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Folklore – Making It Up As You Go Along At Emerald City Comicon

Published Mon, 06 Mar 2017 12:30:21 -0600

Last updated Fri, 10 Mar 2017 04:38:36 -0600

Judd Morse wrote from ECCC for Bleeding Cool,

Writer Zack Davisson led a panel focusing on folklore in comics at the ECCC on Sunday. He was joined by Kel McDonald, author of Misfits of Avalon and the Cautionary Fables and Fairytales series, Brandon Seifert, author of Witchdoctor, and Jim Zub, author of Wayward. Colin Lorimer was scheduled to attend but couldn't make it.

The panel started off by trying to define the different terms of the supernatural in literature, those terms being religion, myth, legend, and folklore. Seifert said that religion to him is the most organized and structured of the terms. Legend deals with mythical people and events, but aren't necessarily "godish." He said that some characters, like Hercules, are also frustrating hybrids though, that are seen as both myths and legends. And myth, of course, deals with deities.

Folklore is more oratory than any of the rest, said Zub. Davisson agreed, and expanded slightly. He said that folklore is also the myth and legend of current times. Concepts like Slenderman or the recent clown panic are recent examples of modern folklore. Davisson also added that he sees religion as more of an ongoing to codify and structure folklore.

The panel agreed that folktales and folklore makes great story because it's also a lot of fun. There's a lot of underlying teaching tools, underlying drama there, said Zub. Folklore represents a shared interest and connection to the past.

Seifert agreed, and added that a lot of the power that comes from folklore comes from the fact that these stories have been retold and refined for generations.

McDonald said that change within folklore is constant, and often for the best. Many of the early Grimms fairytales didn't really make sense, she said. There'd often be characters changing into other characters or shapes and back again for no reason at all.
Davisson asked the panel which countries had the best folklore, and it was agreed that for the most part, the best folklore comes from isolated areas, islands like Japan and Britain and the Philippines. You'll see a lot of the same archetypes wherever you look, said Davisson, but island nations tend to have really cool, weird stuff.

The panel then discussed the effects of accidental change modern retellings of folklore has wrought. Vampires, for instance, only became plagued by the effects of sunlight because it was written into the silent film Nosferatu. Similarly, werewolves now enjoy a deadly allergy to silver because the writer of the Hollywood classic film The Wolfman was also a fan of the Lone Ranger, and just thought that silver bullets were neat.

Davisson closed out the panel by asking if the panelists feel like they need a historical context to explore folklore. As an outsider, is it cultural appropriation, asked Seifert? I don't know. That's something I wrestle with, he said.

If that's the case, countered Zub, does a British writer then have the necessary experience to write a character like Captain America?
Cautionary Fairytales got a lot of blowback from readers after publishing its Asian edition, said McDonald. In the upcoming Pacific Islands edition, McDonald and her team have made a big effort to source more cultural consultation to the project, as well as to bring on illustrators with more of a cultural link to the subject matter.

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