Ollie’s Odyssey by William Joyce

Many artists reach a plateau and stay there, revisiting the same themes or visions, never expanding, never stretching, never evolving with their work.  And then there are those lucky few artists – which includes writers, graphic artists, musicians and performers – who continually grow, develop and stretch their capabilities.

Into that happy few we must count author, illustrator, animator William Joyce (born 1957).  After creating some of the most beautiful picture books of the 1990s, Joyce then branched off into his other love, filmmaking, and helped design a number of memorable films (including Toy Story), before branching out into production himself.  He also started the company Moonbot to make apps, games, animated shorts – anything, in fact, to which he could harness his storytelling genius.  Located in Louisiana, Moonbot is a human-scale Disney, where talented artists, writers and filmmakers create the next generation of children’s classics.

His first love, though, remains books.  He started a series of picture books and prose novels that detailed the origins of such childhood myths as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny called The Guardians of Childhood, and he has now served up a new original novel with illustrations, Ollie’s Odyssey.  It is his most daring and interesting prose novel to date, and a significant demonstration of his ever-increasing capabilities.

Ollie’s Odyssey is all about a kid named Billy and his special relationship with his toy, a ragdoll his mother made named Ollie.  During a wedding party, Ollie is kidnapped by the minions of an evil toy, the demented clown Zozo.  Billy must sneak out of his home at night and trace his lost friend, a journey that leads him to a deserted underground carnival, to a confrontation with a horde of menacing reconfigured toys, and to a final battle royale led by Ollie and some odds and ends who form a junk army.

In outline, it would seem as if Ollie’s Odyssey would be just another kid’s adventure story.  But Joyce uses this framework to write a deeply moving tale about growing up, the inevitability of change, loss and, perhaps most important, the power of memory.  Rather than a stock villain, Zozo has become twisted through the loss of his beloved ballet dancer-doll.  He is a tragic-villain, fully formed and compelling enough for the most adult fiction.  Similarly, Billy and Ollie fear changes to their friendship as Billy ages, and Ollie wonders what becomes of toys that are no longer loved.  The coming end for their partnership does not mitigate in any way the love they have for one another, but it does add a tragic dimension unusual for kiddie fare.  Joyce also talks about resurrection and rebirth during the junkyard sequence, where now useless bric-a-brac takes on new life and new identity to help Ollie and save Billy.  It is a stunning juggling act: Joyce has written a profoundly moving and emotionally resonant novel in the guise of a children’s book.

Just as Joyce has previously illustrated his picture books with dazzling watercolor work, and then branched out into both line drawings and computer illustration, Ollie’s Odyssey tests his versatility with a series of charcoal drawings – a medium he has not used in his published work before.  The illustrations of Ollie’s Odyssey are unlike those of any of Joyce’s previous work, and fit the overall emotional tenor of the story beautifully.  Charcoal brings a gritty, tactile sense to this tale of fuzzy friends and frayed castoffs that would be missing from glossier modes of illustration.  He also used the paper upon which he drew to great effect, allowing what would normally be the white ‘tooth’ of the paper to soak up computer-added color.  The book is also beautifully designed by Joyce with chapter heads in bold red crayon, and different colored papers representative of different characters and scenes. 

As with much of Joyce’s oeuvre, his latest book can be savored by adults as well as children. A man who loves popular art immoderately (and wears that love on his sleeve), Joyce peppers Ollie’s Odyssey with echoes of titans and works that come before.   Attuned readers will catch bits of filmmakers Todd Browning and Lon Chaney, hints of the classic Universal Monsters with a touch of The Island of Lost Souls, a healthy smattering of Ray Bradbury, and shout-outs to everything from the original King Kong to Batman Returns to The Magnificent Seven.  Indeed, the final image of the book is a direct rift on John Ford’s mighty ending for The Searchers … and one wonders if Joyce is writing for adults who have kept their inner child alive and well, or if he writes for children who will one day make more adult connections.

