NYCC INTERVIEW: Cynthia von Buhler on Illustrating EVELYN EVELYN for Dark Horse Comics

When musicians Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley created the musical duo Evelyn Evelyn (in which they perform as Siamese twin sisters with a tragic past) it was a perfect fit for children’s book illustrator, Cynthia von Buhler to depict their painful back-story in print.

While signing at the Dark Horse booth at New York Comic Con, Buhler took the time to talk about her creative process for Evelyn Evelyn. “… Basically, I just took the story and they [Amanda and Jason] gave me a lot of freedom to do whatever I wanted with it. Because originally when they first approached me they wanted a certain style. So I just sort of based it on that style. It’s basically, it’s just drawing. All I’m doing is working with pencil and drawing so it’s my sketching style.” Buhler’s primary medium in her children’s books are dolls/puppets, which she poses and then photographs, so simply sketching for this story was a departure for her.

Buhler continued to explain why she chose to work in sketches, detailing how and why she chose to illustrate the graphic novel in this manner. “I was very smudgy with it. I got the pencil on my hands and I rubbed it all over the pages because the story was so kind of dark and dirty. So I would just rub my fingers and it would kind of, it would just sort of fit, and it gave it this dusty feel to it. And then after that my interns colored it. I would indicate where I wanted the color and they would color it and darken it.”

Her favorite scenes in the story to depict were ones involving animals, in Evelyn Evelyn the sisters go from living at a chicken farm to working with a two-headed elephant at the circus, and she discussed how her research led her to a no-meat lifestyle. “Doing the animal scenes, I’m a big animal lover, and I really love Elephant Elephant, Bimba and Kimba that’s their names, and the chickens. Actually, I was a semi-vegetarian, but I still ate chicken and then when I started doing this book I stopped eating chicken, because I was researching the chickens and the chicken trucks and all of that. And I stopped… So this book changed me that way... If you see some of the pages with the chickens. When you’re working on a book you have to research it. So I would type in, you know, ‘chicken cages’ and all the images that came up were so disgusting that I just didn’t want to eat chicken anymore.”

With such dark and strange subject matter, from Siamese twins to a child pornography rings and the circus culture, Buhler’s work relied on researching her subject matter, which she performed to create a more accurate story for readers and to ensure the authors were happy. “All of the pages, everything, you know all the pages was researched. Pretty much. The twins, freaks, things like that. But I worked very closely with them [Amanda and Jason] as far as just, I would do a picture, I would draw it, and then I would send it, email it to them and they would say, ‘Oh that’s awesome!’ or ‘I love that!’… They pretty much liked everything I did, and they would make little comments here or there and you know, we basically went back and forth a lot, and I really really loved working with them because we have the same sort of twisted sense of humor.”

Despite the subject matter, Buhler’s work is inspired by the world around her and her everyday experiences, all of which changes depending on what she is working on at the time. “It’s really different depending on the project, because I’m actually coming to this… My first comic book or graphic novel... I’ve been writing children’s books, writing and illustrating children’s books. So, you know, the world inspires me. Everything around me inspires me. Different people, different animals, and I am very inspired by animals. So I think that that’s why that part of the book really struck me.”

After her foray into graphic novels, Buhler has been bitten with the bug, and her first authored graphic novel turned play, Speakeasy Dollhouse, which is an autobiographical tale being told with handmade dolls had its first sold-out performance this Monday. “… I am working on a play right now. I actually have a new graphic novel coming out called Speakeasy Dollhouse and it’s about my family and it’s about the mafia and prohibition. And it’s done all with dolls. And I’m putting on a play in Manhattan starting on Monday… It’s sold out.”

For more information on Cynthia von Buhler’s play, Speakeasy Dollhouse, being performed now, go to http://www.speakeasydollhouse.com.

Enthusiasts of genuine tragedy and celebrity intrigue, gird your mental loins for an authentic tale of unbelievable hardship and epic catastrophe! This wholly true and accurate account details the extraordinary lives of Evelyn and Evelyn, a darling but unfortunate pair of conjoined twins who brave extreme circumstances of calamity and adversity, such as: the bizarre and bloody night of their birth and subsequent orphaning; their early years on a chicken farm; shocking encounters with depraved gentlemen; life in the circus; the terrible fates of their dearest friends; and concluding with the sisters’ rise to international fame via the internet, as told with astounding eloquence by musicians Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley, and documented in gorgeous detail by the artist Cynthia von Buhler.