By Brian Truitt, USA TODAY
Andrew Rostan's nickname is "Jeopardy" because he was a five-time winner of the TV game show in 2007.
Artwork by Dave Valeza and Kate Kasenow, Archaia
Not exactly Mary Worth: An Elegy for Amelia Johnson is the story of a 30-year-old terminal cancer patient and a unique challenge she gives to her two friends.
Artwork by Dave Valeza and Kate Kasenow, Archaia
Not exactly Mary Worth: An Elegy for Amelia Johnson is the story of a 30-year-old terminal cancer patient and a unique challenge she gives to her two friends.
Soon, though, "best seller" may be a more apt moniker.
Published by Archaia Entertainment, An Elegy for Amelia Johnson ($14.95) is the debut graphic novel for the writer as well as for artists ? and Savannah College of Art and Design classmates ? Dave Valeza and Kate Kasenow. The book is in comic shops now and will be in bookstores March 15.
It's the story of Amelia, a 30-year-old woman who has terminal breast cancer, and her two oldest friends: Henry, a filmmaker, and Jillian, a magazine writer. Henry and Jillian are struggling to rediscover their creative voices when Amelia gives them a mission: She wants them to deliver video messages to people close to her and chronicle their responses. (Amelia also has some ulterior motives.)
Philosophical autobiography
Rostan, 26, started writing the novel in August 2007. He had attended Emerson College with Archaia's editor in chief, Stephen Christy, who had told Rostan he should write a comic. But later, Christy gently told him that his superhero and science-fiction ideas weren't that great. Rostan asked him what he wanted, and Christy replied, "I want to tell a story about love and time."
Rostan chose to do that in a story about death.
"I'm not the type of person who wants to write stories with depressing endings," Rostan says. "Walt Disney once said how he's a happy-ending kind of guy, and so am I. So I started to think of how I can get an 'up' ending in a story about death, and everything flowed from there."
Elegy turned out to be an autobiography of sorts for Rostan, at least philosophically. "These are my own thoughts about life, love, death, the universe, everything, coming out through a multitude of voices," he says.
Amelia's final heartfelt message to Henry and Jillian was something that took Rostan a while to perfect. "The key to it was asking myself, 'What does she really want from all of this?' What she says is basically her answer," he says. "It's something that any of us can relate to. We all want to believe we are well thought of, that we didn't leave a negative impact on the world when we go."
As he was drawing Elegy, Vazela connected with the themes of friendship and of struggling to follow a dream.
Where no one is a saint
"That's how I related to both Henry and Jillian: They both found their fields and have made accomplishments in their fields, but they're stagnating because of insecurity and because of the missing part of their self-esteem. That's something I would see every day in my friends and myself. You're just aiming for something but you're not quite there yet, or maybe you're just selling yourself short," Vazela says. He had to step back from the project before it was finished, so Kasenow was brought in.
"Dave has a simpler style than mine, but I believe his drawings boil down a lot of extraneous details and show emotional expressions in their truest sense," Kasenow says. "Andrew's story is both beautiful and meaningful. It was a great feeling to bring that to life."
Rostan wanted to convey the reality that nobody is a saint, not even the seemingly angelic Amelia.
"In her own way, she's as messed up as anybody. That's real life. I don't believe anybody is purely good or purely evil. In fact, I like to tell my parents that I always have loved them, but I really loved them after I found out they were as flawed as anybody. I know I've got a lot of flaws. But I also believe we have an innate capacity for goodness."
Rostan has no problem at all being called "Jeopardy" a while longer ? "It was a dream of mine since I was in preschool, and I used to watch Alex Trebek sitting in my grandfather's lap, so I'm happy I did that" ? as long as he can also be called a writer.
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