War of 1812 brought to life through comic-book family

It might well turn out — the muses being a playful lot — that the most poignant recreation of the War of 1812 this bicentennial year is found in a comic book.

To the astonishment of Upper Canada, it may also be that no community in the country is putting more oomph per capita into commemorating the war than the Alberta town of Canmore.

More surprisingly still, the creative brains behind the unlikely outbreak of 1812 war fever in Wild Rose Country are a Brit, a Scot and a Yank with almost no connection to the Ontario turf on which its battles raged.

Prepare to meet the comic-book Loxleys.

The Loxleys were a sprawling family moved north to the Niagara Peninsula from Pennsylvania. By 1812, four generations strong, they were as square-jawed a clan of Upper Canadian stalwarts as you’d want to encounter.

The saga of what America’s expansionist designs on the Canadas did to that family, and others like it, is told in The Loxleys and the War of 1812, a graphic novel to be published this month.

The publisher, Renegade Arts Entertainment, is a story in itself. So is Canmore’s impressive war effort. But first the book.

It’s a richly coloured hardcover more than three years in the making that will be released April 27. The historically accurate comic-strip story by Scottish writer Alan Grant runs 101 pages, followed by a 64-page summary of the war by Canadian historian Mark Zuehlke. Illustration is by Claude St. Aubin, colouring by Lovern Kindzierski, letters by Todd Klein.

Behind the project is editor Alexander Finbow, a 40-year-old creative dynamo from England and a founder of Renegade.

It’s only three years since Finbow immigrated to Canada with his family. After looking at settling in Vancouver or Calgary, he figured he might be able to make a go of the little entertainment arts firm in Canmore.

“There are so many high achievers from sports, the arts,” he said. “There’s a real mix of people here, which means that you can get a lot more done than I think you could in some small towns.”

Finbow and a group of colleagues had started Renegade a few years before he came to Canada. Like many good ideas, it first saw light of day in a pub — this one in Brighton, England.

A group working on a film there, talking shop over a few pints after work, found they shared a vision. They wanted to start a small creative company that would “bring stories to life” through comic books, audio-books, movies, animation and novels.

One of those sitting around the table was Grant, one of the most prolific writers in the comic-book industry. Grant, now 63, joined Renegade and Finbow turned to him about three years ago to pitch the idea of a graphic novel on the war that many historians say made Canada.

Charmingly, Finbow had only recently become aware of the war at the time — at least from a Canadian perspective.

He’d been killing time in a Banff shop while his wife, Karen, tried on clothes. He picked up a book on the War of 1812 and found it a terrific story.

“It’s something that we don’t learn about in England. I knew the War of 1812 from Napoleon and the European conflict. We learn a lot about that. You’d think somewhere it would have been mentioned that something was going on in North America.”

It turned out Grant knew even less than Finbow. While intrigued by the project, Finbow recalled, Grant was “terrified of trying to figure out how to do something with all the political, historical and military stuff in there.

“How do you do that without making it really boring? It’s very easy to turn those things into a history book, and you lose the sense of a story.”

Finbow suggested using a family as the medium through which to tell the story, and doing so through letters and journals. He researched Upper Canadian families, couldn’t settle on any one, so the Loxleys became “an amalgam of different stories from that area.”

Grant was fed the research and, a famously fast writer, had a first draft within two weeks.

Even after the book was done, Finbow was so taken with the history of the era that he wanted to find further ways to tell the story of 1812.

“I have this slightly irritating habit of wanting to do more with things,” he said. He knew that no matter how good a graphic novel was, some people would never look at it “because they’d grown up thinking comic books are for kids.”

As a result, Grant adapted the comic script into a prose novel. An animation is also in the works.

“What else could we do to get people involved in the history and to make it come alive?” Finbow wondered.

And it’s the fruits of that endless curiousity that really has Canmore buzzing.

As it happened, Finbow had led a workshop at his daughter’s school. He had the students improvise comic-book stories as an acting lesson. They loved it.

“It reminded me what a good way doing a school play is to bring history alive,” he said. “Not only for the kids who are doing it, but also for the community, the teachers, their parents.”

As it happened, Finbow knew Tab Murphy, a Hollywood screenwriter who lives in Canmore much of the year. Murphy adapted the comic-book story for the stage. And on May 10, the Grade 7 students of Lawrence Grassi Middle School of Canmore, Alta., mount their production of The Loxleys and the War of 1812.

“It’s created a lot of buzz and interest from people in the town,” Finbow said after running a rehearsal this week.

