How A Prize-winning Cartoonist Brings Hand-drawn Comics To The Web

Jailed during nan 2021 coup successful Myanmar, American journalist Danny Fenster spent six months arsenic a governmental prisoner. For overmuch of his incarceration he battled boredom and fear, subsisting connected meditation and podcasts connected an SD paper smuggled successful by mail, sent by his girlfriend, Juliana.

Now, astir 5 years aft his release, he collaborated pinch his relative Amy Kurzweil, a celebrated New Yorker cartoonist and graphic memoirist, connected a long-form interactive comic for The Verge astir his imprisonment. I chatted via email pinch Kurzweil astir her domiciled arsenic an illustrator and storyteller successful this eager long-form project, nan responsibilities inherent successful telling personification else’s story, and really she produced rich, multilayered drawings utilizing only a pencil.

Any Kurzweil: When Danny was first imprisoned, I called my friend Ahmed Naji, a writer who had been imprisoned by Egypt’s authoritarian authorities for 9 months successful 2016. He told maine that nan acquisition of cruel imprisonment tin beryllium worse for group connected nan outside; you attraction astir nan detained but person nary accusation astir what’s happening. I’m not judge I judge him, but I did admit Ahmed’s validation that nan not knowing was a typical benignant of torture. That was portion of my information for wanting to collaborate pinch Danny connected this piece. I wanted to cognize what his acquisition was like, to cognize it successful detail, and to let myself immoderate informed imagination of nan reality I’d blindly groped astatine successful my mind.

As you tin imagine, Danny’s lawsuit was a large portion of my family’s life successful 2021. Along pinch Juliana, our family formed a benignant of impromptu SWAT squad dedicated to figuring retired what to do. We met regularly pinch our embassy, and called connected each assets we could deliberation of. (We were organized — we had a Slack channel!) We met different group who’d knowledgeable this typical torture, and we corralled a organization of group invested successful nan ngo to #BringDannyHome and #ProtectThePress.

But we didn’t really cognize what Danny was experiencing. There was a profound disconnect betwixt our banal regular realities and nan unknowns of Danny’s detainment. I person a vivid representation of taking early greeting meetings pinch erstwhile ambassadors while connected a picnic successful Disney World pinch my brother’s family, opinionated successful statement for It’s a Small World while posting astir my cousin’s imprisonment. The disorientation of this acquisition had a profound effect connected everyone successful my family. We felt retired of control. Helping to create a activity of creation that testifies to nan specifications and specifics of what happened feels profoundly orienting. It’s healing. This is 1 logic why imaginative and immersive storytelling is truthful important: It gives america a prolonged emotion of being like, Ooh, that’s what it was like.

How did this imaginative collaboration activity betwixt you and Danny?

Danny is simply a talented writer, and I was happy to return advantage of his desire to archive his experiences and his openness to doing it successful a multimedia way. We started pinch conversations, and worked together to fig retired nan portion of his acquisition that could construe good to a communicative for The Verge. We knew we wanted to item nan value of storytelling and media, some arsenic a measurement to header pinch uncertainty and arsenic a measurement to link group crossed literal and metaphorical bars. Danny began by penning prose, past we worked together to accommodate his essays and selections from his situation journals to a comic book complete Google Docs, and past I started sketching.

Tell america astir your drafting process.

Drawing has ever been my measurement to link to a consciousness of nan truth, for 2 reasons. The first is that drafting is embodied; it helps maine consciousness and transmit emotion. The 2nd is that drafting reveals details.

Danny sent maine each nan applicable pictures he had of Myanmar, on pinch his journals, which had a fewer sketches successful them, but location are nary nationalist photographs of Insein Prison. We looked together astatine nan Google Maps outer position of nan panopticon and he showed maine his ward and explained what happened where. He drew maine galore maps — of his and Juliana’s apartments, of his ward and his cell, but nan only different ocular assets I could trust connected was a postulation of drawings by Maung Pho, a erstwhile captive successful a different ward.

When I tie a abstraction I can’t see, moreover successful a elemental style, I request truthful galore questions answered: What was nan level of your compartment made of? What was nan texture of nan walls and what was written connected them? What did you spot done nan bars of your cell? Where was your furniture and wherever did you support your things? Oh, you really had a New Yorker tote successful your compartment for six months? Cool. Each drafting required revision; sometimes Danny needed to spot maine tie thing — successful item — earlier he remembered what nan abstraction really looked like. That wall was taller, and that wall had barbed ligament connected it, and location were weeds there, and location were nary trees here... This comic required much back-and-forth revision of drawings than thing I’ve ever worked on. That’s partially why I drew nan finals successful pencil.

But it was truthful gratifying erstwhile I’d really get thing right, and I’d think, Wow, drafting is nan astir magical exertion location is.

How did tech play a domiciled successful your drawing?

Danny and I relied heavy connected texting to stock images and explain things arsenic I worked. We were capable to walk immoderate clip moving and sharing notes successful person, but astir of our process happened pinch america crossed nan world from each other: Me successful nan US, Danny successful Vietnam, wherever he was surviving until recently. We besides organized (somewhat chaotically) each our ocular and textual resources successful Google Drive folders.

I tie by hand. I for illustration nan nonstop relationship pinch nan paper, and I particularly for illustration drafting successful pencil because of nan clash and consciousness of nan line. I do a batch of tracing, for illustration really I held insubstantial up to my machine surface to trace Danny’s handwriting from nan scans of his situation journals. For my finals, I drew nan under-draft successful bluish pencil, and past I’d “ink” pinch Blackwing pencils, which are heavy and create beautiful darks.

A bully scanner (and bully scanner software) is truthful important: I usage an Epson wide format pinch Epson Scan 2 software. Then successful Photoshop, I discarded nan bluish pencil underlayer and tweaked nan levels, truthful nan acheronian pencil became higher opposition without losing grayscale and texture. Photoshop besides became my canvas for playing pinch layout, and approximating really nan travel of layers would activity successful nan last animated version. I’m obsessed pinch really pencil marks look connected a integer screen, and I deliberation “inking” successful pencil saves maine a batch of process headache and preserves nan first emotion and travel of a spontaneous drawing.

How was exertion a portion of Danny’s acquisition successful prison?

One of nan first things Danny said to maine erstwhile he sewage retired of prison, which I’ll ne'er forget, is that it was bully to beryllium without his phone. This is not to downplay nan suffering, but it’s emblematic of Danny to make an study for illustration that, to look from imprisonment noticing that he’d been offered something. One of nan questions we wanted this communicative to research was: If we are truthful inundated pinch information, pinch stories astir suffering and hardship and injustice, really do we really grant an individual news story? In a democracy, we request entree to each of these stories, but really tin we care astir immoderate 1 of them?

That’s to opportunity thing of each nan untold stories. Danny and I are only successful a position to show his Myanmar communicative because he was fortunate capable to beryllium an American pinch immoderate resources. We deliberation nan reply present has thing to do pinch trade and emotion and immersion, what we dream this communicative offers readers, but it besides has thing to do pinch nan mind of nan story’s recipient.

The climax of this comic involves Danny receiving, from Juliana, a communicative that really moved him: a This American Life section astir different American imprisoned abroad. Danny had mislaid dependable entree to pen and paper, nan basal technologies he’d primitively relied connected to make meaning and capable his time, truthful he’d been meditating, readying his mind for boredom, and past present comes… a podcast!