Ollie’s Odyssey is a bigger, grander, more ambitious book than anything that Joyce has attempted before, and he rises to the occasion splendidly.  It is certainly the finest of his prose novels, and one cannot but wonder what this protean talent has in store for us in future years.

While we are delighted that Joyce has spread his abilities into so many different areas, it is perhaps in books that devotees get the fullest distillation of his talents.  His written and illustrated works are the least collaborative of his output, and capture his philosophy best.  That view of life has been changing and evolving over time – that William Joyce names his protagonist Billy is surely no accident – and if the man himself can emerge from the crucible of experience with his sense of wonder intact, what is he not capable of?  And what, he asks, are any of us not capable of?  It’s that sense of possibility, that childlike sense of limitless adventure, that the world is filled with things to delight each and every one of us, that is the essence of Bill Joyce.

Ollie’s Odyssey is highly recommended to kids, old people, and everyone in between.

Billy’s Booger, A Memoir (Sorta), by William Joyce

This week, we look at some books that make for perfect summer reading, and we start with something special.  Any new book by author, illustrator, filmmaker and poster boy for high-spirited shenanigans William Joyce (born 1957) is a cause for celebration.  But his new book – Billy’s Booger, A Memoir (Sorta) – is sufficient for bursting out into song, headstands while doing a Tarzan yell, and unrestrained fits of the hokey-pokey.

Not that Billy’s Booger is your ordinary, wonderful book.  It’s snot.  It is something quite unique – an illustrated memoir by a master of the form.  In it, he chronicles his participation in a school-book competition, and includes his first opus, Billy’s Booger – The Memoir of a Little Green Nose Buddy.  In short, this is the portrait of the artist as a (very) young man, and provides an insight into the formative components that make up Joyce’s protean imagination.

The story does snot have many fairy tale elements, despite its very traditional beginning of Once upon a time.  Or, as Joyce starts his narrative, Once upon a time, when TV was in black and white, and there were only three channels, and when kids didn’t have playdates -- they just roamed free in the “out of doors” there lived a kid named Billy.

And we’re off for an in-depth look into the Joycean imagination.  Most books in Joyce’s oeuvre exist largely as showcases for his stunning depictions of glowing, nostalgic Americana.  Billy’s Booger, however, is different – it has the full complement of stunning illustrations (some, the finest of his career), but is more of a masterpiece of design than anything else.

Consider – Joyce includes his initial foray into book creation as a special insert into the book itself, published on different weight green construction paper (and printed in what appears to be white chalk).  In addition to that, Joyce reproduces the illustrative style of 1950s-60s hygiene texts, along with loose-leaf paper doodles, and also includes several loving homages to classic newspaper comic strips.  Nor does he miss an opportunity to display his obsessive creativity and imagination: the endpapers include schoolboy doodles of the most mischievous sort, including my favorite: Replace Hallway Floors with TRAMPOLINES – why has this not happened? 

Joyce fills the book with quotations of his many obsessions, as well as many of his early books.  In what may be my favorite illustration in the book, Joyce’s depicts his younger self creating his first magnum opus.  In the background, just perceptible, is the poster from the 1933 King Kong, one of Joyce’s seminal influences.  Nearby is a model spaceship in the mode of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers (Joyce’s sense of science fiction, like that of your correspondent, is locked in 1930s art deco futurism).  On his desk is a brontosaur that may well serve as the model for his later creation, Dinosaur Bob, and doodles on his desk bring to mind his most recent book, The Mischievians.

In other parts of the book, you will see references to his earlier works, including George Shrinks, Roli Poli Oli, and perhaps even a nod to his sometimes collaborator, Michael Chabon.  There is even a little doodle that will become the logo for his animation and imagination company, Moonbot.

