Terri Favro is an award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Her literary science fiction novel, Sputnik’s Children, was named a Globe and Mail Best Book and made the CBC Canada Reads longlist. It was followed by The Sister’s Sputnik and her non-fiction book, Generation Robot. Ron Edding, Terri Favro’s husband, is a Canadian artist who has successfully exhibited and performed his work internationally. Terri and Ron have collaborated on several graphic novels including the Bella Series and now the amazing, Cold City. This dynamic graphic novel duo is definitely a collaboration to watch. Attend the official book launch in Toronto on Sunday April 14, from 1:00PM to 4:00PM, at Cafe and Comics.
Terri, where did the idea for this graphic novel come from?
The idea was sparked by a framed photograph hanging in a room where Ron was teaching art. The photo, which was from the 1930s, was of a young man who, according to a plaque on the frame, died “in defense of his father’s home”. Ron’s curiosity was piqued. He researched the story through newspaper archives and discovered that the young man had been shot in 1933 while wrestling with a burglar trying to break into his family home on Wellesley Street in Toronto. The young man was from a prominent family – his father was a surgeon at Wellesley Hospital. The shooting victim only survived for three days, but that was long enough to identify the gunman as a “man with an accent and a swarthy complexion.” The crime set off a media storm in Toronto and a hunt for the gunman in immigrant sections of the city, like the old Ward neighbourhood, which many Torontonians of that time considered a slum. There was a substantial reward for information. Even though this took place during the depths of the Depression, when people were desperate for money, no one informed on the gunman.
Inspired by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s classic graphic novel, From Hell, which combined fact and fiction to tell the story of the Jack the Ripper murders in Victorian London, Ron and I decided to tell both the true story of the murder, and a possible fictional story identifying a killer and explaining what had happened to the gun and how the murderer got away. For several years, on the date and time of the shooting, we visited the scene of the crime where the young man’s house once stood, and walked toward Union Station through various streets and alleyways, to see what buildings were left from 1933 and what route the killer might have taken to escape. We assume that he might have made his way to the train station before the police even started looking for him. At the time, the Toronto police still relied on callboxes to alert ‘beat cops’ of a crime: it would be another year before two-way radios were installed in police cars. So, the response to the murder by the police might have been slow enough to allow the killer to escape by train.
Ron, where do the visuals start for you? Did you focus on a certain scene or plot point and build from there or did you go in the order of the plot or just make character sketches first?
As collaborators, Terri and I spend a lot of time discussing the project concept before we do anything else. During the process of writing and drawing, new ideas will come and go, but we try to maintain a firm grasp of what the story is about. Character sketches come next. Terri and I have to agree on what the characters should look like. As for the drawings, I follow the script that Terri has developed, working intuitively to create the images in each frame so the story is told in words and images. Individual frames have to work with each other on the page to establish the rhythm and pacing appropriate for the story.
Terri, why did you decide to start in 1994 and tell the story as a flashback?
As I mentioned, the scene of the crime was on Wellesley Street. The house was demolished in the 1970s –– an apartment building stands there now –– but it is very close to Barbara Hall Park, where the AIDS Memorial was built in 1994. So, the story is bookended by two overarching crises… the Depression (1933 was probably the worst year) and the AIDS epidemic. This also gave us an opportunity to tell the story in the words of someone who had witnessed the crime: our imaginary child accomplice, Claudio. He was only thirteen in 1933 when the murder took place, and in 1994 he’s in his seventies and in poor health. He finally reveals his part in the murder to a friend, a journalist, because he wants the friend to find out what happened to the gunman. While Claudio was an accomplice to the murder, he was an innocent. He can’t reveal what he knows to the police without both implicating both himself and his sister Caterina so he keeps the gunman’s identity (and the location of the murder weapon) a secret, only sharing the information with his friend. So, the story is shown through the eyes of an eyewitness – Claudio as a child in 1933 – but also with the passage of time, the greater knowledge of an older man – Claudio in 1994.
