tonycliff

Retrospective - Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant

Added 2024-01-19 00:50:13 +0000 UTC

… or "DD1," for short.

This book was published by First Second Books in August of 2013. It is, essentially, what I put together in the last instalment, with a few additional bits (which I'll mention when they pop up) and a judicious application of copy editing. It's my own DELILAH DIRK AND THE TREASURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE plus Flight Volume 5's DELILAH DIRK AND THE AQUEDUCT, with a new "prologue," a bridge chapter, and a new chapter at the end.

If you want to read about how we got to this point, click through to the Retrospective "Collection," where I am (appropriately enough) collecting them.

- - - - -

THE COVER

A lot of people are (perhaps justifiably) wary about collaborating with the editorial forces of a traditional publisher. Fears of having their work turned into something unfamiliar, maybe. First Second has always been really good in that regard. For whatever reason, they did not want to go with the cover I'd made for the "Secret Edition." A cynic might suggest they want a new cover out of a sense of ownership. Maybe. But I really like this cover, so I don't particularly care.

Colleen AF Venable was First Second's designer on this book, and we worked together to come up with this design. I sent a bunch of sketchy options, I'm sure, and (here comes the theme song for these posts, sing it with me) if I recall correctly we all liked this one best, even me. I remember fretting about Colleen being able to "see" the potential of the drawings in the sketches, and her reassuring me that it was not a problem. I like Colleen a lot.

More than anything — certainly more than the relatively serious cover for the "Secret Edition" — I like that this cover feels fun. It promises good times. Not dramatic times, not angsty times, not mysterious times. Just fun. Despite any evidence to the contrary, and despite my core-deep love of it, fun might not be my natural state of being, so I'm glad Colleen & co. were able to extract it for this cover.

Note that the inside of DD's skirt is red. This is not how it appears anywhere else, and that's okay. It looks nice on the cover, the vivid red against the turquoise and pale beige. If anyone has ever noticed this, they've never pointed it out to me. The silver foil on the typography was Colleen's idea and I love it.

The "french flaps" are a First Second "house" thing. I like the flaps. I did not write the copy for this.

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THE PROLOGUE

Here's a fun fact about this first book in the Delilah Dirk series: technically, according to everything I learned from Grade 10 English through any book I've read on writing or scriptwriting, the protagonist of this story is Selim.

Sure, DD has her own wants, and she drives the movement through the story, but in many ways she is the antagonist. Selim is also his own antagonist. Of course, in the end, this is all academic — of no real importance to the reader — but! Selim's got the strongest arc through this story, and I needed something to echo with the inevitable ending where Selim teams up with DD. I wanted to hint that, at heart, though he is the timid runt of his litter, he's got adventure at heart.

Ahh, I see I set this story in 1807. If PDAP takes place in 1795, and Alexandra is 15 there, that means DD is 27 years old in this story. How about that. I definitely knew she was 27 when I wrote this and made those choices intentionally and on purpose and by design.

This also makes her two years older than she was in the "Secret Edition."

When Selim recites tea ingredients here, he is reciting the ingredients of a tea called "The Blood of My Enemies," which reader Nikki made in real life, inspired by TREASURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE (I believe), before I wrote this prologue. It is one of my very favourite things to have come from this whole Delilah Dirk project. She offered to send me some but I declined, not wanting to accept comestible gifts from internet strangers. I still think this was the right choice, but I am a little disappointed in myself for being so cautious. I tried to show my appreciation by including this nod to her recipe in the prologue, meaning Selim is describing a tea that was designed around his own story, which is an idea I love. Nikki may well be reading this, so I invite her to add any rememberances in the comments.

I swear this scene is inspired by a real thing I read, where some Janissary official would pay his men by piling food (rice, not gold, admittedly) in the center of a room and letting them all fight over their fair share. Since I'm not very good at recording my research, I cannot find the article now.

I would kill for an office this big.

- - - - -

CHAPTER ONE

I suspect every page of this book had to be re-lettered to accommodate the smaller "First Second signature size." If I hadn't, the type would be unreadably small. IIRC these pages were the most difficult, but now that I look at them I'm not especially bothered. The First Second edition looks better in some ways.

I love the idea that the guards are always so dim-witted that they can simply be talked into opening the cell doors. Though… reading it now, I wonder why the guard opens the door in response to what she's told him. Presumably because he's so dim-witted.

The cartoonish manacles are almost certainly inspired by Aladdin. Let's find out.

Yup!

Among a few other things I would do differently if I were making this story today, I would not choose to pile up bodies like this. There's a very casual disregard for human life in this chapter. I don't love it.

