Peter in manga

I had the pleasure of meeting Elaine Tipping of Tiny Blue Dragon Studio, creator of the Peter Pan Manga, at Emerald City Comic Con in March. She is a kindred spirit who cares as much for the original story as I do, and I was delighted to find her interpretation of Barrie's book. The tale lends itself beautifully to the manga format.

"It's important to be faithful since the original has so much charm and detail that is either lost or outright changed in other adaptations," says Elaine. "And since no one reads books anymore, the Disney version has become the penultimate version, which is unfortunate, as I don't think there is a less faithful version out there. It also doesn't help that Disney tends to monopolize titles and people tend to think that Disney has actually written Peter Pan, which has lead to a few interesting conversations. Barrie had some messages in his original story that were changed in adaptations, so I want to get to the core of his writing and bring that through.

"There are a few things I changed. I removed all the racism, for one (as much as I could get out) because it doesn't add to the story, in my opinion, and it's not part of his message. He did do what research he could on the natives, but at the time, he didn't get far, and all he really had was like, the Last of the Mohicans, so I'm writing a native tribe that fills the purpose that he wanted, without all the added on ignorance of the time. There are a few other things that got changed, little descriptors that didn't make sense, or were impossible to draw. Barrie writes a lot of inconsistent things too, he'll say one thing, and then contradict it in the next chapter, so there's a lot of balancing going on. Not to mention that Barrie can write surrealism like nobody's business (everyone tends to look at Through the Looking Glass for that style, but I'd argue that Peter Pan is nearly as surreal), but that is also lost in adaptations because it's just so weird in parts."

But her interpretation of the story keeps to Barrie's original message--growing up is inevitable, but it doesn't have to be sad. Being stuck in childhood, unable to fully experience life, is far worse, Elaine and I agree. 

Elaine is also well aware of the perils inherent in adapting Edwardian mores to current times. She put a great deal of thought into her own portrayal of Tiger Lily, which she calls "tricky." "A lot went into her planning. For one, I wanted to avoid the racism, but for two, I also wanted to consider the location of Neverland, which I've always thought to be near the Caribbean, or somewhere in the Atlantic, since they mention the 'mainland,' the mainland being Britain and such. I like to joke that it's in the Bermuda triangle. Anyway, I wanted the natives to be a mix of what a kid might dream up as a native person, but also like they could have had influences from other places off the Neverland. I went with a more South American, Caribbean, island theme to them, to give them real world influences, but also be fictional, since they are unique to the Neverland. So I had to dance a bit of a fine line there, and wanted to avoid being too historically accurate, what with the whole surreal aspect to the whole story."

Maria Tatar's Annotated Peter Pan includes the screenplay Barrie wrote 1989 for a proposed silent film, and Elaine used that for additional clues into Barrie's visualizations. The natives are all much taller than the boys, and therefore older, as opposed to Disney's child Tiger Lily.

Like me, Elaine objects to the usual (again, Disney-driven) depiction of a bumbling Mr. Smee. "I actually did start out drawing him older and then I realized...wait, why do we draw him older? There is no mention of his age in the book, the only hint we have is the original actor hired for him in the first play, who definitely wasn't grandpa-ish, like so many versions do. So I thought it would be fun to go younger on him. I also like the idea that he's learning from Hook, looking up to Hook, and I wanted to try a different dynamic than "old fool" for Smee."

Of course, one reason I connect with Elaine's interpretation of Peter Pan is her portrayal of Jas. Hook. "Hook was a tricky one. Hook is the one character Barrie goes into depth about, and he's really the only one we know for sure what he looks like. In detail. So the trick is to make a loyal Hook, but also a Hook that's unique to my version. I'm pretty happy with what I came out with. I did a lot of research on him, to help back up my version, and that helped a lot." (I'm happy with her version, in case you hadn't guessed.)

