Vera Vance: Comics Star

by Claudia Mills

  “Do you really mean it?” Vera asked.

  “Totally! But is it okay if I still do the Bow-Wow comic? Even though you named the school, and thought of Wag-a-Tail Lane, and helped think up the characters, and everything?”

  Vera could feel her own eyes shining. “Of course!”

  “Now I’ll get to draw Evil Giant Cat! She was the one I wanted to draw most, but I didn’t want to take her away from you!”

  Vera heard her mother’s footsteps coming down the hall. Quickly, she positioned the book on top of the pile of Little Spoon pictures.

  “If you girls want a snack, let me know,” Vera’s mother offered as she came into the room. “We don’t bring snacks into the bedroom, but you could spread out your project on the dining room table if you’d like to work there.”

  Vera shot a panicked glance at Nixie.

  “We’re fine,” Nixie answered for both of them. “Thanks, though!”

  Vera waited to see if her mother would ask to see their comics. To her great relief, she didn’t.

  “All right, girls,” was all she said. “Have fun!” The door closed behind her with a gentle click.

  “Now,” Nixie said, the animal book apparently forgotten, “let’s draw!”

  seven

  A hero’s journey, Vera learned on Monday, begins with the “call to adventure.” Those were such tingly words they gave her a thrill.

  Buzz-Bee was telling them about a man named Joseph Campbell who wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The title meant there were thousands of stories about all different kinds of heroes, but every hero story had the same basic structure, or shape. That’s what made them hero stories.

  The hero’s story had so many parts probably even Nolan couldn’t remember them all. Buzz-Bee told the students how the hero’s story starts with regular, ordinary, everyday life. Then the “call to adventure” comes, although sometimes the hero doesn’t want to answer it. Of course the hero does eventually respond, or else he or she wouldn’t turn out to be a hero. Then the hero finds “mentors” (wise advisers) and other helpers, and faces a bunch of tests and challenges, leading up to one huge test, the “supreme ordeal.” The hero succeeds and then goes back home to regular, ordinary, everyday life again. But the hero is changed in some way because of everything that has happened in the story.

  Vera gave a sigh of satisfaction when Buzz-Bee finished talking. The words Buzz-Bee had used were so grand and glorious. They made Vera want to be a hero herself, not now, of course, because third-graders didn’t get calls to go on adventures, and her mother wouldn’t let her answer a call to adventure, anyway. But someday.

  Then she thought about her own comic and felt a stab of worry.

  Little Spoon had no call to adventure. She just fell out of the silverware drawer when she was being put away from the dishwasher.

  Little Spoon had no real mentors or helpers, just Plastic Spoon and Chopsticks, and they were often as lost and frightened as Little Spoon herself.

  Little Spoon did have adventures, but just the same kind of little adventures one after the other. Her story had no supreme ordeal, just little ordeals, which might make sense for a little spoon, but not for a true hero on a true hero’s journey.

  If Joseph Campbell was right, Vera’s comic was wrong.

  She had never raised her hand in comics camp, but this time, when Buzz-Bee asked if anybody had any questions, hers was the first hand to go up.

  “What if your comic-book character doesn’t do any of those things?” She could hear the wobble in her voice.

  “Well,” Buzz-Bee said, “not all comics are hero stories. Think back to the examples we shared the first week. Plenty of comics just show funny little things that happen in real life, and that’s completely fine. But I have a feeling, when all of you look again at the comics you’re making, you’ll likely find your hero does do many of these things, in his or her own way.”

  Was that true of Little Spoon?

  Maybe falling out of a drawer was a call to adventure, especially if you had never been out of a drawer on your own before.

  Maybe a plastic spoon could be a mentor and a pair of chopsticks could be a helper.

  But Little Spoon definitely kept having the same kind of small adventures over and over again. Vera knew that for sure.

  “Besides,” Buzz-Bee continued, “the whole reason we’re talking about the hero’s journey is to help us decide how best to tell our stories. If your story lacks one of these elements, guess what? You can change your story. You can revise your story—any story—to add whatever you think is missing. It’s as simple as that.”

  Buzz-Bee smiled at Vera, and Vera gave her an even bigger smile in return.

  Now all she had to do was give Little Spoon a supreme ordeal, an adventure bigger than all the other ones, which all the little adventures would have been preparing her for. Little Spoon needed to perform some great big, extra-heroic rescue.

  Little Spoon needed to rescue the entire silverware drawer.

  Little Spoon needed to rescue…Big Spoon.

  * * *

  “I don’t think our comic is a hero’s journey, do you?” Boogie asked Nolan during camp the next day, as everyone got out their comics to work on them some more. “I mean, our toaster keeps popping up a piece of toast, and the toast lands somewhere crazy, and the toaster says ‘Oops!’, and there’s a bunch of facts, and then there’s another piece of bread in the toaster, and it starts all over again.”

  Nolan nodded thoughtfully. “Ours is more of a nonfiction comic. The toast part is there just to make it fun for kids to read.”

  Boogie looked relieved.

  “Mine is a hero’s journey,” Harper said, tossing back her long, dark brown hair.