Teachers Sonja Howatt and Ronda Krasnodemski are leading the production and also overseeing a student-produced magazine on the war.

How pumped are the Canmore kids?

“They all changed their Facebook profiles to their characters from the Loxley family,” Howatt said. “I am so impressed with how engaged they are.

“And then you start to hear other people in the community saying, ‘Hey, I hear you’re doing a play for the War of 1812.’ Then it leads to a conversation. It’s really interesting.”

Howatt said she wanted to make more of the learning opportunity than just a play.

“I wanted there to be a little more rigour attached to it. So we have them creating a magazine where they have to write a special report like a National Geographic-style, and they have to do an article where they take on the perspective of someone from that time, and an editorial. So when they’re not rehearsing the play, they’re working on this magazine.

“I couldn’t have even planned for all the learning that’s been happening with these kids. It’s been incredible.”

Howatt said graphic novels are often an easier sell to modern students than traditional academic texts.

“The way our brain works is to respond to visuals and to respond to stories, so it just makes sense,” she explained. “For this next 21st{+-}century generation of learners, graphic novels are going to be a key piece in engaging these youths.”

By now, of course, Alexander Finbow knows the Battle of Tippecanoe as well as he does Trafalgar Square. He’s also been a quick study in the regional sensibilities of his adopted homeland.

To his knowledge, no school in Upper Canada is doing such a play. “I’m hoping some of the schools in Ontario will see what we’re doing here and say, ‘Okay, give us that script, we’ll do it better!’

“I’m kind of hoping we can spur off a little bit of East vs. West rivalry.”

That’s never been much of a problem in this country before.

In Toronto, The Loxleys and the War of 1812 will be on sale at Fort York. Comic book stores across the country can order it from Diamond Comic Distributors Inc. For more details, Renegade can be reached at contact@renegademail.com

Alan Grant lives in the Scottish village of Moniaive, in the region of Dumfries and Galloway. He’s in his 63rd year. And if that conjures images of tweeds, faithful old terriers and a taste for the novels of John Buchan and Muriel Spark, banish them.

Grant is a prolific writer of comic books and graphic novels, has worked at the top of the field for Marvel and DC Comics, written Batman, RoboCop, Judge Dredd, The Demon and other such thrillers and chillers.

Still, he was taken slightly aback when Alexander Finbow, a partner in Renegade Arts Entertainment, asked him to write a graphic novel to commemorate the bicentennial this year of the War of 1812.

The Loxleys and the War of 1812, written by Alan Grant, will be published later this month.

Q: Were you a reader of comics as a boy?

A: I was a fan from childhood. My grandmother taught me to read and write — before I went to school — using British humour comics as her teaching aids.

Q: How did you get into the business of writing comics?

A: I started my career writing romantic fiction for female teenagers in the U.K., years before I ever wrote a comic story. But as soon as I’d written my first comic — which was Tarzan and the Sabre-toothed Tiger — I knew where I wanted to make my future. There’s just something about the blend of words and pictures which adds up to much more than the individual parts.

Q: What was different about the War of 1812 project?

A: Research of this type was a first for me, because I primarily write science fiction, superheroes and fantasy . . . and you just make up whatever you need to for them. In most of my work, imagination was always more important than historical accuracy.

Q: Did you know much about the War of 1812 before writing the Loxleys?

A: I knew absolutely nothing about the War of 1812 prior to Alexander asking me to become involved. I didn’t even know that the song “The Battle of New Orleans” — which was a big hit in the U.K. for Lonnie Donegan, the so-called King of Skiffle, when I was a kid — was about the 1812 war.

Q: So how did you bone up on the subject?

A: Alexander sent me several erudite books on the war to read through before I started writing. I became fascinated by the 1812 story and took the research very seriously. I wanted to get everything spot-on and not offend anyone who knew the history behind it.

Q: What are the particular challenges in writing a graphic novel that might not occur to the layman or prose writer?

A: Writing a comic or graphic novel is perhaps closer to screenwriting than it is to writing prose. Basically, you have to imagine the story as a movie, and “freeze frame” those moments which seem most important. I’ve been writing comics for more than 30 years now and have — I hope! — acquired a feel for the genre, so that I can recognize what’s important and what can be let go.

Q: You’ve also adapted the comics version to a prose novel. Which form is more gratifying?

