Q&A with Nadja Baer (Adapter) and David Cohen (Chief Strategist of Round Table Companies)

I posted about a graphic adap­ta­tion of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion a few days ago. When I got a chance to send some ques­tions to Nadja Baer, the adapter, I jumped on it, as an added bonus Mr. Cohen chimed in as well to make it a very inter­est­ing and unique post.

Q. What was the idea behind writ­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion in graphic novel for­mat?
+David (Pub­lisher): One of the procur­ing causes for adapt­ing books into comics was to make con­tent more acce­si­ble to an audi­ence that cur­rently doesn't favor it.  When look­ing at our wish list of IP for 2012 the Con­sti­tu­tion eas­ily made our short list for titles to move into pro­duc­tion.  Besides the fact that this is an elec­tion year, the Con­sti­tu­tion is a doc­u­ment that has steadily lost ground in our edu­ca­tional sys­tem.  There are many rea­sons for this that have noth­ing to do with the con­tent, but we wanted to make this an easy choice for a kid to pick up and read.  We've played with the edu­ca­tional sec­tor and saw this as an oppor­tu­nity to dive in. 

~Nadja: I would add that putting it into a visual for­mat makes not only the con­tent, but also the con­text much more acces­si­ble. A lot of peo­ple tend to think of history–including the peo­ple in history–as a list of names, events, and dates to be mem­o­rized for exams.  Under­stand­ing the indi­vid­u­als, their per­son­al­i­ties, and the cir­cum­stances in which they debated and wrote the Con­sti­tu­tion helps mod­ern read­ers to inter­pret the mean­ing behind the words.

Q. With all the talk about Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity which has been in the news for the last 10 years or so, do you think that mod­ern politi­cians are try­ing to work within the guide­lines or around them?
~Nadja: That's a tricky ques­tion.  I don't think it's all that eas­ily gen­er­al­ized to be able to lump all politi­cians and all the debates of Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity into one cat­e­gory and say, "Yep, they've all gone rogue," or "No, they're play­ing straight by the rules."

Q. In many of the pan­els I noticed a pat­tern of the Found­ing Fathers "giv­ing it" to mod­ern politi­cians. Was that on pur­pose or a Freudian slip?
~Nadja: It's not so much the Founders them­selves giv­ing it to mod­ern politi­cians as the per­son­i­fi­ca­tions of the exec­u­tive branches of gov­ern­ment.  Those per­son­i­fi­ca­tions were a pur­pose­ful choice in that they were not depicted as belong­ing to either mod­ern times, or of the late 1700's; they are able to bridge the gap between the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive and a mod­ern read­ing of the text, and to help illus­trate that the Founders def­i­nitely had pos­ter­ity in mind when they set up the rules (and there­fore able to stick it to the mod­ern politico).

Q. Who is your favorite Found­ing Father and why?
~Nadja: John Adams.  He comes across (from his own writ­ing) as a neu­rotic spit­fire; he was pas­sion­ate, opin­ion­ated, and funny to boot. Read the biog­ra­phy by David McCul­lough or My Dear­est Friend: Let­ters of Abi­gail and John Adams, edited by Hogan & Tay­lor and then tell me you don't agree.  Of course, we have that extra per­spec­tive in get­ting to see him so closely from his own and Abagail's words to each other that we don't have for all of the Founders, so it's easy to think of him as some­how more human.

Q. Any positive/negative expe­ri­ences in book pro­mo­tions? What are the chal­lenges of book pro­mo­tions in the social media age?
+David (Pub­lisher): I may be a glass half full kind of guy, but I see the cur­rent pro­mo­tional cli­mate as an oppor­tu­nity.  As many before me have remarked, the pub­lish­ing indus­try wasn't work­ing as it had for decades.  This reces­sion is a great equal­izer and an oppor­tu­nity for any­one to step in and make their mark.  This tech­nol­ogy dri­ven mar­ket makes it that much eas­ier to reach an audi­ence.  Sure, It's scary, but it's also super exciting.  

Shame­less plug dis­guised as a wise ass ques­tion: Why do you love ManOfLaBook.com so much and often visit the web­site?
~Nadja: I'm a sucker for puns and his­tory books.  You had me at the url.

My favorite Found­ing Father is actu­ally Alexan­der Hamil­ton (my thoughts on his biog­ra­phy), but I also find John Adams (my thoughts on his biog­ra­phy) very inter­est­ing. I agree with Nadja that it's amaz­ing that John and Abi­gail Adams had an equal mar­riage in today's sense.

Zohar — Man of la Book.

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CJO

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