I like to think I'd sweat a few more calories to come up with cleverer ways to handle all this, these days. My taste for "henchmen" death has greatly diminished since I made this.

- - - - -

CHAPTER TWO

I forgot about this sequence where DD pretends they're going to crash into the ship but do not because the boat flies. In retrospect, it was a clever way to get the audience to buy into the idea of the flying boat. It makes the scene about DD's character and playing a joke on Selim rather than the spectacle of the flying boat, using character business to get away with an idea that is silly if you think about it too hard.

When Selim starts waxing poetic about flight, I worry that I've over-egged it, but then DD takes us somewhere else, asking about "is that how you would have reacted in a real emergency," and I feel like I've gotten away with asking you, dear reader, to accept a flying boat.

During my early work on PDAP, I spoke a lot about wanting to re-inject weird, fuzzy little moments into the story, "like I used to." This (above) is exactly that type of scene. We cut away to a suffering, unsuccessful fisherman who, when he notices he's about to be crushed by a falling object, is relieved, not terrified. I suspect this was how the scene came to be: I wanted the boat to fall out of the sky, I figured it would frighten anyone who saw it, and I probably thought, "but what if I did the opposite?" Is the result too cartoony? It's cartoony, for sure, but I like it.

When the friend says, "patience, brother," is he simply repeating his sentiment from the first two panels? Or is he saying, "don't worry. A boat will fall on you one day."

I want to try that sort of thing more often.

I like how casually confident DD is in this, how naturally superior she seems. I have to remember to hint at that characteristic when I reach the conclusion of PDAP, and I have to do it funny. I enjoy the contrast of the majestic townscape set against DD & Selim's stupid, gentle little conflict.

Zakul!

At the risk of sounding all up myself — and I hope you understand that my instinct to avoid this is deeply-rooted — while I was looking through these sections, I really did think, "hey, nice job." I guess that's what a decade's worth of distance will do, especially on a project which could not possibly be more tailored to my own preferences.

We meet the townsfolk whose bridge DD will burn down later. Selim likes them. We scope out the target of our infiltration. Selim waffles about what he is and is not willing to do. DD makes him an ultimatum and asks, "Okay?" Then we turn the page and she is positively beaming. It's cute.

Selim is so full of concern, so grave and serious. And DD couldn't possibly care less. I love the absolute die-hard commitment to honour and duty we see characterized in the HORATIO HORNBLOWER books, and I love taking the piss out of it here. They're both positions I absolutely believe in ("keep your word, fulfill your duties," and "ahhhh, take it easy, do what feels right"), and its so much fun to bounce them against each other.

There's a cut on Selim's hand which symbolizes his debt to DD. It shows him how close he came to death. I thought the emphasis on the cut hand was something I added for DD1, but it turns out it's in THE TREASURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, too. I guess that's just another one of those scenarios where you (by which I mean "I") look for ways to make importance out of whatever is — so to speak — at hand.

In TREASURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, I think the cut was simply meant to show Selim, "look! Your blood! You really could have died!" In DD1, we say "yes, and it also reminds Selim what he owes to DD and how different his life would be without her."

At some point I'm sure I asked myself whether this dream sequence should be clearly delineated as such; you know, with squiggly borders or something. I'm glad it's not.

At this point, my wife said to me, "I am the inspiration for Delilah Dirk, aren't I?"

Is it clear what happens here? That the sail fills, the boom swings, and DD is knocked overboard? Regardless, it's a funny drawing and a unique action setpiece. And this sequence echoes the way we started the chapter, with Selim not-knowing the boat. Good job, whoever decided to bring back that idea. Except now DD is starting to chafe against Selim's dogged pursuit of his "honour-debt" — hey, a character arc! Was that intentional?

Selim also gives DD the scarf which he will use to save her life in the next chapter.

- - - - -

I'm going to take a break here and split this post into two, because 1) I still have a lot to do this week and 2) there's going to be a ton of flatting to do, so I don't want to rush through these retrospective posts too fast. I still want something interesting to share with you all while I'm (checks notes) colouring in my drawings.

This week I finished lettering Chapter Four! It looks like a comic book now!

I also took my pile of post-it notes for Chapter Five, and all the other notes I have scattered everywhere, and compiled them into a coherent document. I'm going to get some early writing done now, then let the writing "simmer" while I flat Chapter Four. Then, I'll thumbnail Chapter Five before I start colouring Chapter Four, so that those Chapter Five Thumbs can, in turn, be simmering while I colour Chapter Four. Then, when Chapter Four is all done, I'll probably have a ton of brilliant ideas about how to revise those Chapter Five thumbs to make them funnier and more economical and I can dive right in to doing that.