  Vera wanted to ask, What happens in yours? But maybe Harper would say, None of your business, and hide her papers even more so no one could see.

  Then Nolan asked Harper, “What happens in yours?” That was probably why he knew so many things. He never minded asking questions other people were afraid to ask.

  Harper hesitated. Then, as if figuring the rest of them were going to find out sooner or later, she said, “It’s about Princess Esmerelda of the kingdom of Esmer, and her call to adventure is when the Ancient Ones come to her and tell her that because she was born in the eighth minute of the eighth day of the eighth month of the year 8,888, she is the only one who can save her people from being wiped off the face of her planet.”

  It sounded so much like a real comic that Vera felt even sadder for Little Spoon, whose call to adventure had been so much less dignified.

  “Mine’s going to have a call to adventure when Evil Giant Cat arrives,” Nixie said. “Right now the dogs are having so much fun at Bow-Wow Academy I haven’t made it happen yet.”

  “Mine has no call to adventure,” James said, as if this made his comic vastly better than theirs. “Mine is just funny.” He shot a glance at Nolan and Boogie. “Like, really funny.”

  Did he mean his comic was funnier than Oops? Without having seen a single drawing by James, Vera already liked Oops better than his.

  She didn’t share anything about hers, not that it was a secret—she had worked on it in front of everybody yesterday—but because she couldn’t bear to see Harper’s superior smile or James’s smirk.

  “I’m hungry,” Boogie declared. “You can only draw so many pieces of toast without wanting to eat something.” He hopped up and got himself a paper cup of lemonade and another of Goldfish crackers.

  “Hey, Boogie!” James called over to him. “Bet you can’t toss a Goldfish in the air and catch it in your mouth!”

  Boogie grinned at the challenge. Moving closer, he set his lemonade on top of the low bookcase next to their table, tossed a Goldfish cracker into the air—and missed.

  “You lose!” James called over to him.

/>   “That was just my warm-up,” Boogie replied. “It wasn’t the real Goldfish-cracker toss.”

  The second toss must not have been the real one, either, because Boogie missed that one, too.

  Deep in conversation with Brian and Buzz-Bee about some camp stuff, Colleen wasn’t noticing Boogie’s attempts to answer James’s dare. Shouldn’t somebody tell Boogie to stand farther away? But Vera liked Boogie too much to say anything that might come out sounding like a criticism.

  “This is going to be the real toss!” Boogie boasted. “Prepare to be amazed!”

  The third Goldfish soared higher into the air than the first two. Trying to catch it, Boogie made a grand leap toward the bookcase.

  The bookcase where his cup of lemonade was sitting.

  The bookcase where his cup of lemonade used to be sitting.

  The cup—and its contents—went flying toward their worktable.

  Harper shrieked, snatching Princess Esmerelda to safety in the nick of time. Vera and Nixie, at the other end of the table, were far enough away that Nixie’s dogs and Vera’s spoons were spared. James didn’t seem to care if his “really funny” comic got splattered.

  But Boogie and Nolan’s comic was drenched: lemonade had soaked through the pages of Nolan’s carefully lettered facts and Boogie’s drawings of the flying toast with its funny expression of wide-eyed horror at yet another mishap.

  Colleen, Brian, and Buzz-Bee were there now with a roll of paper towels to soak up the lemonade.

  “This is why we have a rule about no snacks by the worktable,” Colleen scolded, stating the obvious.

  All Boogie could say, in a small un-Boogie-like voice, was, “Oops.”

  But his eyes scrunched up and his lips twisted as if he was about to cry.

  eight

  At camp on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, Nolan and Boogie worked as hard as they could in the time left to redraw the pictures ruined by the lemonade catastrophe.

  “I’m such a klutz,” Boogie kept moaning.

  “Look, the pictures are turning out even better this time,” Nolan reassured him on Friday. “It’s like those were the warm-up pictures, and these are the real pictures.”

  That sounded so much like Boogie talking about the warm-up Goldfish-cracker toss versus the real Goldfish-cracker toss that Boogie gave another moan.

  “I’m a klutzy klutz,” he said dolefully. “I’m the klutzy king of klutzy klutzes.”

  Vera was working even harder than Nolan and Boogie, trying to finish the drawings of Little Spoon’s biggest adventure. She almost wished Brian and Buzz-Bee hadn’t shown a video on Thursday about famous comic-book heroes like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and Wonder Woman, and that another guest speaker hadn’t come for the first part of today’s camp to talk about animation. It was hard to take a whole hour each day away from drawing. But even drawing time wasn’t as wonderful as it should have been because the others kept talking about comic-con, comic-con, comic-con.

  * * *

  Ask her again, Vera told herself Saturday morning as she and her mother climbed into the car to go to gymnastics.

  Why would she say anything different this time? Vera asked herself.

  Maybe if you keep on asking, she’ll know you really, really, REALLY want to go, Vera answered her own question.

  Vera already knew what to say back to that. When was the last time your mom ever changed her mind about anything?

  So that was the end of the silent conversation between Vera and Vera.