And what made her think of drawing Peter Pan as a manga to begin with? "I've always really been into Peter Pan, but I had a resurgence in college when I reread the book and found it absolutely charming, and way more deep and detailed than I remembered it as a kid. A few years ago, I was taking a comic course out here in Japan and I thought, you know, I should do a comic to practice all the things I've learned. You know what no one's done yet? A loyal Peter Pan adaptation! And that's how it all started."

Elaine is working on three to four comics at any given time, and draws her Peter Pan pages in stages. She pencils one week, inks the next two, and then tones the final week. Each one can take from two to four hours to complete, depending on the complexity of the page. 

Ultimately she will complete Barrie's entire book, and then some. "I've actually planned out the rest of the chapters, outlined what they'll contain, and I know how many books the series will be. I also might write a few side adventures, but not include them in the timeline, since I don't want to infringe on Barrie's works, but there will be a lot of adventures in the middle of the story, using Barrie's list of adventures at the end of the underground home chapter."

The Peter Pan manga is available in several places and formats, including on Amazon in both book and Kindle versions. It's available for free on  Smack Jeeves and Deviant Art, as well as inkblazers and Crunchyroll, and Elaine reposts to Tumblr (where I first came across the manga), Facebook, and her own Patreon. She posts as TriaElf9 on DA and Tumblr. Go forth now and see the story, along with Elaine's commentaries on her process, for yourself!

Dressing the Captain

After writing a post about Vivian Drew's attire, I would be remiss if I did not address that of Captain Hook. (And if she throws mugs at me to get her post, I don't want to think what he might do.)

J. M. Barrie mentions the captain's ruffled lace collars and his hair, which was "dressed in long curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance." And he describes Jas. Hook as adopting "the attire associated with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts."

Hook as pictured by contemporary artist Maxim Mitrofanov.
I can't find the year he  illustrated Peter Pan, or worse,
how to get my hands on  a copy of the book.

Ah, Charles II, the "merrie monarch" who took the throne after the puritan reign of Oliver Cromwell, who rescued the tradition of playing cards and reintroduced the celebration of Christmas as we know it today. And whose tenure is wonderfully summed up by Mathew Baynton in BBC's "Horrible Histories" (watch and sing it for hours, and then watch the rest of the Stuart episodes, and after that, just keep going through the many eras of Britain's history).

At first it seemed obvious that James would wear a red coat, but the more research I did, the more I realized this was a later convention, and one not necessarily adhered to by contemporary artists, either. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the first depiction I've found of Hook in red is by Roy Best in 1937, a look popularized by the 1953 animated Disney Peter Pan. Before that Captain Hook was depicted mostly wearing blue, and sometimes gray. Aha, I thought--red coats must be for battle. And so, in The Stowaway, they are.

Anne Graham Johnstone's Hook, 1988

Bilious green, I'm afraid, was too unflattering to be a serious option, as no doubt the Captain figured out for himself early on.

Peter Pan playing card issued
 by Pepys in 1910 with art by
Charles Buchel, 1904

The Captain would also have quickly found knee breeches with stockings and buckled shoes impractical for working on board a ship, and I see him trading those in fairly quickly for sturdy trousers and knee-high boots. Yet he would continue to revel in his brocade waistcoats and full-skirted coats with their ornate embroidery and deep cuffs to better display the the lace ruffles at his wrists. Vivian Drew points out--rightly--that James's wardrobe, elaborate as it is, rather resembles a uniform. He cannot disagree. Yet, within those parameters, he is every bit the clothes horse he encourages her to be.

And while this is not directly related to my research into the clothing choices of Jas. Hook, I can't close this post without sharing the art of Charlotte Whatley in her unusual and delicious steampunk paper doll version of Peter Pan.

There. Now I've shown James in his underwear too. Happy, Viv?

Dressing the pirate lady

Vivian Drew wants her clothing post. Monday night, I heard a thump in the kitchen and looked to see if a cat had jumped on the counter, and saw instead an open cupboard door above my head and a mug flying at me. My "Vivian mug," which shattered at my feet.

