INTERVIEW: Award-winning illustrator P. Craig Russell (2024)

The legendary artist speaks on his work, and his involvement in ESM's Debussy festival

By Rebecca Rafferty@rsrafferty

As part of the Eastman School of Music's month-longcelebration of the music of composer Claude Debussy, ESM will present a freeperformance of "Pelléas Redux"Friday, October 26, at 8 p.m. at Kodak Hall in Eastman Theatre. A theatricalpresentation of Maurice Maeterlinck's love-triangle-laden tragic play, “Pelléas & Mélisande,” featuringmusic from Debussy's operatic adaptation, the show will also includeillustrations from the comic-book adaptation of the story by P. Craig Russell. The concert will be led by ESM music-theory professor Matthew Brown, and Russell's illustrations have been transformed into a motion comic for the event through the use of various digital techniques.

P. Craig Russell is a comic-book writer, artist, andillustrator known for his romantic, Art Nouveau-esquestyle. He has won both Harvey and Eisner awards, and is extremely well regarded for his work on “Amazing Adventures,” “Elric,” “The Sandman,” as well as his ongoing series ofcomic book adaptations of operas and literature. Russell is in town visitingRochester for the first time for the presentation of "Pelleas Redux." City spoke with Russell prior to hisvisit about his work, the upcoming ESM collaboration, and the comic-bookworld's shift into the digital age. The following is an edited transcript ofthat interview.

CITY: How did youbecome interested in creating comic versions of epic operas?

P. CRAIG RUSSELL:Well, I’ve been an opera fan since I was a kid, so I was familiar with themusic. But mostly I was just looking for a good story to tell, outside of themainstream superhero Marvel comic sort of genre, which is where I started as aprofessional. When the opportunity came up to do comics outside of themainstream, and with the opening up of so-called ground-level comics in thelate 70’s, it was just sort of a natural fit.

How do you choose theparticular stories?

It has to be a good story. There are a lot of great operasthat have somewhat silly stories that I don’t think would be interesting graphicnovels, so it would have to be something that has a good libretto to begin with.Not just great music, because the music isn’t going to translate into a visualform -- certainly not a soundless visual form. So most of my operas also havegreat librettos, [such as those] by Maurice Maeterlinck, Oscar Wilde, things like that. Or Wagner’s own libretto for "TheRing of the Nibelung."

What about “Pelléas et Mélisande,”or Debussy in particular, interested you?

Well, that was the first one I did after “Parcifal,” and “Parcifal” hadbeen written for me as sort of a prose treatment by a friend ofmine, Patrick Mason. “Pelleas” was the first one Ichose, and I chose that entirely because of the libretto. I was somewhatfamiliar with the music, and certainly loved Debussy, but did not know theopera all that well. Most of what I took from it was Maeterlinck’s originalplay, although I did listen to the opera and it did influence some scenes, inhow I presented it. But I just thought the dialogue between the characters wasso brilliant, so affecting, that I just jumped at the chance to do it.

The comic bookindustry is collaborative by nature, but can you discuss how creating a comicadapted from opera differs from other adaptations you’ve done, such as OscarWilde’s fairy tales, or even illustrating stories written by living writerssuch as Neil Gaiman?

I try to do as much as I can, be in control of as manyaspects of a piece of work as I can, whether it’s an adaptation from a play, anopera, a short story, or a novel. I think I pretty much approach them all thesame. I’m taking a literary form and a finding visual structure, a visual wayof presenting the story. So there’s not too much difference from one toanother.

Although, one difference in adapting an opera or a play froma novel is that in the opera or play, it’s all dialogue. There are stagedirections, but the story is told entirely with words, with dialogue betweenthe characters. Where in a short story or a novel, you have a lot ofdescriptive writing, a lot of sections that simply describe what you’re seeing.The author can describe a person’s internal state, what they’re thinking orwhat their position in society is, which is much more difficult to do in aplay, where you have the people talk to each other. I find that a play or operais in a way easier to adapt because it’s all told through this dialogue andaction. The book -- you just have a lot more decisions to make as to what toleave in, what to take out. There is just a lot more sculpting going on with anovel than with a play or an opera.

You’ve said these works were adapted from the theatricalscripts, but you also listen to the music while you are creating theillustrations. Can you talk a bit more about the musical composition and howthat’s taken into account?

With "Pelléas & Mélisande,"there was a little bit I took from the music, but not much. My next one was"Salomé," and that was working with Oscar Wilde’s words, but I am a crazy Straussfan, so I was listening to the opera a lot, and that influenced my adaptation.In a sense, it’s almost an adaptation of an adaptation, because Strauss isdoing an adaptation of the stage play.Listening to some of his musical solutions influenced how I dramatized myadaptation. There were certain musical sounds, like when Salomé looks into thecistern where John the Baptist is, the music gets black; it just gets so dark.He created the effect of taking the audience down into the cistern with thisblack sound. That influenced me in a way -- I actually did the same thing, Itook us down into the cistern to a point where the panel was pitch black, andreversed the camera so we’re looking up through the grating at Salomé, as ifwe’re John the Baptist in the cistern.

What sort of inspiration or visual research do you do for illustrations? Forexample, do you use models, or look at the photos from the original productionswhere they’re available?

