'The Nutcracker and The Mouse King: The Graphic Novel' officially releases next week, September 8th! (Patreon)

Fewf! It's been a long time coming but after 3 years, lots of rewrites, mountains of edits and a ton of noodley drawing- we're finally here! I'm very excited to announce that The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is hitting bookstore shelves next week. It's still super sad that I can't bring this around to conventions and comic festivals, but maybe that'll be an option next year, who knows. For now I'm just glad I can finally hold it and move on to the next project! I'm currently working on a pitch, but still feel extremely anxious about it, so I'm letting it simmer a bit longer...maybe I'll be ready when I've forgotten how much work this one was to make haha. 

Above are some sneak peeks at the interior illustrations and some process step by step images! These are some of my favorite pages from the book because they're some of the silliest pages!

Here are some thoughts behind the process of adapting this story!

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King: A Graphic Novel is an adaptation of the original German/Prussian text from 'Nussknacker und Mausekönig' written by ETA Hoffmann in 1816. (We were originally going to call this book The Nutcracker Prince, but when I found out what the original name in German was for it I felt the need to keep it the same name- especially because that was the text I was adapting!) 

The original story reads more like a Grimm fairytale than Tchaikovsky's ballet version, and the original has an entire side story in the middle of the book that the ballet completely omits! The first image in this image set on Patreon is the opening to that embedded narrative. Have you seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? If you have then you’ll surely remember the bizarre ‘fairytale’ that the father tells to his children on the beach...that soon becomes more reality than fiction! That was one of my favorite movies growing up and I drew on that nested story for inspiration. I actually wonder if CCBB was in turn inspired by the original Nutcracker! 

While this story is not the ballet, it’s not far from it. Alexandre Dumas actually cut this whole embedded narrative and replaced it with an embellishment of the original Nutcracker ending where the Nutcracker leads Marie to his kingdom. In the ballet, Clara (who is named Marie in the original but changed to Clara for Dumas' version) and the Nutcracker visit the realms of the dolls around the world. This part in the book is actually filled with political messages from 1816 that ETA Hoffmann thought would be a clever way to talk about turmoil in the Ottoman Empire. The story specifically referred to groups of people I felt was unnecessary for modern young readers. I see why Dumas and Tchaikovsky kind of ran with their own versions and edited out quite a lot. Hoffmann had some serious editing to do and it's an interesting book for it's time because there was no moral instruction in the book at all. I added a bit throughout, but not much, to keep it the stream of conciousness, wild ride that it was intended to be. I tried to keep this book as close to the original as possible but made several decisions to update scenes to make the book feel right for our time, focusing on Marie’s imagination and deep caring for others. 

A few days ago Google was celebrating the life of Alexandre Dumas, so I decided to share a bit about my inspiration for my Nutcracker character designs!-->

Alexandre Dumas was a black novelist and one of the most celebrated French authors of the 19th century. He wrote the Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo and edited the version of the Nutcracker story that Tchaikovsky made into The Nutcracker Ballet. He essentially propelled the Nutcracker to it’s fame as one of the most influential and recreated stories of all time. 

I have loved the Count of Monte Cristo since I was a kid, it’s probably one of MY favorite stories of all time, so when I was first asked by First Second Books to draw a Nutcracker graphic novel based on the original story I knew I wanted to add Dumas in somehow, even though I wasn’t drawing the ballet version. All of Dumas’ stories have wonderful adventures with incredibly brave, strong-willed main characters in them. I think that's what makes his stories timeless for both kids and adults. With that in mind I decided to add Dumas in as an adventurous, strong willed kid- who also happens to be the story’s lead- The Nutcracker! The above photo of the boy is the Nutcracker in his human form, seen finally when an evil spell is broken by Marie’s loyalty and love. 

The next image is his father, The Astronomer, who was loosely based on Dumas' father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, who was a great general in the French army! He once had a clash with Napoleon Bonaparte and was thrown into a dungeon for 3 years- just like Edmond in the Count of Monte Cristo!! The Astronomer in The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, is also threatened by a mighty leader or else he’ll be thrown into the dungeon, and I thought such a brave character should also be a Dumas. 

Here's a picture of all the characters together!

That's probably enough for now, I'll circle back around and post more about the chapter openers too, and more about the process of working with an editor and actually getting the book made!

As always, let me know if you have any questions!
Natalie