On my ex-mug: "From Home to Port"
by Sherrie Spencer, because it makes me think of Vivian Drew

A new mug has been ordered from cafepress.com--because I can't have several Captain Hook mugs and no Vivian mug--so I suppose it's time for the post that was delayed for Tiger Lily and children who fly away. One of the ongoing challenges in writing The Stowaway has been figuring out what an Edwardian woman would wear aboard a pirate ship which has a tenuous connection to any particular era of history. Vivian's evening gowns were a simple matter, and great fun to describe, but something practical for daily life aboard ship was another story altogether.

The pirate wench: Even if the historical accuracy of this image weren't absurd, Vivian would be disinclined to throw aside the standards she's lived with for over three decades in front of men who have already tried to take unwelcome liberties with her. No, respect should not be contingent upon what a woman wears, but it happens now, and The Stowaway takes place in 1908. Any sort of bodice over a shirt would contribute to the costume-y "wench" effect, so I was left to find a different direction.

From a Dutch printing of A General History of the Robberies
and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, attributed to
Captain Charles Johnson (apparently a pseudonym)

Historical female pirates did not provide me with a solution either. Anne Bonny and Mary Read dressed the same as their male counterparts, all the better to startle their foes into making mistakes when they undid shirts and showed their true identities. While a great ploy, Vivian is not inclined to combat, dressed or otherwise, and discovers she is too fond of nice women's clothing to forgo it.

An Edwardian S-shaped, tightly-laced corset would of course be deeply unsuitable for working on a ship. But Edwardian women did wear waistcoats under suit jackets and over shirtwaists, and my discovery of the Liberty bodice provided me with the key to Vivian's wardrobe. Made of fleece-lined fabric without boning with buttons rather than lacing, and with shoulder straps, it was made for young girls as well as women like maids who needed more freedom of movement than a traditional corset would allow. Thus it would be a reasonable compromise for Vivian, providing the support and modesty she was accustomed to without the restrictions of a corset.

So a suitable outfit for her would start with a combination--a one-piece undergarment with no sleeves and divided legs rather than a skirt--with a Liberty bodice on top, and then her shirtwaist, skirt, and waistcoat. A great deal of clothing, yes, but without heating on the Jolly Roger, she'd be glad to have all of it. As for warmer weather--well, that's in the book. *wink*

When I started streamlining the narrative, it was easy to cut out details of love scenes, but much harder to let go of clothing descriptions. The world is rife with regular porn. It needs more clothing porn.

Why they flew away

Adaptations of Peter Pan frequently invent reasons why Wendy feels she must fly away to Neverland with Peter and not grow up. In the 1953 Disney film, she is about to be moved out of the nursery because she has become too old to share the nursery with her brothers. The 2003 film created the odious character of Aunt Millicent (though played by a lovely actress, Lynn Redgrave), who disapproves of the children's tales of adventures and wants Wendy to be a proper society lady. Wendy also begins drawing pictures of a mysterious boy paying visits to her in her bed, to the consternation of all the adults in her life.

Flora White, 1914

But when I was young, I wouldn't have needed much convincing to fly away to a beautiful place of freedom and adventure, and I don't believe most children would. These filmmakers (and many writers) must find that reality distasteful, given the lengths they go to showing that the Darling children need more impetus to fly away with Peter than simple desire.This change undercuts the point of J.M. Barrie's book. To Barrie, that desire was not only sufficient, but part of the inherent nature of children.

For instance, Barrie describes how Peter Pan convinces Wendy and Michael and John to join him by telling them exciting tales of mermaids and pirates, and how he appeals to Wendy's desire to take care of boys who have never had anyone to nurture them. Peter's childishness is not sugarcoated either, and in fact is integral to the story. For example, on their way through the skies to Neverland:

He could go so much faster than they that he would suddenly shoot out of sight, to have some adventure in which they had no share. He would come down laughing over something fearfully funny he had been saying to a star, but he had already forgotten what it was, or he would come up with mermaid scales still sticking to him, and yet not be able to say for certain what had been happening. It was really rather irritating to children who had never seen a mermaid.