And Joyce simply never lets up.  In those pages where he recreates classic comic strips, I was able to spot homages to Peanuts, L’il Abner, a gorgeous Little Nemo page, Flash Gordon (of course) and Dick Tracy.  It is in his affections and deeply-rooted loves that Joyce reminds me most, perhaps, of the late Ray Bradbury (1920-2012).  Like Bradbury, one of the great writers of the last century, Joyce wears his heart and his loves on his sleeve – which is perhaps where they belong.  It is not a fashionable way of looking at the world; and certainly the last thing anyone could ever accuse Joyce of was being “ironic.”  But it is honest, and sweet and boyish and … peppy.  I can’t read Joyce (or Bradbury, for that matter) and not feel young again, or at least young at heart.  If for no other reason, Joyce deserves a medal, perhaps with an oak leaf cluster, if they have one lying around somewhere.

More literal minded readers will wonder how much of Billy’s Booger is “true.”  Well what does it mean when one promises the truth in a memoir?  Is this the actual book Joyce created in his boyhood, reproduced here without editorializing?  Did he, in fact, have such a happy relationship with his principal?  (If so, Joyce was doubly, if not triply blessed.)  And … are these pages lit by the glow of personal nostalgia?

Well … what does it matter?  Billy’s Booger is thickly crusted with enough biographical data to have more than a kernel of truth, and this is the artist’s biography as he remembers it.  Perhaps, one day, there will be a full-fledged autobiography or third-person biography to enjoy in addition to the Booger.

In a culture that values its heroes and children’s entertainment when it’s “dark,” the wonderful world of William Joyce provides a much-needed corrective.  His world is a place of sun-kissed landscapes, mid-century American optimism, and unfettered fun.  His books are for very young children, very old people, and everyone and anyone in between.

For those reasons, and many others, the book Billy’s Booger is our pick of the week.

A Bean, A Stalk and a Boy Named Jack, by William Joyce

Proving that once again the ridiculous is often sublime, author-illustrator-film-maker William Joyce returns with a new book for young readers, A Bean, A Stalk and a Boy Named Jack.  This is Joyce’s amusing and endearing take on the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale … and perhaps another story or two, thrown in.

Joyce provides the narrative this time, allowing newcomer Kenny Callicutt to provide the illustrations.  The text is Joyce as his breezy, irreverent best.  There’s a drought in the kingdom where small boy Jack lives, resulting in a severe problem: the monarch’s pinky is now stinky.  It’s up to a small boy, an even smaller bean, and a very large stalk to travel upwards to a land of giants (including a rather endearing young giant in his bath), and make the world right once more.  Delivered in a sort of staccato, wise-guy meter, A Bean, A Stalk and a Boy Named Jack is tons of fun for the younger children of all ages.

A special word here about illustrator Callicutt: though his style is similar to Joyce, it is completely his own.  The figures have a wonderful, toy-like quality (as if Mother Goose created a line of Lego toys), and are drawn with a pastel-toned minimalism.  Callicutt first came to Moonbot, Joyce’s company, as an apprentice, and this is his first picture book.  We hope it’s the first of many.

Moonbot, of course, is Joyce’s imaginarium located in Shreveport, Louisiana.  After years as the most creative and light-hearted children’s’ book double-threat in the industry, Joyce created Moonbot Studios to nurture new talents and create extraordinary entertainment for an array of media platforms. Moonbot makes not only books, but apps, games and anything else that is a medium to carry narrative.  If you think that Joyce has created a small-scale Disney down-south, you would be right – but one more nimble, daring, irreverent and, most of all, directly connected to its legion of fans.  Expect great things from Moonbot in the years to come.

Like much of the Joycean oeuvre, it would seem that A Bean, A Stalk and a Boy Named Jack is tied into a larger, mythic universe.  Jack holds a staff much like Jack Frost from Joyce’s Guardians of Childhood series – are they the same person?  The Princess (and we must always have a Princess) is named Jill … are there possibilities there?  And will this book open up an entire series of Joyce’s fractured fairly tales?  We can only wait and see.

On top of the language-play and delightful visuals, it is always a pleasure for your correspondent to welcome the annual offering from William Joyce.  It is an indication that the holiday season is upon us, and that things will always turn out right in the end.

Even if your pinky is stinky.