I never look at original production photos. I don’t want to be influenced byanother artist’s interpretation. Of course, I’ve seen many of them in books andsuch over the years -- stage sets of different productions and all that -- I’mnot unaware of it, but I try to do something as original as I can, I try tohave an authentic personal response to it that’s different in some way fromeverything else that’s been done.

The other half of your question, about models -- yes. Irope all of my friends in sooner or later, into acting out bits and parts. Idon’t have them in costumes ever, I just sort of approximate something I want, then make the rest up as I’m drawing. But to get theconsistency of facial design and such, I’ve had friends that I’ve been usingover a 35-year period. It’s kind of like having aphoto album of them…I have friends that are aging in my comics.

How did this particular project with the Eastman School of Music get started?

Matthew Brown approached me through email, and introduced himself, and talkedabout the project they were doing, was I interested in it.I thought the project was fascinating. I haven’t seen what they’ve done yet,but I’m looking forward to seeing this constant stream of images while themusic is being played. In Utrecht they did a concert performance of "Cavalleria Rusticana" and theyused my adaptation above the orchestra. They were projecting my illustrations.It can be an interesting way to present it. Something new forthe audience, and a new way to approach it.

I think the way Eastman is using my pictures is much more complex thanthe earlier one. It’s about a 60-page adaptation, andI think they’re using almost every single image. I’ve had no input into the way they’re handling this, so I’m very interested tosee how it’s going to turn out. I feel confident in it because I know how muchwork they’re putting into this, into the chamber score, the rehearsals, and Iknow from the piece [Brown] showed me, it seems to be quite laborintensive. They seem so intent in what they’re doing, I feel confident it’sgoing to look good.

Will there by other such projects in the future, if others approach you fortheatrical pairings of music and your illustrations?

I would love there to be. I think "The Ring" is a natural, but it’s so enormous.I think "Salomé" would be easily turned into an adaptation; it’s a shorter opera,shorter than "Pelléas." I’ve also done adaptations of "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci," and I think those would both translate well.

Do you have plans to continue to adapt operatic theater into comic book form?

I have a lot of projects lined up, not operatic. I have the next several yearsaccounted for. But I do want to do one more. I’m not sure why, but I settled onthe number 12 years ago. I’ve done 11, that leavesone to go.

What shifts have you seen in your work throughout your career?

It’s more of a constant evolution, where you don’t notice it from one month tothe next or one year to the next. But you look at your work from 10 years or 20years ago and the style is different. You can look at it and say,Well, this is what decade this is from.

What do you see happening in the future of comics, with regards to the digitalage? For example, digital versions at the same time of print releases.

If it can in any way work in such a way that artists can produce work and makeenough profits to live on, and not be killed by all of the piracy that’s goingon, that’ll be a good thing. Now, I understand that everyone who is illegallydownloading something wouldn’t necessarily buy your book, if this wasn’t available. It’s just that if there’s a chance to getit for free, they will. So it’s hard to say how many sales you’ve lost.

It’s a new world. I’m stilldoing things pretty much in the old-fashioned way with pen and pencil andpaper. There are cartoonists who just do their work digitally now, and there’sno hard copy at all. I’m doing an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s"The Graveyard Book" right now, and I’ve done the script and layouts for theentire book on regular old sheets of paper, and it’s all been handlettered, and will be given to seven other artists who will do the finished artworkover my layouts. But one artist, Michael Golden, who is doing the last story inthe book, is doing it entirely on a computer. He’ll just scan in those pagesthat have the lettering on them, and however he does it, he’ll have done it,but there will be no hard copy of that one story out of the entire book.

There’s a lot of excited or panicked talk, depending on where you’re comingfrom, of print media disappearing over the next few decades. There’s a bigshift already in literature into eBooks. Do you think there is a threat ofcomics ever not existing in the physical realm, or will their collectable nature asart objects save them?

I couldn’t really say. I hope so. I do know in animation there are no longer anyanimation cells, which is really sad. Collectors would get individual cellsfrom the films. Now you can get prints of them, but that physical part isreally gone. It’s not quite the same as books. I would imagine the mainstreamcompanies would be just fine with it being all digital.I just did a short story for DC Comics and my new scanner isn’t compatible withmy computer, so I had to send in the original to DC in New York City -- the old-fashioned way, through the mail -- for them to scan it at their office, and theeditor said there were some young people who were so excited -- they’d neverseen original artwork.

When I started back in the 70's, I was working on a book for Marvel for a coupleof years which eventually was cancelled because its sales were low -- the saleswere about 75,000 copies an issue. That at the time was considered low. Todaywe would kill for a 75,000 print run. I think because of computer games and allof that, the sales have dropped significantly over the decades. At the sametime it’s opened up in other directions. Major publishers are getting more intographic novels, and it’s going more in the direction of single volumes ratherthan these single periodical pamphlets you get at the newsstand.

Would you say then that video games and new media were a greater threat to thecomics industry than comics transferring into the digital realm?

Yes, because it was happening before comics entered the digital age. I thinkthe general consensus is that audience found the superhero sword-and-sorcerywas more exciting and more fulfilling in the digital gaming arena than justreading a comic book.

Would you consider doing illustrating for video games?

Yes, I think a lot of it is the subject matter I do -- fantasy, sword andsorcery and all of that. They’re all equally valid artisticoutlets, they’re all interrelated. I don’t seeit as the enemy, it’s just a natural sort of evolution.

To see more work by P. Craig Russell visit his website.