Tag: Andrea Offermann

Smash Pages Q&A: Andrea Offermann on ‘Yvain: The Knight of the Lion’

The artist discusses the artistic choices she made for the book, the ways that she was allowed to play with the script and help shape the story, and the comics scene in Germany right now

Andrea Offerman has drawn picture books and illustrated novels including The Midnight Zoo, The Boneshaker, The Broken Lands, and The Thickety. Her art has been exhibited in Germany, the United States and elsewhere. Comics fans might known here best as one of the members of the Flight collective, contributing stories to two volumes of the anthology series.

I spoke with her in 2007 about the short comic she made for Flight Volume 4, her first published comic, and we spoke again recently about the graphic novel Yvain–The Knight of the Lion, written by M.T. Anderson, which is out now from Candlewick Press. The book is her first graphic novel and it is an artistic tour de force for many reasons, and we spoke about the artistic choices she made, the ways that she was allowed to play with the script and help shape the story, and the comics scene in Germany right now.

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Smash Pages Q&A: M.T. Anderson on ‘Yvain: The Knight of the Lion’

M.T. Anderson has written everything from picture books to young adult novels. Anderson received the National Book Award in 2006 and he’s written contemporary stories, historical ones, fantasy and science fiction novels including Feed, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, and the recent Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. His first graphic novel, Yvain: The Knight of the Lion, illustrated by Andrea Offermann, is out now from Candlewick Press.

The book is a retelling of a 12th Century epic poem by Chrétien de Troyes. Though not well known today, de Troyes is considered one of the greatest and most influential medieval writers. Anderson and Offermann made a number of striking and inspired artistic choices as far as how they approached and presented the story, which is both very much about the 12th-13th centuries, but also very contemporary in some ways.

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