A: I have a fair amount of experience in this field, having written several anthologies of short stories for U.K. publishers, as well as adapting some of the Batman movies into novel form. I’ve also written several original novels based on characters like Batman, Robin and Superman, as well as original novel spinoffs from the Smallville TV series.

For me, comics will always be more gratifying than prose writing. Because reading comics utilizes both hemispheres of the brain — left hemisphere for the words, right hemisphere for the pictures.

I think it’s a superior art form to books, which use mainly the left hemisphere, and TV/movies, which use mainly the right hemisphere.

At least, that’s what I tell the students I lecture to.

Q: Finally, have you been to Canada?

A: Several times, holidaying in Vancouver and Slave Lake, as well as camping in the Rockies a couple of hours’ drive from Jasper — where the mosquitoes were the fiercest I’ve ever encountered. I also visited Toronto a couple of times. A beautiful city.

“I’m kind of hoping we can spur off a little bit of East vs. West rivalry.”

That’s never been much of a problem in this country before.

In Toronto, The Loxleys and the War of 1812 will be on sale at Fort York. Comic book stores across the country can order it from Diamond Comic Distributors Inc. For more details, Renegade can be reached at contact@renegademail.com

Alan Grant lives in the Scottish village of Moniaive, in the region of Dumfries and Galloway. He’s in his 63rd year. And if that conjures images of tweeds, faithful old terriers and a taste for the novels of John Buchan and Muriel Spark, banish them.

Grant is a prolific writer of comic books and graphic novels, has worked at the top of the field for Marvel and DC Comics, written Batman, RoboCop, Judge Dredd, The Demon and other such thrillers and chillers.

Still, he was taken slightly aback when Alexander Finbow, a partner in Renegade Arts Entertainment, asked him to write a graphic novel to commemorate the bicentennial this year of the War of 1812.

The Loxleys and the War of 1812, written by Alan Grant, will be published later this month.

Q: Were you a reader of comics as a boy?

A: I was a fan from childhood. My grandmother taught me to read and write — before I went to school — using British humour comics as her teaching aids.

Q: How did you get into the business of writing comics?

A: I started my career writing romantic fiction for female teenagers in the U.K., years before I ever wrote a comic story. But as soon as I’d written my first comic — which was Tarzan and the Sabre-toothed Tiger — I knew where I wanted to make my future. There’s just something about the blend of words and pictures which adds up to much more than the individual parts.

Q: What was different about the War of 1812 project?

A: Research of this type was a first for me, because I primarily write science fiction, superheroes and fantasy . . . and you just make up whatever you need to for them. In most of my work, imagination was always more important than historical accuracy.

Q: Did you know much about the War of 1812 before writing the Loxleys?

A: I knew absolutely nothing about the War of 1812 prior to Alexander asking me to become involved. I didn’t even know that the song “The Battle of New Orleans” — which was a big hit in the U.K. for Lonnie Donegan, the so-called King of Skiffle, when I was a kid — was about the 1812 war.

Q: So how did you bone up on the subject?

A: Alexander sent me several erudite books on the war to read through before I started writing. I became fascinated by the 1812 story and took the research very seriously. I wanted to get everything spot-on and not offend anyone who knew the history behind it.

Q: What are the particular challenges in writing a graphic novel that might not occur to the layman or prose writer?

A: Writing a comic or graphic novel is perhaps closer to screenwriting than it is to writing prose. Basically, you have to imagine the story as a movie, and “freeze frame” those moments which seem most important. I’ve been writing comics for more than 30 years now and have — I hope! — acquired a feel for the genre, so that I can recognize what’s important and what can be let go.

Q: You’ve also adapted the comics version to a prose novel. Which form is more gratifying?

A: I have a fair amount of experience in this field, having written several anthologies of short stories for U.K. publishers, as well as adapting some of the Batman movies into novel form. I’ve also written several original novels based on characters like Batman, Robin and Superman, as well as original novel spinoffs from the Smallville TV series.

For me, comics will always be more gratifying than prose writing. Because reading comics utilizes both hemispheres of the brain — left hemisphere for the words, right hemisphere for the pictures.

I think it’s a superior art form to books, which use mainly the left hemisphere, and TV/movies, which use mainly the right hemisphere.

At least, that’s what I tell the students I lecture to.

Q: Finally, have you been to Canada?

A: Several times, holidaying in Vancouver and Slave Lake, as well as camping in the Rockies a couple of hours’ drive from Jasper — where the mosquitoes were the fiercest I’ve ever encountered. I also visited Toronto a couple of times. A beautiful city.