"And if he forgets them so quickly," Wendy argued, "how can we expect that he will go on remembering us?"

Mabel Lucie Attwell, 1921

But even Wendy's memory of her loved ones is not consistent, despite the fact that "in the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than other girls"--in contrast to the depiction of Wendy as a girl who didn't want to grow up.

As time wore on did she think much about the beloved parents she had left behind her? This is a difficult question, because it is quite impossible to say how time does wear on in the Neverland, where it is calculated by moons and suns, and there are ever so many more of them than on the mainland. But I am afraid that Wendy did not really worry about her father and mother; she was absolutely confident that they would always keep the window open for her to fly back by, and this gave her complete ease of mind. What did disturb her at times was that John remembered his parents vaguely only, as people he had once known, while Michael was quite willing to believe that she was really his mother. 

Anne Graham Johnstone, 1988

Perhaps Barrie's easy acceptance of that quality of children is part of what makes Peter Pan not solely a children's book. As he himself ends his tale, 

...and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.

Heartless. Barrie was able to like and appreciate children despite this capacity. It's unfortunate so many others who revisit the story of Peter Pan don't feel the same, or trust that their audiences might.

Taking on Tiger Lily

With the casting of Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in the upcoming Pan movie (as if I didn't have enough issues with that already, starting with the fact that it's inexplicably set in WWII), I can't not address the problematic portrayal of the character and how I hope to address it.

Anna Mae Wong as Tiger Lily with Betty Bronson'
 Peter Pan in the 1924 silent film.

Complaints about Mara's casting center around the white-washing of Tiger Lily, which has been a problem with the casting since the story was first filmed. (That said, Q'orianka Kilcher, having already played Pocahontas and Aaya in SyFy's Neverland, might want to play someone besides an iconic Indian princess for a change.)

Rooney  Mara

J. M. Barrie himself,I'm sorry to say, made no real stab at accuracy when he wrote his Indian characters to appeal to young boys in Edwardian England. 

On the trail of the pirates, stealing noiselessly down the war-path, which is not visible to inexperienced eyes, come the redskins, every one of them with his eyes peeled. They carry tomahawks and knives, and their naked bodies gleam with paint and oil. Strung around them are scalps, of boys as well as pirates, for these are the Piccaninny tribe, and not to be confused with the softer-hearted Delawares or the Hurons...

Bringing up the rear, the place of greatest danger, comes Tiger Lily, proudly erect, a princess in her own right. She is the most beautiful of dusky Dianas and the belle of the Piccaninnies, coquettish, cold and amorous by turns; there is not a brave who would not have the wayward thing to wife, but she staves off the altar with a hatchet. 

The single worst section in the book, to my mind:

They called Peter the Great White Father, prostrating themselves before him; and he liked this tremendously, so that it was not really good for him. 

"The great white father," he would say to them in a very lordly manner, as they grovelled at his feet, "is glad to see the Piccaninny warriors protecting his wigwam from the pirates."

"Me Tiger Lily," that lovely creature would reply. "Peter Pan save me, me his velly nice friend. Me no let pirates hurt him."

She was far too pretty to cringe in this way, but Peter thought it his due, and he would answer condescendingly, "It is good. Peter Pan has spoken."

I didn't even want to include this, but it's the elephant
in the living room of Neverland.

Barrie at least made Tiger Lily a warrior and foil to Wendy's domestic aspirations. The 1953 Disney film was pretty much entirely offensive in its depiction of the Indiands--it's as if the writers were not even writing about human beings. "What Makes the Red Man Red?" indeed.

(And yet my personal favorite rendition of Tiger Lily comes from a Disney "My Side of the Story" book, in which she's a real estate agent who gets in over her head when trying to find a property for Hook to buy.)

