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Publishers Weekly: Turning Your Ideas into Graphic Novels
Sydney Padua, Keith Knight, Ron Wimberly, Derf Backderf and Calvin Reid
Award-winning artist and author Derf Backderf discusses his latest graphic novel: "Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio," September 7, 2023. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.
It's All in the Footnotes: Derf Backderf's Kent State
John Backderf, known as Derf, discovered a love for comic books as a child, while perusing the newsstand of his hometown corner drug store. He attended Ohio State University on a journalism scholarship where he served as a political cartoonist for The Lantern. After a brief stint as a political cartoonist at a Florida paper, Backderf solidified his career as a cartoonist when his comic The City debuted in The Cleveland Edition. The comic when on to have a 24-year run, gaining syndication in alt-weeklies all over the country, including the Village Voice.
As alt-weeklies began to dry up, Backderf moved on to penning graphic novels, creating Punk Rock & Trailer Parks (2009), My Friend Dahmer (2012), and Trashed (2016). Previous projects drew from his life experiences, from his childhood friendship with Jeffrey Dahmer to his stint as a garbage man.
Published in 2020, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio took Backderf into new territory, researching and illustrating a story outside his personal experience, but the story still had roots close to home for Backderf. In 1970, at age 10, Backderf encountered members of the Ohio National Guard, who were camped out in a field across from his elementary school in Richfield, protecting truck convoys during a labor strike. Within days the Guard would be called to Kent State.
Over the four years it took to research, write, and illustrate the book, Backderf absorbed as much information as he could about the events of May 4, making regular research trips to Kent, hunkering down at Scribbles Coffee with pen and paper, interviewing witnesses like Alan Canfora and Chris Butler, and perusing the May 4 Archive at Kent State University Library Special Collections.
This exhibition pairs Backderf's original illustrations with notes, artifacts, and sketches that reveal the power and process of his storytelling. All artwork and objects featured in these cases are on loan courtesy of Derf Backderf unless otherwise noted.
May 4 Visitors Center
By Derf Backderf
Black United Students' Oral Histories:
Follow Backderf's footnotes to Kent State University Libraries' oral histories project, which includes memories from Black students who were active in BUS. Many more oral histories from this project were used to add personal touches to the students' experiences depicted in Backderf's book, including witnesses and victims. Use the QR code to access their accounts of campus life in the late sixties and May 1-4, 1970.
Curtis "Jeter" Pittman, freshman in 1970, was warned by BUS leaders to stay away from demonstrations when the National Guard entered Kent. He understood a "common-sense perception" that law enforcement would react violently toward Black protestors. He also emphasizes how local issues - like children's education and poverty - were a more immediate concern than the Vietnam War.
omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/1637
E. Timothy Moore, undergraduate student in 1970, was intimately aware of potential law enforcement backlash against protests, having grown up in Cleveland during Civil Rights struggles and race riots. He saw SDS, the Weathermen, and BUS as "colleagues" in their revolutionary struggle.
omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/1650
Napoleon Peoples, graduate student and counselor, describes the National Guard's actions on campus the weekend leading up to May 4, including a tear gas canister entering the stairwell of his dormitory. After hearing "firecrackers" on May 4 (later revealed to be the sound of Guardsmen firing their weapons) he helped facilitate the mass exodus of students when the university closed after the shootings.
omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/4348
Kent State University Libraries Special Collections and Archives. Kent State Shootings: Oral Histories.
May 4 Visitors Center
By Derf Backderf
The Students
Backderf established a unique relationship with the May 4 community as he looked to many survivors for help in constructing details of the story. Personal details allowed readers to see Allison, Bill, Jeff, and Sandy as peopel and not just victims. in his Eisner award acceptance, Backderf stated, "Getting to 'know' them, through their friends and classmates, was a joy and an honor. Jeff, in particular, was always at my elbow. He was a young guy looking for his path in life and having a great time while doing so, much as I was at that age."
May 4 Visitors Center
by Backderf - see the full cartoon here: media.cleveland.com/pdq_impact/photo/derf-oct-15jpg-82a74...
By Chuck Ayers
Crankshaft Process
While Derf Backderf scans his inked artwork, completing the final shading and text on a computer, Chuck Ayers looked to traditional newspaper printing techniques when completing the comic strip Crankshaft. First, author Tom Batiuk and Ayers would meet to discuss the script and content of the strip. When working on the May 4 arc, Ayers was careful to research, focused on getting the details correct. Because it was syndicated, Ayers had specific guidelines about the stacks of panels and placement of the title, allowing for newspapers to adjust the comic based on their layout needs. After drawing and applying the black linework, Ayers created a final color layer on velum. The color overlay is like a paint by number for the printer. The numbers correspond to a key representing cyan, yellow, and black percentages that the printer will use to achieve the appropriate colors for the final comic.