Ron, there are two styles of drawing that come through in the novel. One is very detailed in the depiction of the buildings and backgrounds, while the people are drawn a bit looser and more freely. Why did you choose to do this?
I think of buildings (ancient to modern) as indifferent and mute witnesses to the human drama taking place in and around them. I prefer to draw them as they are. That being said, through the use of shadow, line and point of view, an accurately drawn building can still be portrayed as menacing, inviting, powerful, etc. Buildings do not move or speak. Humans, of course, are the opposite. We express ourselves in speech, but also in facial expressions, body position and hand gestures. I am not fond of a hyper realistic illustrative style that freezes people in the way a statue does. A looser drawing style allows the reader (viewer) the opportunity to see things a little differently each time they look at the image.
Terri, was it difficult to capture the voice of 1930s Italian-Canadians?
My grandparents all emigrated to Canada in the 1920s, so the cadences of speech, the “Canadese” words and the slang were all very familiar to me! I was just channeling the voices of elders I grew up with.
Ron, was it difficult for you to visually recreate the Toronto of the 1930s?
Archival photographs, maps and our own collection of books about the history of Toronto were all very useful. My favourite thing to do, however, is to walk around the city and take reference photos of relevant locations and then adapt them to my drawings. If you look hard enough, you’ll find a lot of 1930s Toronto hiding in plain sight. Drawings of the House of Providence House were the most challenging. I used two poor photographs of the building (which has been gone since the 1960s) and the site plan from an old city map, to try and reproduce the structure. In relation to the previous question, it is the only building in the graphic novel that seems to “change character” in the course of the story.
Terri, why did you choose to end the novel with a jump to the year 2000?
Although the actual cold case is still open (the gunman was never caught), we wanted our graphic novel to have a satisfying ending, one that provided both the characters and the reader with closure. We decided that Claudio – who had been burdened with the secret of the gunman’s identity all his life –– should have his wish fulfilled, that his friend the journalist would solve the mystery and share that information with Claudio’s niece. Using an email on the last page was also a way of showing the passage of time. So much had changed from 1933 to 2000, not only in the characters’ lives but the world around them!
Ron, how does the art of this graphic novel differ for you from the artwork in the Bella Series?
All the Bella stories (a series of four comics that Terri and I had published previously) were drawn in graphite, one full page at a time. There is a certain freedom in this approach as the artist is not restricted by the frame. Cold City is drawn in pen and ink, frame by frame – over 900 8” x 11” drawings! The frames, as I pointed out earlier, have to work together to create a page. The frames can be expanded and contracted at the service of the story. Pen and ink require the use of line to create variations in tone. That, combined with solid black and white, created the overall look and feel of the graphic novel.
Terri, it seems like you are telling Italian-Canadian stories in your graphic novels. Why is this important to you?
I feel that these are my stories to tell. For many years, I never read or saw stories about Italian-Canadians. I would say they are still a rarity. So many of the stories that we see as “Italian-something” are actually Italian-American stories or based on Mafia stereotypes. I like a good gangster story as much as the next person, but it’s getting to be a lazy, tired stereotype. Yes, Cold City is a crime story, but it’s also a story about people: immigration, desperation and redemption, not another version of The Godfather. It’s time to tell other stories and I’m very happy to tell them.
Ron, how does graphic novel art fit in with your other artwork or projects?
I have always enjoyed the collaborative process and the exchange of ideas that eventually coalesce to form something entirely new. Filmmaking has always been an inspiration for me and editing a graphic novel is not unlike editing film. However, drawing has always been at the heart of my visual arts practice. I regard drawing as a basic cognitive process and I have been making marks and lines ever since I could hold a pencil.
Terri and Ron, what’s next for this amazing graphic novel collaboration?
We are working on a historically-based graphic novel set in both Toronto and Italy during the rise of fascism. Accidental Hero is a story that takes place in Canada and Italy so there are a whole bunch of challenging and exciting drawings to be done. Our research and storytelling process is similar to Cold City. We were honoured to receive a Toronto Arts Council grant for Accidental Hero and look forward to having the graphic novel finished some time in 2025.
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