He Did It All for the Nyuki

Quick. Name an Eisner-award nominated comic artist and writer who also has a Ph.D in biology and teaches college-level science classes. The answer is easy, mostly because there aren’t many people in the industry that fit anything even remotely resembling that description (It’s hard to imagine Garth Ennis giving a lecture on mitochondria).

Somehow, Jay Hosler has found the time to devote his life to both the study of life sciences and the production of great sequential art. His current big seller, Clan Apis, tells the story of Nyuki, a honeybee who takes herself — and us — on a journey through life in the hive and as part of the swarm. The six-chapter collection was nominated for two Eisners this year.

Widely discussed as a work accessible to — but not written specifically for — children, Apis is lighthearted but pulls no punches in its description of life as a bee. Its frank description of death and conflict in a world populated by wisecracking insects provides a welcome sense of balance in a medium where stories for all ages aren’t easy to come by.

Meanwhile, the first issue of The Sandwalk Adventures, Hosler’s newest work, hits shelves in December. The series chronicles conversations between Charles Darwin and a microscopic mite living in the follicles of his eyebrows.

Again, not something you’re likely to see from Garth Ennis.

Hosler lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife Lisa and son Max, who enjoys playing with mechanical pencils. Jay and Lisa are expecting a second child soon.

KO: Le’s talk about Clan Apis, since that’s kind of your opus right now. I think it’s fair to say that it’s written for younger audiences, or at least written to be fairly accessible to younger audiences.

JH: I think the latter is more what I had in mind. It sort of goes to the real concept of “all ages,” which means that it should appeal to, well, all ages. Unfortunately, it’s sort of in a market right now where “all ages” is translated as “just for kids.” And so, and I’ve said this before, I think, to people, that I sort of write these things like I imagine the old Warner Brothers cartoons, which was, you know, there’s slapstick and silly stuff for kids, but there’s another level, that kids will just skip over things they don’t get, as long as you give them enough material to keep going. And then there’s political commentary and broader thoughts that should appeal to older readers.

KO: How did you feel, then, when the Eisner nominations came through, and they addressed your work in terms of its youth orientation?

JH: Oh yeah, I have no problem with that, because ultimately, if I had to pick a market that is completely, in my opinion, unaddressed in the comics medium today, it’s kids. I mean, what book are there out there for kids? You go into comic shops now and you’ve got Akiko, and you’ve got Bone, and you’ve got Castle Waiting, which are all great books — Amy Unbounded, which is a mini-comic, is a great book — but in reality, compared to the vast content of Previews — this is not a slamming of Previews, this is a comment on the type of material they receive — is almost exclusively adult-oriented. And so to be nominated in a category for kids books, I have no problem with that. I’m excited about it.

KO: I’s interesting you’re saying this, since people outside the medium generally stick to the belief that comics themselves are pretty much just for kids.

JH: Yeah, it’s an interesting dichotomy. It is considered sort of childish literature. And I think there’s been a real concerted effort by a lot of people to make it adult, and when I say adult here, I mean what the real world means — not, like, pornographic. Something that a grown-up could read and not feel embarrassed about. And of course there are tons of books out there like that. One of my favorite books of all time is Minimum Wage. It’s not a kids’ book, but it’s not standard everyday fare either. The problem is that it almost seems like this desire to legitimize ourselves as okay for adults to read has left this dearth of material for kids to read. Companies make attempts at kids’ books, but usually that fails, because most people have no respect for kids’ intelligence.

KO: What are you thinking of specifically when you say that?

JH: I’m loath to single things out, but I’ve seen books come out from various publishers within the last two years that, in my opinion, missed the mark on what kids want, because what you’re doing is you’re thinking of it in terms of what kids want instead of just writing a book that could be read by a kid. I know that’s sort of a fuzzy distinction. I think that when you sit down and think, “I’m going to write something that a kid would like,” you’ve already started from the wrong standpoint. For example, I don’t think Linda Medley sits down with a Castle Waiting story and says, “I think a kid will like this.” I think she sits down and writes a story and does certain things, like — this is going to make me sound like an old fuddy-duddy — but you don’t have cursing in it. You don’t have gratuitous sexual content. You don’t have gratuitous violence. She tells a story without those trappings, so in that respect it’s accessible to a child, a child can pick it up and read it. Now, there are also elements to it that a seven-year-old kid won’t get. But at least there aren’t those really strange barriers to a kid reading it. I guess I’m not in Linda Medley’s mind, so I don’t know what she’s thinking, but I suspect it’s not “kids could read this,” I think it’s more along the lines of “I want to tell a good story.”

KO: So when you wrote Clan Apis, did you think that there was a void to be filled, or were you just writing it because it was a good story to write?

JH: I got the idea for Clan Apis reading a book called The Biology of the Honey Bee. I was doing that reading for my research, and so many of the elements of it seemed like the parts of a story — things you would anthropomorphize. And it struck me as very unusual, because I was anthropomorphizing something that was very alien, a very alien world. And so the starting point was that it was just a different story. And everything I write, I write with the mind that my son will read it someday.