Under the Surface with Dave Lapp

It was a wild and wonderful weekend at TCAF, and debuting Dave Lapp’s latest graphic memoir, The Field, was definitely a highlight.

The Field, which has already received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, unpacks a long, hazy 1970s summer from Dave’s childhood, when developers began digging up a field on the edges of his small town.

Throughout the summer, while the town’s adults remain focused on their fractured marriages and neighbourly resentments, the children are allowed to run wild in the field, collecting caterpillars and tadpoles, catching field mice (which they smuggle home), and nursing a curious fascination with Dave’s mother’s matches and their potential for disaster.

As the summer meanders on, Edward brings a new friend into the circle. But Jack’s got a mean streak strong enough to flip Dave’s world–and his place in it—upside down.

Find out more in this Q&A with Dave Lapp.

6 QUESTIONS WITH DAVE LAPP

1. The Field seems like it takes place in the 1970s, when children were more free to roam, and before the empty lots were developed. Yet it also seems timeless and could be any North American suburban environment. Did you intend for the time and place to be universal or is it more specific?

I intentionally tried to make the book universal. The idea that my experiences are comparable to other people who grew up at that time, and enjoyed that kind of freedom, felt right to me.

2. This will be your fourth book with Conundrum. It is a much more ambitious book. How does it compare to your previous books? How long did it take to create?

Not to denigrate my other books, but this is my first real graphic novel. By that I mean I planned the whole thing from start to finish. My other books were collections of work that came out bit by bit. The Field is a fully formed work that is coming out as a whole. The book took me a very long time to do. I started it in the summer of 2006. At that time, I believed it was the only book I would do. Then Conundrum happened and very happily I did three books! But, because of those obligations and my mom dying of cancer, I had to keep putting The Field aside. So instead of taking about 10 years as I had hoped, it took me much longer.

3. You live in Toronto, home to a thriving comics scene. Are you involved in the comics community in the city?

My direct involvement is teaching cartooning to kids at the Art Gallery of Ontario every week. That is an incredibly inspiring and thriving environment and I am happy to say my 4 classes are usually full. I’ve also being doing Comic Jams for the last 20 years or so. At first at the Toronto Comic Jam where there can be up to 20 people and now with a smaller group.

4. Are there any specific influences for The Field?

Easily Chester Brown’s I Never Liked You. A great book, but I would’ve loved 300 pages of CB’s childhood stories.

5. Would you call The Field autobiography? You were surely a child of the 1970s since we are the same age. But also the character is called David Lapp. Hard not to make comparisons.

The Field is autobiography. I used to tell these stories to kids in my classes and I was always surprised how interesting they found them. At a certain point I thought “Let me see how many I can come up with when I list what I can remember.” There were so, so many and after writing them all down I realized there were enough for a graphic novel. Leaving my name, and some family members’ names the same made it easier to maintain the energy to finish such a big book. When I had doubts about ever finishing The Field, I could always find inspiration in the source material. I would reflect upon how fortunate I was to have had all these experiences, and be able to write and draw them, let alone remember them.

6. The pace of the story is very deliberate but the reader is always on the edge of their seat. Will the gun go off? Will the woods burn down? So, tension is created even though it is slow. This is masterful cartooning. How did you achieve this?

After writing and sketching out everything as thumbnails I had a 300-page book with 4 panels per page. My original plan was a simpler book that would be easier to do. Once I started the editing process, I realized the only way to tell the stories properly was to do them the long way. I abandoned the 4-panel grid and decided that the stories would be as long as they needed to be and to approach everything as though I had all the time in the world.

Once I released myself from any real deadline or specific format, I was able to pace and compose everything based mostly on what felt right. This often meant revising pages into formats which were much harder to draw. An easy example is any page with 9 panels and multiple characters. Everything becomes so tiny, especially the hands, I found it quite difficult, but accepted my mental decision to do it that way. My back and wrist and shoulder did not agree.

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

Ready to dive in? Order The Field today!

Want to read another interview first? Read Dave Lapp’s Q&A with Publishers Weekly!