May 4 Visitors Center
Panel: Drawing Out Childhood - Summoning Childhood Experience with (l-r) MariNoami, Derf Backderf, John Porcellino, Julia Wertz, and Mike Dawson (moderator)
Graphic Content: Comics of May 4
From comic strips and political cartoons to comic books and graphic novels, the events of May 4 have received plenty of ink from illustrators over the years. This exhibition examines graphic art depictions of May 4 with a focus on three artists spanning different generations, each with varying connections to Kent state and the May 4 shootings. Witnessing the events of May 4 first-hand, Chuck Ayers reported through illustration. Derf Backderf's meticulous research and interviews allowed him to pen a story, connecting readers to the lives of the four fallen students. Katherine Wirick shares her father's story of May 4 to commemorate him, an ROTC student and classmate of Bill Schroeder. Through their thought bubbles, ink stains, and pencil sketches, all three artists prove the emotional power and impact of illustration in addressing the events of May 4, 1970.
May 4 Visitors Center
By Derf Backderf
Mapping May 4
One Kent History Junkie's Contribution to Backderf's Book
Kent State University senior library associate, Jason Prufer, author of Small Town, Big Music: The Outsized Influence of Kent, Ohio, on the History of Rock and Roll, has an interest in collecting and documenting photographs of Kent from the past. His talent for scrounging up old Kent photos came to Derf's attention. After connecting on social media, Backderf and Prufer first met when Backderf stopped by the library during a May 4 commemoration. "He told me he wanted to have his illustrations be accurate to Kent in 1970 down to the particular specifics of what the buildings looked like and the street layouts of that time. He wanted everything about his novel to be as historically detailed and accurate as possible," remarks Prufer on his initial meeting with Backderf as he explained his book project.
Prufer made helpful contributions, assisting Backderf in bringing a sense of historical accuracy and attention to detail to the book. Prufer's expertise came in handy as Backderf was researching. "Over the next year Derf would throw me many questions about a range of very specific places in Kent. Sometimes he'd send me sketches he had done to ask if they were historically accurate and sometimes, he'd need to know what a place looked like that was never even photographed. He'd throw me questions such as: 'Where was the water tower in relation to the shootings?' or 'Do you have a photo of this row of houses that doesn't exist anymore?' or 'I have a closeup photo of one of the characters and I can't tell where this is, could you identify this for me?' Honestly, it was great fun because sometimes it would even force me to do some heavy digging to find the answers."
May 4 Visitors Center
By Derf Backderf
13 Seconds
Backderf's book conveys the power of illustration and its ability to do things that photographs can't. While iconic images of May 4 snapped by brave student photographers grabbed the world's attention, helping to convey the gravity of the events of May 4, 1970, many photographers hit the ground when they realized the Guard were shooting live ammunition. Unlike the photographers, Backderf depicts the horrific moments when the bullets hit Allison, Jeff, Sandy, Bill, and the wounded students. He also adds to the iconic photographs captured during the events, making them his own. Using text, he transforms John Filo's famous picture of Mary Ann Vecchio over the body of Jeffrey Miller, with a cinematic scream, evoking the feel of a horror film as it wraps around the pages, forming a triptych.
"The power of comics lies in creating the unseen," remarks Backderf. "This makes comics one of the few mediums that can account for those moments, when the visuals didn't get a chance to be captured via camera or newsreel." Backderf did not hold back on the violence, emphasizing the horrific magnitude of those moments.
May 4 Visitors Center
By Derf Backderf
The Process
Backderf's background in journalism came in handy during the research process. "I wanted to capture a history you could feel. This turned me into an obsessive over the actual look of places, the atmosphere. I knew people who were in Kent State would read this and so things had to be right."
Backderf's meticulous research comes to life as he transforms his notes and interviews into a script. From the script, he develops thumbnail sketches. Next, he creates full-page, detailed sketches. The sketches are inked in with a pen.
The inked artwork is scanned into a computer where he works to add value and dialogue. Since these are the inked pages, the dialogue you see in the pages on view here was added specifically for display purposes.
After several rounds of copy editing and fact checking, files are prepped by the publisher. Print proofs show additional updates made by the printer, like adding a gutter, the space down the center of a two-page spread where the pages are bound together. The book finally heads off to the printer after four years of research, sketching, and editing.
May 4 Visitors Center