Given that I'm generally so concerned with being true to J.M. Barrie's original story, it's valid to ask how I'm addressing the portrayal of the Indians. It's a problem without a good solution. As I see it, these characters have never been done right (I think SyFy's Neverland miniseries came the closest, but I realize there are issues there as well, no doubt many I haven't even caught). The premise of The Stowaway is that Peter Pan told his story to Mr. Barrie with a plethora of wish fulfillment fantasies and misunderstandings--if not outright lies. And that includes his descriptions of the other people who live on the island.

After reading many bloggers' opinion, I went with the approach that since this tale is fantasy already, why not use a lost civilization as the "tribe" in Neverland? Research turned up the City of Caesars: a civilization founded in Patagonia by shipwrecked Spaniards who built a city of gold and diamonds. Spanish doubloons and sailors. Aha! 

As Hook says to his companion Vivian in The Stowaway,
"[The Trapalanda] are neither of Asia nor the Americas. Peter calls them Indians because he has nothing else in his vernacular that fits...Have you heard of the City of Caesars or the Wandering Town? It's a lost civilization, like Atlantis, except that here it is very much found."

I realize this approach can be seen as erasing the Indians altogether, as the movie Hook did. Tiger Lily is one of the few well-known Indian characters in literature, after all. But I would rather be guilty of that than adding to inaccurate and offensive stereotypes that I am not informed enough to avoid. I am not qualified to write an Indian tribe with the accuracy and respect it demands, nor do I believe research would be adequate to resolve my ignorance. As I said, it's a problem with no good solution. I am making this decision because it seems likely to cause the least harm.

Defending Mr. Smee

I didn't realize when I began writing The Stowaway that I would become protective of characters I had formerly not been overly concerned about. Such as poor Mr. Smee, being seen by the world today as an ineffective bumbler when he was originally nothing of the sort.

The first Smee, as acted by
George Shelton in the 1904 theater
production of Peter Pan.

J.M. Barrie describes Smee as Irish and a Nonconformist--e.g., not a member of a state religion like the Church of England. He does not mention his first name, allowing that detail to be guessed at by numerous tellers of the Peter Pan story, not always in ways of which I approve. For example, "He was called Smee because he looked like a Smee."--Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry. Really? Must we be that disrespectful to the original? (I confess to having a little fun with Mr. Smee's first name in The Stowaway, but I do my best to be respectful otherwise. In fact, it's hard for me to refer to him without the honorific of "Mr." after so long writing about the crew with the formality with which their captain addresses him.) 

In Barrie's Peter Pan, we first see Mr. Smee as "an oddly genial man who stabbed, so to speak, without offence." Make no mistake, he has no compunctions about killing, taking lost boys hostage, and other acts of piracy.

Smee had pleasant names for everything, and his cutlass was Johnny Corkscrew, because he wriggled it in the wound. One could mention many lovable traits in Smee. For instance, after killing, it was his spectacles he wiped instead of his weapon.

Bob Hoskins, who plays Mr. Smee in the movie Hook in 1991 and reprises the role in Syfy's 2011 Neverland, touches upon the quality the original Mr. Smee possesses of being a genial sociopath, in that the women of Neverland fear him. But even Hoskins does not portray him with characteristics that he would be required to have in his role of bo'sun of the Jolly Roger (not first mate, another common mistake).

Barrie does describe Smee as "rather stupid," and indeed he is less educated than the erudite Jas. Hook, with little understanding of his captain. But as bo'sun, Mr. Smee must have some degree of intelligence and a great deal of common sense. The bo'sun (or boatswain) is responsible for the maintenance of all the equipment on a ship, from rigging to anchors, and supervises the crew who work on the deck. Mr. Smee has a working knowledge of every aspect of sailing the Jolly Roger. And while it is popular to depict the crew of the Roger as a pack of dunderheads, if that were so, there wouldn't have been a ship around long enough to present worthy foes to Peter Pan.

No. 

 

Also, a bo'sun's whistle looks like this.

ABC's Once Upon a Time takes regular liberties with its characters, and amusingly has created a William Smee closer to Barrie's character than Disney's, a competent and decent man--perhaps more decent than Mr. Barrie would have liked. Christopher Gauthier's interpretation could expand to include a trait which Barrie does describe as native to Mr. Smee--a curious quality of unknowingly inciting pity from others. Perhaps other portrayals confuse this quality with idiocy?

