The Sorcerer of the North
Comics are a new form of books I have been to really get into. And because of that, I have tried my hand at cartooning. This is a full comic I drew for an English assignment.
The idea for the project eluded me for a couple weeks, but once I got it, I had the script for dialogue done in two hours. I would attribute my ENTIRE view of storytelling to two books: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, and Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. The idea of stories about stories is something I am absolutely fascinated by because these books have infiltrated the fundamental way I think, so while I’m not claiming to be a mini Borges, The Sorcerer of the North would not be what it is without reading it. The Starless Sea also happens to be a story about stories, but its specific writing style made me love insanely dramatic characters and otherworldly storylines. So when you read dialogue like “They say you can take away the cold”, that is entirely Morgenstern’s fault.
This comic has a bunch of references to my favorite books. The passage in page seven is from the short story The Garden of Forking Paths by Borges, and it appears in Labyrinths. Though the story is really dark and grim compared to my comic, I really wanted to include it because it is probably my favorite passage in literature. It’s about the final moment of beauty and imagination that exists right before the main character’s inevitable doom. The title appears in the bookshelf on page two. Some of the other books in the shelf are randomly there because I happened to see it on my own bookshelf while drawing: 1984, and an ACT Prep book. Some of the other books are really important to me: The Code Breaker inspired me to apply for IMSA and pursue becoming a scientist, His Dark Materials is my absolute favorite trilogy ever, Ovid’s Metamorphoses was the book I meticulously studied for my paper on Divine Order and Devotion, and Artemis Fowl was my childhood favorite series. Unfortunately, some of my other favorite books didn’t make the cut because the names were too long to list (Born on a Blue Day, by Daniel Tammet).
These literary references continue on page five, with each of the illustrations alluding to a special book. The first is a city in the sky, referencing His Dark Materials. The scientists in the book travel to the North Pole and when they take a picture of the Northern Lights, they find a sparkling city behind the Aurora Borealis, an alternate universe. The key is for The Starless Sea, where the motif of the bee, the key, and the sword is referenced SO many times. Also, stars are evil in that book. The third references the garden of jewels from the Epic of Gilgamesh; when I read this, I was absolutely floored by the descriptions of the lapis lazuli trees, gemstone fruits, and more. It made me so sad that huge portions of the translation were missing from this part of the story because the clay tablets were not preserved. I hated that we would never know what happened in this garden and that piece of history is lost forever. The fourth is Labyrinths, and the fifth was just an excuse to draw a horse and a cool archer lady. The reason why the final panel’s words were “of Stories within Stories” was because The Sorcerer of the North is a story about stories, and if within that story I reference stories within stories, that makes me extra cool.
As for art, I am not an artist. I really wish I was- unfortunately, I never started early enough to get good. So I had to make certain sacrifices. The reason I went with this story is because it only had two characters, and there is almost zero action. Designing the kid character was easy, it was just slapping eyes, nose and mouth on a coat face thing. The hooded figure had a black hole for a face because I really didn’t want to draw one. Also, during the period of making this comic, I absolutely was not ready to tackle the goliath of an annoyance that is drawing hands. The kid gets mittens, and the sorcerer gets ambiguous straw fingers. That’s it. One thing I am really proud of are the wood textures on the cabin walls. I worked hard to develop the design and make it look real, and you can see the texture get more detailed as the comic goes on, because I get better at drawing it. The extra fine lines (like the wood texture) were made with an almost dried up uniball pen I got from India 6 years ago. Every three minutes of drawing, I would have to vigorously shake the pen to get the slightest bit of ink out. That pen also exploded sometime along the drawing process, thankfully not on the comic, but unthankfully on me. I used No. 2 pencils for shading, and I would use my fingers and a paper towel to smooth out and smudge the lines. So if you were to visit my dorm or house, you would find black handprints literally everywhere.
Addressing plot points: I have no idea why the sorcerer’s desk ended up looking like a laboratory. I guess science is unconsciously always on my mind. It was meant to guide the readers towards thinking the sorcerer is some kind of potion maker. Also, I have no idea how two clear liquids being added together in page five ended up making ink. I guess the sorcerer does have some kind of real magic thing; I wouldn’t know though, drawing that page was a fever dream. The ending with the cat had no logical reason for existing. It just felt right.
