Duna Haller
Paul Carroll is an editor and comics creator from Dublin, and a founding member of both Limit Break Comics, Irish comic collective, and Cupán Fae, fantasy writers’ collective. Limit Break Comics has recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for its Irish folklore comic anthology, Turning Roads, to high success and very early funding. The book contains Irish tales’ retelling stories by over 30 comic creators, and is set to publish during this summer. Last Friday, our own journalist Duna had the luck of sitting with Paul to chat about the anthology, as well as his editorial and creative work, and you can find a video of said chat below in this article.
Paul described how the idea for Turning Roads came up from Yorkshire’s Thought Bubble talks with colleagues, to taking it to the Art Council of Ireland, and finally settling for a Kickstarter. The anthology selected its stories by an open pitch in Patreon, and Paul talked with us about how Irish tradition of oral storytelling for these tales has always meant that a community is involved in the story, and how that relates with this open process of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, as well as to the collaborative nature of comics and of comics’ online communities.
Paul talked about how these stories, by creators like Gary Moloney, Dave Hendrick, James Killian or Triona Farrell, vary greatly from more traditional reinventions to futuristic sci-fi narratives to experimental storytelling. “I think that’s the short of way that a lot of comics in this book are gonna be told where the creators are going back and forth with their idea (…) and it turns (the myth) upside down”, he said, as he expanded on some of them like two vastly different Banshee’s retakes and a King of the Cats one. We also got into Paul’s writing work, specially around Plexus, an anthology-styled series that he writes with multiple artists, talking about some of the themes in its first and upcoming issues and the process of working with his collaborators like Rebecca Reynolds, Donna Black or Barry O’Sullivan. Here’s the whole interview for you to watch!
