Scott Chantler: Northwest Passage
In his graphic novel “Northwest Passage,” Scott Chantler reinvents the frontier western comic book by doing something very simple — he takes it out of the west and puts it into the north. While it’s more Daniel Boone than Two Gun Kid, it mines the same territory of manly Americana, but dispenses of the well trod plot devices by placing his adventure in Canada and examining the pressures between the French and the English.
Taking place in what was known as Rupert’s Land in Canada in 1755, Chantler’s story follows Charles Lord as his past comes to catch up with him on several roads and he ends up having to fight for his post at Fort Newcastle after it is taken over by a French privateer. Lord is forced to team-up with rag-tag comrades from his past, as well as own up to family connections and responsibilities in the present.
Chantler’s story-telling is tender and gripping, while his art manages to keep things light with an almost cartoony style that comes together with the subject matter in an unlikely but highly successful mixture for pure excitement. Adventure trends lean towards bells and whistles, but Chantler has proven himself an ace at doing the most basic thing demanded of a comic book creator that too many fail at— he can tell a gripping story in a straightforward manner, blowing away his competition in most genres.
Chantler lives in Waterloo, Ontario. His childhood comic book interests aren’t immediately apparent from his current work.
SB: When did you first begin to read comic books?
SC: I was pretty young when I first discovered comics…probably only three or four years old. Remember how Gold Key used to package comics together two or three to a plastic bag and sell them in toy stores? I was constantly pestering my mother to bring comics home from the toy store. I was really into Batman, probably because of the ’60s TV show. I was born in the early ’70s, but that show ran in repeats forever.
I didn’t really become a regular comics reader, though, until I was 13. Then it was “Conan,” DC’s “Warlord,” and the other sword-and-sorcery books that were popular at the time. Then, when I was 18, I discovered Will Eisner, and it was mostly Indie books from then on.
SB: What prompted you to conceive of Northwest Passage? What was the process of creating the characters and realizing the plot?
SC: Six or seven years ago, I read two books by popular Canadian historian Peter C. Newman — ”Company of Adventurers” and “Caesars of the Wilderness.” They’re the first two books in his history of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which is the English trading company that was so vital in the exploration and settling of Canada — many of Canada’s major cities are built of the sites of HBC posts. It occurred to me at the time that here was an ideal setting for an adventure story, a setting that strikes the same mythic chord with Canadians that the Old West does with Americans, or that the age of chivalry does for Europeans.
SB: How important is the “Canadian-ness” of the story?
SC: I think it’s essential. The whole genesis of the project was to set something in Canada, really. It sets it apart from traditional westerns, and also informs the story in all sorts of interesting ways.
SB: What do you think are the commonalties and the differences between the archetypal frontier heroes of Canada and the United States? Do you think there is something particular about Charles Lord that makes him a Canadian style hero?
SC: I think these types of heroes are largely the same across all cultures and times…that’s why they’re archetypes, after all. But in the end, Charles chooses home, family, and personal loyalty over individual achievement and glory, and I think that’s a particularly Canadian sentiment.
SB: It’s obviously well researched - did you ever find yourself with certain story plans that you had to change after doing some research?
SC: Oh, sure. All the time. The story sort of develops along with the research. It’s not as if you write a story, then open a bunch of history books and find out you were wrong about a lot of things. The two feed off each other in ways that are interesting and surprising. The story grows out of things you discover in the course of your research, not the other way around.
SB: Do you have any artists you look to for inspiration in regard to depicting the frontier?
SC: The thing about depicting an era that pre-dates photography is that you’re pretty much depending solely on the works of artists that came before you who depicted the same era. So yeah, I relied a lot on historical paintings and drawings, especially those of Canadian artist C.W. Jeffreys. His stuff had the same sort of romantic feel that I was trying to capture, even though I draw nothing like he did.
SB: The French role in Canadian history is fascinating to Americans — and the hostility that continues nowadays is very curious to us. How did current political situations with Quebec inform your story and the depiction of the French?
SC: There’s nothing in “Northwest Passage” that’s intended to reference modern-day political issues. But just as the history of the U.S. is very much black vs. white, the history of Canada is very much English vs. French. So to present an historical Canada without touching upon that would just be weird.
SB: You’ve got a lot of tortured males in there! How do you view this sort of haunted psychology in regard to things like doing great deeds and taming a wilderness? It seems as though there really is some kind of damaged, outsider quality to the archetypes.
SC: Well, I think it must have taken someone half-crazy to travel half-way around the world and be stationed for years at a time in an outpost on the edge of Hudson Bay, thousands of miles from anywhere, where it’s winter nine months of the year and black fly season the other three. That’s some hard living. A lot of the Bay men were just desperate for work, and the fur trade provided a decent wage. But I have to wonder how many of them signed on because, for whatever reason, they wanted to be tested, or because they civilized society lacked something they desired, or both. Or maybe that’s just me reading into it. Because I’ve got something of an outsider quality myself. But I’m also loyal as can be to my fellow outsiders. I wanted that duality in the book, and I think it comes across.
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