Shannon and Dean Hale are the authors of the fantastic fairy-tale remix Rapunzel’s Revenge (which I review here). Shannon has also written a number of works for young adult and adult readers, including Princess Academy, a Newbery Honor winner. I was delighted to take the chance to talk to Shannon about the writing of Rapunzel’s Revenge.
A foundation for much of your work is in the reworking and retelling of fairy tales and canonised texts. What is the appeal of these stories? What creative opportunities do they offer?
I’ve always loved fairy tales, but it’s the ones that irritate me the most that I find inspiring. ‘The Goose Girl’ was just too brief, too much unexplained, and my mind didn’t stop working over it, trying to solve the puzzles and problems it left me. ‘Maid Maleen’ was fantastic, but dealt briefly and unfairly with the maid character. Her story became Book of a Thousand Days. With both of those, I stayed pretty close to the skeleton of the original story.
With Rapunzel’s Revenge, the fun is taking a well-known fairy tale and unraveling it. The advantage of this instead of just writing an completely original story is the Grimms’ version is in constant dialog with ours, asking questions and creating complications that wouldn’t be there otherwise. It’s also satisfying on a personal level, because Rapunzel is to me the most irritating fairy tale of all time and I couldn’t let it stand without having a snarky thing or two to say about it.
Rapunzel’s Revenge is very much a Wild West themed fairytale, with all the romantic appeal of the frontier. What’s the source of this interest?
It all started with her hair. Dean and I wanted to combine our two passions: fairy tales and superhero comic books. Which fairy tale hero would make the coolest comic book superhero? Rapunzel was our conclusion. Because she used her hair as whip and lasso, going Old West was a natural leap. Besides, we wanted to use the visual format to its fullest, and the Western landscapes and themes are so iconic, so cinematic, so just plain fun we relished diving in head first. I did a lot of research on the Old Westnot the true history but Hollywood’s, hunting for archetypes we could play with. The prison break is a big onealso, the revenge plot, stranger comes to town and helps out the locals, man vs. wild nature, despot gets his/her comeuppance, enslaved folk break free, privileged youth is cast out of society only to return stronger and take over, etc. And things like cattle ranchers, bad sheriffs, friendly outcasts, troubled townsfolk, wandering entertainers, mines, railroads, settlers… We were shameless about cramming in as much as we possibly could in 144 illustrated pages.
Rapunzel makes short shrift of the blond, blue-eyed, square jawed adventurer who would have been her rescuer and love interest in earlier versions of the story. How did you come to include him?
Yes! We called him ‘Prince.’ This goes back to the whole Rapunzel-being-the-most-irritating-tale-of-all-time thing. In the original story, the Prince visits Rapunzel in her tower, but instead of bringing a rope or ladder, he just keeps coming back with arms full of ‘silk’ for her to weave into her own ladder. Doofus. She ended up having his love children, so I can guess what his real motivation was for continuing to visit and keeping her locked up. Scoundrel! Rogue! Sicko! We were tempted to cut the prince character out of our story altogether, but it was just too fun to give him a guest appearance, let Rapunzel see him for what he truly is, and have her own little revenge. That’s the name of the book, after all. Of course plot-wise, Rapunzel’s main revenge is against her kidnapper and captor, Mother Gothel. But in another sense, her revenge is also against her treatment in the original story. And that’s part of the fun in doing retellings!
There are a number of characters of colour in the story, from Rapunzel’s partner Jack to a sizeable proportion of side characters (good and bad) and background faces. Was this something you’d discussed in the creation process?
It was. When Dean and I wrote, we didn’t assign any of the characters race or ethnicity. But when we discussed the project with Nate (the artist), one of the things that was very important to us was that we represent the full spectrum of people in this land. Although Gothel’s Reach is mythical, it was inspired by the American Old West, which was very culturally diversesettlers from the east and Europe, African Americans, American Indians, Hispanics, Asians, etc. And on top of that, we added other mythical creatures and fairy tale folk. It seems like the stereotype Old West figure is the white cowboy, and I didn’t want the story to be so chalk full of white cowboys that it got boring. We left it up to Nate to assign the look to all the characters, and I think he did a fantastic job.
Of course beside the white cowboy, the other major figure in the Old West is the Indian. In our world, the equivalent of the Indians were the original settlers of that land. They would have already settled the choicest spots before immigrants came. So when the immigrants arrived from the Old World, instead of driving the original inhabitants out, they co-settled and those spots became the territory’s major cities. So most of the Indians of our world are urban city dwellers. Nate’s original sketch of Jack had him as a blond, but when we saw him, we all were unanimous that Jack should be this world’s equivalent of an American Indian. I love Jack. Nate is illustrating the sequel now, entitled Calamity Jack, that will give more of Jack’s back story and then continue the story from the end of Rapunzel’s Revenge. it’s an urban caper tale and maybe even bigger and badder than Rapunzel’s Revenge.
You have a four year old son, whose bedtime reading, according to your blog, becomes more and more exciting. What sort of comics do you hope will be available for him to read?
He already reads comics, of course! He likes DC Superfriends, Marvel Adventures: Avengers, Tiny Titans, Powerpuff Girls, Owly. Dean dusted off his Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham. While Max doesn’t read yet, I’ve noticed he’s much more likely to sit down with a comic book on his own and look through it than he is with a picture book.
It seems like for years the comics industry was so determined to be grown up, kids were forgotten. But with comics creators writing for their own kids now and traditional children’s book publishers getting into the game (like Bloomsbury) there’s plenty out there. Age appropriate books are so important, as are plenty of realistic and varied characters. I think it’s just as important (or perhaps more!) for boys to read books with female main characters as it is for girls. I would also be pleased if said girls got to wear pants on occasion.
Your other writing is solo work, but for Rapunzel’s Revenge you collaborated with your husband Dean and artist Nathan Hale (no relation). How did you work the collaboration process? Were there any really epic battles?
Shannon: The collaboration was surprisingly bloodless. We all agreed that I’m in charge and the boys are my contract workers. Right?
Dean: Yes, I am currently bloodless after the ordeal. Seriously, though, the contract worker thing is something Shannon and I discussed, and I was all behind being the toadie. Or the ‘Unseen Puppeteer,’ as I prefer to think of myself.
Shannon: Anyway, Dean and I discussed lots before writing, then I’d write the first draft, leaving holes if I thought he’d be great at filling them, which he was. He’d go through, changing stuff I wrote, and I’d go back, changing more stuff. At this point, we honestly can’t remember who wrote what, though there is an ongoing battle in which both of us claim the funny lines. Then Nate pretty much had free reign.
