Myth and Miyazaki: Brenden Fletcher & Karl Kerschl on the Lush Visual Fantasy of Isola

By Ross Johnson / October 18, 2018 at 10:30 am

Inspired by the work of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, and a fascinating journey all its own, Isola is a visually stunning story of two formidable women on a quest. The Gotham Academy team of Brenden Fletcher, Karl Kerschl, and colorist Msassyk have joined letterer Aditya Bidikar (Motor Crush) for a very different type of story: the Queen of Maar is under the influence of an evil spell (she’s been transformed into a tiger), and the captain of her guard will stop at nothing to save her—even though the only hope of reversing it lies half a world away on the mythical island of Isola. The art is lush and bright—hands down, this one of the best looking books you’ll read this year—and the story unfolds with minimal text and maximal visuals.

Isola, Volume 1 (Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition)

Paperback $9.99

Isola, Volume 1 (Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition)

By Brenden Fletcher , Karl Kerschl
Artist Karl Kerschl , Msassyk

Paperback $9.99

The first collected trade edition is out this month in an exclusive B&N edition featuring a variant cover, design pages, pre-production materials, and a 10-page prequel tale. Writer Brenden Fletcher and artist Kark Kerschl were kind enough to chat with us about the book, a passion project for them both.

Brenden, you’ve talked about Miyazaki as an influence on all of your work, and his touch is certainly very present here. How does Ghibli figure specifically into the development of Isola?

Brenden: Karl and I labored on a project, the spiritual predecessor of Isola, for nearly a decade before we threw in the towel and moved on to other work. That story had been influenced by a lot of the surface elements of Miyazaki’s earlier films. I think we were both more than a little in love with his worldbuilding at the time.

When we were finally able to dive back into creating our own world, we pulled liberally from our previous unpublished work, but looking back now on how it all shook out, I feel like the elements of Miyazaki’s influence that found their way into Isola exist primarily in its tone, atmosphere, and approach to character-building [versus] a collection of similarly inspired designs. You can still see Ghibli in the visual language, but I think Miyazaki’s DNA runs a lot deeper.

Likewise, Karl, the book’s visual style is striking. What were your design inspirations?

Karl: I tried out a few different visual styles when I started work on Isola, but ultimately I defaulted back to something comfortable—a look inspired by traditional animation. I like flatly-colored characters and lush, painted backgrounds, [and that’s] the way I’ve approached the last few projects I’ve drawn. Fortunately, Michele Assarasakorn joined our team as colorist and brings a unique palette to the whole book. This being a fantasy world, we’re trying to take real world elements and abstract them with bold colors to make them more alien. Some direct inspirations include the Ghibli films (of course), Tolkien, and the Dark Souls and Zelda series of video games.

Is there other mythology that inspires the story and world? It has the feel of old folklore.

Brenden: Oh, wow, I’m glad it feels that way to you. It was certainly our hope to create something with a timeless feel. With that in mind, we pulled from a lot of myth while crafting the larger [mythos], and continue to do so for the smaller episodes in the ongoing comic book series. Influences we wear on our sleeves are the old Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen and the ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. You’ll find bits and pieces of our favorite stories littered throughout Isola if you look long enough. You’ll also note that the world we’re creating is populated with its own myths, stories, and songs that all play a part in influencing Olwyn and Rook on their journey, for good or for ill.

The connection between Rook and Queen Olwyn, two very different women, is central to the book. Can you talk a bit about it?

Brenden: What can we say without spoiling the story too terribly? Ha! The relationship is the very core of our story. I think their personalities, while on opposite ends of the spectrum, are quite complimentary. They’re almost like Felix and Oscar from The Odd Couple, pushing and pulling each other in unpleasant ways, but usually with the best of intentions, and always, in the end, bringing out the best in one another. At the center of any conflict Olwyn and Rook might have is a great love and deeper understanding than either woman is willing to admit.

