandkids love them too. Sounds crazy, but those two writers could have made AMAZING comics!
Do you think audiences will resonate with this book more due to the current pandemic?
I really hope so! But then again, I’m not really offering a ‘feel good’ take on a pandemic, nor am I suggesting the solutions they had ‘mirror’ ours – but if anything I hope that the backdrop of the plague falls away a bit as new parts of the story emerge – and that’s kind of my hope for our own situation too.
What does the future hold for you as an artist?
I’d like to continue writing and drawing – but it is hard work. Now I’ve met my initial goal (of proving to myself I can write a 22 page book), I’m starting to consider new goals – and many of them (like a 200 backer Kickstarter for example) do involve creating / finding a bigger audience (if not for Wren then for my next project, whatever that might be) and that’s so much harder (and much more time consuming) than writing / drawing. So yes I’ll keep drawing / writing but if no ones ‘buying what I’m selling’ that’s OK, I can be satisfied with what I’ve achieved – and I’ll go back to reading comics rather than writing them, whilst nodding sagely to myself “I think I know how they do that!”
It was great chatting to Peter, wishing him all the best with issues three and four.
Don't forget you can head over to www.pottyville.co.uk to grab your copy of issue number one.
Looking forward to seeing where this story goes.
If you would like to have your book reviewed please drop an email to stewjones22@gmail.com
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