moorereppion

Those of you who visit the site regularly will probably already know by now that April is the month Dublin hosts it’s annual One City, One Book events and that 2009’s chosen book just happens to be Dracula by the city’s own Bram Stoker.

Leah and I were lucky enough to be invited to take part in the month long celebration of Stoker’s Gothic masterpiece, giving a talk on adapting the novel into a comic book for Dynamite Entertainment.

The event took place on Saturday afternoon at the prestigious Dublin Writer’s Museum.

The Museum Collection is as fascinating as it is various. As might be expected, there are plenty of books, representing the milestones in the progress of Irish literature from Gulliver’s Travels to Dracula (though this part of the collection is currently on loan to Dublin City Library for the April events), The Importance of Being Earnest, Ulysses and Waiting for Godot. Most of these are first or early editions, recapturing the moment when they first surprised the world.

Our talk was held in the Gallery of Writers – a beautiful gold leaf decorated, second floor space filled with busts and portraits – which was presumably once the grand dining room of the 18th century townhouse now occupied by the Museum

After a very pleasant lunch in the nearby Dublin City Gallery we were ably assisted in getting things in order by the museum staff as well as our good friends Pádraig, Deirdre and Catie.

When 3 pm came the room was packed (extra chairs were even required).  Familiar faces in the crowd included Anno Dracula author Kim Newman, Irish novelist and comic writer Michael Carroll and supernatural fiction writer Brian J. Showers.

In our talk, Dracula: From Novel to Comic Book, we tried to cover everything right from the genesis of the project through to the final product. Some of the things we talked about, such as our reasoning and justification for including Dracula’s Guest as our opening to The Complete Dracula, are things we aim to cover in the extras which will be included in the back of each individual issue.

When we mentioned that Warren Ellis had said some very nice things about the book, one member of the audience was compelled to shout out “We don’t believe you!” – thus proving that uncle Ellis’ reputation as a cheery, well meaning soul precedes him (he is very, very nice really).

The talk went very well  – the audience were especially blown away by Colton Worley’s beautiful digitally painted artwork.  Several people came up to us afterwards and said that they’d found the whole thing fascinating and we’re really, really looking forward to #1 coming out next month.

Amongst those who congratulated us on a job well done was One City, One Book founder Jane Alger who surprised us both by saying that she would love to get a signed copy of the collected edition of The Complete Dracula when it’s out to add to the first edition collection.

Thanks very much to everyone who came to the talk (and those of you who tried hard but sadly just missed it) and thanks to the One City, One Book and Dublin Writer’s Museum people for all their help. We had a fantastic weekend of Dracula related fun and the talk went so well we might even do it again some time.

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Many of the photos above were taken by the multi talented Catie Murphy, one or two by Mr. David Manley and the rest by us, except for the Gallery of Writers image which was found via Google.