“Into the Dust” provides me with an opportunity to respond to themes that initially inspired me to create comics. Put simply, characters and stories that have survived because they were allowed to evolve with the times attract me. Certainly, I am not the first person to find travel fascinating or to view life as a journey of self-realization. Historic classics, such as Homer’s Odyssey and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, remain viable because they allow their readers to vicariously experience situations that they would not have in real life. In particular, American audiences have continually sought out stories in literature, film,and television that serve not only as a way to escape ordinary life, but to vicariously experience and learn from the actions of fictional characters. Created in very different times and contexts, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (and John Ford’s excellent film adaptation ), Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, and even the classic 1960s television series Route 66 attest to the popularity of such stories. Owing to the increasing prevalence of the automobile, twentieth-century stories often are presented in the guise of road trips.
L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, is one of the most popular of these stories. Baum wrote a whole series of novels about the adventures of outsiders—people from the real world—in the mythical setting of Oz. Because his characters were archetypal, Baum gave his readers the opportunity to identify more fully with his characters and what motivated them. The original novel inspired several films, the most famous, of course, being the 1939 version. It was updated in the 1970s in the hit show, and later film, The Wiz. Even Marvel Comics produced
a memorable version of the story in oversized comic format around that time. I wonder if Baum ever knew how resonant and enduring his story was to his readers. Baum, noticing that popular fairy tales were so old that they were classified by librarians as historical literature, set about to create a modern fairy tale, one that updated themes explored by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson in order to breathe new life into the genre.
Updating traditional themes and subjects to breathe new life into them and presenting them in different media also attract me. One does not have to look too far to see this is a contemporary phenomenon. Although films have long been adapted from novels and plays, even the films themselves may be updated. Peter Jackson’s recent film, King Kong, comes to mind. Despite the obvious advances in technology and budget, the essence of the original film, and Edgar Wallace’s original story for that matter, remains intact. I am even more intrigued by the tendency in recent literature, film, and art to use an already existent story, character, or image as a starting point, as a vehicle to deconstruct and reinterpret its essence. This phenomenon has led to some unforgettable achievements in comics as well. By rethinking what attracted them to their sources to begin with, these creators turn something old and established into something new and personal. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Will Eisner’s Fagin the Jew brilliantly exemplify this trend.
The inspiration for “Into the Dust” was The Wizard of Oz, but I use it primarily as a starting point. The original story’s format is altered to become a time travel tale. Swept away by a twister during the darkest days of the Great Depression, my protagonist travels from the 1930s to the 1960s, two of the most turbulent decades in American history. One concept I borrowed from the 1939 film is the shift from monochrome to color once worlds shift. My yellow brick road is Route 66, the same route the Joads took in Grapes of Wrath. Because of the tragic occurrences of my own time—the war in Iraq and the unstable American economy
come to mind—I think my story and my plans for how it will unfold in subsequent chapters will communicate effectively to my readers. In addition, the process of creating and publishing “Into the Dust” is a journey of self- discovery, allowing me to grow as an artist and a storyteller.