We managed to get ahold of author Ivo van Woerden and artist Gemma Plum and asked them a few questions – here are their answers!
Gemma Plum is a Dutch artist with degrees in industrial design, graphic design, and graphic narrative. Previous projects have seen her work for public libraries, governmental health departments, children’s rights organisations and The City Archive of Rotterdam. Her work and stories have been published in Dutch and international magazines, newspapers and books, as well as featured in several galleries and museums around Europe.
Ivo van Woerden is a journalist and writer. He has authored various literary non-fiction books and has contributed to Dutch and international newspapers and magazines. He’s been nominated for several writing and journalism awards, and won a prize for his 2015 prose version of The Great Marc Evers.
SelfMadeHero:As some SelfMadeHero readers may already know, The Great Marc Evers started out as an award-winning prose biography published in 2015. How did you both come together to transform that work into a graphic novel?
Ivo van Woerden: I attended a lecture on the power of graphic journalism and was hugely inspired by this inspired by this, in my eyes, new way of telling a true story. I felt in my bones that The Great Marc Evers would be perfect for a graphic novel. I reached out to the lecturer and she connected me to Gemma. We met and hit it off. I loved a short story she had just made at the time. She also felt a personal connection to Marc Evers’ story, which gave it another layer of depth and importance. And she also saw the potential of this being a graphic novel: the story would be open to more readers, also the ones who were having trouble reading prose, like Marc Evers himself.
Gemma Plum: When I received Ivo’s email, I was immediately enthusiastic. I had never heard of Marc, and was never a swimming fan, but I recognised parts of his struggles as a neurodivergent person myself. I’m dyslexic, and I didn’t learn language according to the typical plan. Although I came to love language, along the way I ran into similar help and hindrances that a diagnosis and the accompanying prognosis can bring.
SMH: The Great Marc Evers, naturally, explores Marc’s own rise to glory, but also focuses on the efforts of his family to help Marc become more than what his early doctors believed he could be. What was it like to intertwine the journeys of Marc and Marc’s family? How did you go about translating that balance into this visual medium?
Ivo: When I met the Evers family it was clear to me that Marc’s incredible accomplishments were intertwined with what his parents had endured, had overcome and accomplished, so I wanted to bring both to the forefront of the story. In this story, Marc, his entire family, and those who helped are all heroes.
Gemma: To me, it actually felt like the story of the parents, Frank and Gitty. The interviews with them form the backbone of the story. Although the interview format is not ideal for graphic novels, I felt it worked really well in this particular story because it kept the balance visible. The parents recount the choices they had to make, what that meant, and how that felt. They’re face to face with the reader, as if you’re there with them, having a personal conversation. These short moments are recurring stepping stones between the sequences of Marc struggling and developing. They work well together.
SMH: The push for truthful and respectful representation of neurodivergent people has intensified in recent years, and its prominence in comics is also partly reflected in the growing Graphic Medicine movement. How aware were you of this sentiment when you started adapting this work? Did the process at all change or inform your perspective on representation?
Ivo: We’ve been very aware about how labels can sometimes be a help and a hindrance, from our own lives. And that being able to connect to a story, through being able to identify with the characters, will help raise awareness and understanding.
Gemma: I was very aware of the need for a story like this to reach a broader audience, but I wasn’t aware of the Graphic Medicine movement at the time. I only learned about it when the Dutch version of the book received a great review on GraphicMedicine.org.
SMH: This book’s early pages delve into a strikingly frank account of Marc’s parents navigating the difficulties of caring for a neurodivergent infant and the painstaking process of going back and forth between different doctors while trying to adapt at home. Readers may imagine that depicting a champion is easy enough, but what challenges arose in representing these earlier stages?
Ivo: For me the earlier stages are important because they show the difficulty both Frank and Gitty Evers faced in just finding the smallest signs of growth in their child and trying to make those signs just a little bit bigger with the right help and guidance. They also show that they weren’t out to make Mark into anything more than someone who gets a chance at life, whatever that might have looked like. There were chances to be taken and lessons to be learned to find out how to communicate with him, to learn about his likes and dislikes. They thought it would be good for him to learn how to deal with water because of a ditch behind their house, and that’s where they gradually discovered he enjoyed going to the pool. But it would take many more years for them to realise that his talent in the water was exceptional.
Gemma: I think the difficult balancing act in the book isn’t so much the difference between the early stages and his later success, but between "accepting who you are" and "feeling the need to (help) grow and develop." I’ve noticed people tend to want one or the other, but you need both.I noticed enthusiastic journalists retelling the story of Marc’s parents as them "fighting" or "disregarding" the diagnosis and "pushing" Marc. But that is not what happened. They accepted the diagnosis; they just didn’t want to write Marc off because of it, and they kept paying attention to what he seemed to like and wanted to do. They kept seeing him as a developing individual instead of as an overwhelming statistic.On the other hand, there are people who throw themselves into complete and passive acceptance following the realization that we are all different and have different needs. They feel it is harsh and painful to ask people to do things that are more difficult for them than for others. They think that is loving and kind, but it is equally disrespectful and damaging. When I was little, as I was struggling to get my head around this language ordeal, a remedial teacher told me I should just accept that I was handicapped. I could easily have interpreted that as, "Don’t bother, you’re excused." If I had followed her lead, I would not only have become "handicapped", I would never have grown to love language or more importantly, I would never have been able to (re)tell stories like this.
SMH: In The Great Marc Evers, readers will notice chaotic dark scrawls that obscure parts of certain images, and therefore parts of the story itself. These sometimes represent Marc’s nonverbal cries as an infant, but also serve to visually convey the confusion and distress that neurodivergent people can experience in an unpredictable world. Where did that artistic motif come from?
Ivo: I will let Gemma take this one. I loved how she incorporated them.
Gemma: Frustration… To me, that’s what it felt like not being able to communicate precisely. When designing the story, I didn’t know whether that was a universal representation, but Marc, Frank, and Gitty recognised it immediately. So, there it is.
SMH: Returning to the medical element, and how that ties into athletic training, the book maintains an in-depth approach to presenting the complex web of people involved in helping Marc reach his potential. Was that an important thing to get right in the transition from prose to illustration? How did you work together to effectively include this literal supporting cast?
Ivo: It takes a village to raise and support an athlete at the top of their game, and because this village was made of people who took the effort to understand Marc and the disabilities he was dealing with, we wanted to show their approach. It’s not just a shout out, it’s a representation of a group of people who are out there who do get it, who do know how to be of help.
Gemma: Frank, Marc’s father, repeatedly mentioned that they owed so much to Marc’s sponsors and supporters. Representing them as they actually are is a way of thanking them. A shout-out, as Ivo put it. And indeed, it is a reminder that everybody needs people who are willing to see the individual behind "the client."
SMH: Last of all, what do you hope this publication of The Great Marc Evers will show to English-language readers who may not yet know Marc’s story?
Ivo: It’s such a joy to know Marc's life story is now available to the English-language readers to offer a new perspective. I hope it’ll be an inspiration to anyone who reads it. This story is about what happens when you start looking for a ‘yes’ when everyone else says ‘no’.
Gemma: I love what happens when the focus shifts to what is possible instead of what is not. I hope this mindset makes wonderful things happen on many different turfs.
As always, thanks for reading! The Great Marc Evers is out now in the UK, and out in North America on November 1oth!
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