And duty to their kingdom—can’t forget that duty is always getting in the way of what could otherwise be a perfectly healthy friendship. Olwyn was born into royalty, and that kind of upbringing and station is tough to shake, even when you’re trapped in the body of a blue tiger. Rook, on the other hand, has barely set foot in the kingdom of Maar her entire life, and isn’t very at home around the political scheming and stiff, upper class nonsense she’s meant to endure as the queen’s newly appointed captain of the guard.

You can see why it might take these two a little time and a few hundred miles of hiking to get comfortable enough to open up about their feelings.

Gotham Academy, Volume 1: Welcome to Gotham Academy

eBook $11.99

Gotham Academy, Volume 1: Welcome to Gotham Academy

By Becky Cloonan , Brenden Fletcher , Karl Kerschl

In Stock Online

eBook $11.99

Isola reunites the team from Gotham Academy. I’m curious how the three of you came back together for this. What was the development process like?

Brenden: Isola was in the works before we got the Gotham Academy gig. Karl and I had just wrapped an Assassin’s Creed graphic novel and were searching for our next project. After letting our previous personal project sit on the shelf unpublished for so many years, we felt it was time to get back on the horse and kick into a new creator-owned story.

We were only a few months into development when out studiomate, Becky Cloonan, got the call from DC Comics to make a new Batman-family series with a YA flavour. Becky was committed to another project at the time and couldn’t do the series on her own, so she asked us to join. The rest is history!

Karl: Gotham Academy went through some creative shifts in the coloring department, but we quickly landed Michele Assarasakorn (MSassyK) as our full-time colorist, and she became an indispensable part of the team. We asked her early on to work with us on Isola. Because we have a history of collaboration, we’re able to make decisions fairly quickly, and we put together palette maps and thematic beats that inform the flow of the story. It’s all actually quite fluid, in that details change dramatically in the process of creating the book.

The story is very much told through images, with long stretches very minimal dialogue. Does that create special challenges for either of you, either as an artist or as a writer?

Brenden: I don’t think I could do this book with any other illustrator. It’s crafted to play to Karl’s strengths. He’s uniquely gifted at bringing animals to life on the page, giving them an emotional journey without needing to fully anthropomorphize them. They appear to live and breathe and emote in a way we can empathize with.

It would certainly be easier to tell this story if Olwyn, while trapped in the form of a tiger, could speak to Rook, but I think the dynamic we’ve set up feels more convincingly real (as much as a partnership with a magical tiger queen can feel real, I guess), and the conflicts that ensue, more dynamic and interesting.

The animal characters (particularly Queen Olwyn) have tremendous personality, even without dialogue. Was that tough to convey?

Karl: Rook and Olwyn’s characters were very well established before I ever set pencil to page (or stylus to screen, to be more exact). Brenden and I talked a lot about their personalities, histories, and relationship, and that backstory informs the way I portray them. Making a tiger emote is a bit of a challenge, but if you look closely, the acting is all in her body language. There are some subtle facial expressions, but I feel pretty comfortable with Olwyn. Rook is actually a greater challenge, because her feelings are much more complex. She doesn’t have a great handle on her emotions, so there isn’t really a shorthand for her expressions—they’re different all the time. She’s less of an archetype, so I can’t rely on the usual behaviors. I think it took a whole story arc for me to really get comfortable with her.

And in closing, a shameless reference to some of the B&N exclusive content—can you talk a bit about the 10-page prologue, and what it adds to the story?

Brenden: The prologue sets up the conflict at the heart of Isola while offering insight into the paths the queen and her future captain were on before they intersected. We see critical moments in the relationship of Olwyn and her brother Asher, and a little of Rook’s life in the field, serving in the Circle Guard. But maybe the most intriguing part of the prologue is that it offers very strong hints at what’s to come in later volumes—there’s a character introduced in those pages who doesn’t otherwise appear in the first volume, but plays a very important part in the overall tale. I’m really excited for people to come back to this prologue story in time, and recall how that character and these events set the plot in motion.

The exclusive B&N edition of Isola, Vol. 1 is available on October 30.