Christopher Gauthier in Once Upon a Time

There was little sound, and none agreeable save the whir of the ship's sewing machine at which Smee sat, ever industrious and obliging, the essence of the commonplace, pathetic Smee. I know not why he was so infinitely pathetic, unless it were because he was so pathetically unaware of it; but even strong men had to turn hastily from looking at him, and more than once on summer evenings he had touched the fount of Hook's tears and made it flow. Of this, as of almost everything else, Smee was quite unconscious.

[Pg 202] 

Most striking of all, Mr. Smee possesses traits which Hook himself hopes to embody:

For long he muttered to himself, staring at Smee, who was hemming placidly, under the conviction that all children feared him...Feared him! Feared Smee! There was not a child on board the brig that night who did not already love him. He had said horrid things to them and hit them with the palm of his hand, because he could not hit with his fist; but they had only clung to him the more. Michael had tried on his spectacles.

To tell poor Smee that they thought him lovable! Hook itched to do it, but it seemed too brutal. Instead, he revolved this mystery in his mind: why do they find Smee lovable?

Richard Briers--also known for playing Tom Good
 in  BBC's"Good Neighbors"--as Mr. Smee
in the 2003 Peter Pan film.

[Pg 206]

He pursued the problem like the sleuth-hound that he was. If Smee was lovable, what was it that made him so? A terrible answer suddenly presented itself: 'Good form?'

Had the bo'sun good form without knowing it, which is the best form of all?

This Mr. Smee is far from the man seen in so many books and films who regularly trips over his own feet, who doesn't seem like anyone a ship captain would rely on for anything. Yes, the common depiction of Mr. Smee provides ample comic relief, but at the expense of a character who originally possessed depth and even a bit of mystery.

Ten facts about Captain Hook

As promised! More Captain Hook in the blog this year. (Such a burden.) Some of these details were previously chronicled by J.M. Barrie, while others have been revealed as I work on The Stowaway. (Sources at the end.)

1. Peter Pan has convinced himself that he cut off the hand of Captain Jas. Hook and threw it to the Neverland crocodile. [1] The truth, however, is more complicated and sadder, and took place long before the two met. [3]

2. Books from the Eton library, inscribed with the name "Jacobus Hook," can still occasionally be found in second-hand bookstores. [2]

3. James Hook does fear the crocodile, but no more than he would any large and deadly creature. [3]

4. His hatred of Peter Pan results from the boy killing his men without remorse, tormenting him ceaselessly, and being irrepressibly cocky. [1,3]

5. James Hook is an inveterate clothes horse. The red coats for which he has become known are his battle coats, and the time of The Stowaway, he has three. For regular seafaring, he wears blue or gray. [3]

6. He has patterned his appearance after King Charles II, most spectacularly in the long black ringlets in which he wears his hair. [1] While many artists--mostly post-Disney--depict him in stockings and knee-breeches, he learned early on that such dress was not practical for piracy. [3]

7. Hook's eyes are the blue of forget-me-nots. [1] Barrie describes him as "blackavized" [1], or swarthy. Perhaps this coloration can be traced to his Welsh ancestry. [3]

8. His black hair comes from his mother's side of the family, while the chin he near-despises is a legacy from his thoroughly-despised father [3].

9. James Hook was a (largely unwilling) boy soprano. [3] He also played flute [2] and harpsichord. [1]

10. The Captain detests fiction, feeling that he gets enough make-believe during the time he spends in Neverland. Rather, he prefers histories for the understand they give him of the larger world. [3]

Bonus: The ship the Captain sails at the time of Peter Pan and The Stowaway is the third incarnation of the Jolly Roger. [3]

Sources:
[1] Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, 1911
[2] "Hook at Eton," speech given by J. M. Barrie in 1927
[3] The Stowaway, by your blogger, still in progress