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A Girl Walks into the Woods is the latest project from Old North graphic novelist Diana Tamblyn. It’s a short comic, yet powerful.
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A Girl Walks into the Woods is the latest project from Old North graphic novelist Diana Tamblyn. It’s a short comic, yet powerful.
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You may know Tamblyn as the creator behind graphic biographies of historical figures such as Frederick Banting (Duty Must be Done) and Gerald Bull (From Earth to Bablyon). She’s also the founder of London’s Ting Comic and Graphic Arts Festival.
What’s new this time around is how Tamblyn is not also the writer. Instead, she adapted the story from poet Cornelia Hoogland’s Woods Wolf Girl, which re-tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood from the viewpoint of different characters.
To borrow terminology from the academic world, the 26-page, digest-sized comic is not a unified narrative.
Visually, it’s stunning. Never has Tamblyn’s art been this rich. The splash page on which Red enters the woods is breathtaking. Tamblyn’s biggest influence as an artist is the legendary Jack Kirby and you can see the same attention to detail in her work.
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Tamblyn used her own teenage daughter, Rosie, as the model for Red, which might explain how expressive the young protagonist’s face is.
I also love the play with panels. There are pages here with three panels, seven panels, nine panels – varying the structure of each page is one of those Jedi mind tricks Tamblyn uses to grab and keep the reader’s interest.
Tamblyn credits Hoogland as the co-creator of the book. I have not read the poetry that inspired the comic, but here is a story that rewards multiple readings.
Ultimately, it’s a story about one young woman’s ability to assert herself in a hostile world, as indicated by the final line: “The girl is not always eaten.”
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