  On the ride to the gymnastics studio and on the ride home again, she and her mother talked about everything except comic-con: how Vera had been picked for a special math class, what Scarlatti sonatina she’d be working on next in piano, and what book they should read together now that they had finished Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and were halfway through A Wrinkle in Time. Her mother had seen good things on a mother-daughter book-club blog about One Crazy Summer.

  “Well, just one more week of this camp, and then on to the next one!” her mother said cheerfully, as if that was supposed to be a good thing.

  It wasn’t for Vera.

  * * *

  “All right,” Buzz-Bee said on Monday. “Today is the day for sharing the one page of your comic you’re going to be sending off to display at comic-con. This is your chance to get constructive criticism from your peers. Then you can use that feedback to do any revisions you want to do before Brian and I send off your work after camp on Wednesday, to be judged on Thursday, before comic-con begins on Friday.”

  Every single thing Buzz-Bee said made Vera’s heart twist inside her.

  She didn’t want “constructive criticism” on Little Spoon from any peers except for Nixie, and maybe Boogie and Nolan. Definitely not from Harper or James.

  She didn’t want to hear how wonderful and perfect Princess Esmerelda was. She already knew how wonderful and perfect Harper’s comic was; she didn’t need to hear other people say it over and over again.

  And every mention of comic-con made her want to plug her fingers in her ears and leave them there forever. While the others were having a glorious time at comic-con, she’d be doing homework at the little table in the corner of her mother’s downtown office.

  Brian had some way of taking drawings and projecting them onto a blank wall of the library. He told the campers to bring their comic pages to the library’s circular storytelling area, where they had watched the camp’s videos. With her Little Spoon page clutched tightly, Vera made sure she was sitting next to Nixie.

  Vera had picked a page from the beginning of the story, an improved version of her very first Little Spoon drawing: Big Spoon rescuing Little Spoon from the spaghetti sauce, but then scolding her for not being more careful. Unless people knew how the story started, they wouldn’t know why it was so important for Little Spoon to be the one who rescues Big Spoon in the end.

  She listened as Buzz-Bee explained the rules for critique:

  Say something positive first.

  Be specific. Don’t just say I liked it or I liked everything! Say what in particular you liked.

  Word any critical comments as suggestions, not statements. Don’t say, This drawing is confusing. Instead say, Maybe you could make what’s happening here more clear.

  Vera’s heart squeezed tight inside her chest.

  “Okay,” Brian finally said. He pointed to a boy in the front row. “You’re up.”

  That boy’s comic page first showed a flying rabbit soaring over a sleeping city. Then the rabbit landed next to a masked porcupine that was getting ready to rob a bank. (Vera knew it was a bank because a sign on the building said BANK.) The rabbit waved a weapon that looked like a flaming carrot and shouted to the porcupine, “I told you not to mess with the Bunny of Doom!”

  One camper said he liked the rabbit’s cool name. Another suggested that maybe the rabbit’s ears could be longer so he’d look more like a rabbit and less like a guinea pig.

  The next two comics were also from kids at other worktables.

  Then it was Boogie and Nolan’s turn. Their flying toast appeared on the wall. Vera was glad that the expression of shocked disappointment on the toast’s face when it landed on the moon instead of a plate was so funny that the campers burst out laughing.

  Vera wanted to say to James, See? I bet their comic is a hundred times funnier than yours! Of course she didn’t.

  Two kids later, it was Harper’s turn. Her drawings of the Ancient Ones calling Esmerelda to adventure were so well drawn, with so much detail, that for the first time nobody could think of a single criticism. One kid said Harper’s comic looked like it was made by a grown-up. Another said when Harper was a famous comic-book artist, he wanted her autograph.

  Vera expected Harper to receive her compliments with a toss of her long hair as if she was a princess herself accepting the cheers of her h
umble subjects. Instead Vera heard her breathe out a long sigh of what sounded like relief. How could Harper be nervous about constructive criticism?

  Then Vera’s heart stopped beating. Brian was pointing at her.

  A long moment later, there was Little Spoon projected onto the wall, covered with spaghetti sauce, looking so small and worried with her wide eyes and crooked eyebrows, as Big Spoon loomed disapprovingly.

  “Awww!” came a chorus of appreciation from her fellow campers.

  “She’s so cute!” one of them said, without even waiting to be called on by Buzz-Bee.

  No one had any critical comments about Little Spoon either, not even Harper or James.

  “They loved Little Spoon!” Nixie whispered to Vera. “I told you so! Didn’t I tell you? I told you she was wonderful!”

  “They loved Harper’s better,” Vera whispered back.

  “I didn’t! I bet a grown-up did draw Harper’s. I bet her parents helped her. Little Spoon is like—it’s like she’s a real person, a kid just like us, scared that somebody bigger is going to yell at her. Even though she’s only a spoon!”

  Vera hardly noticed what the next few comics were, or what anybody said about them. Sixteen pages of comics was a lot of comics to critique. Some kids were starting to squirm. How lucky Vera was that her critique was already over with!

  Then Nixie, whose dogs hadn’t been shown yet, gave her a hard nudge. On the wall, instead of the doggy students of Bow-Wow Academy, Vera saw a drawing of two kids. One was tubby with untamed curls standing up from his head as if he had been electrocuted. Exaggerated teardrops flew from his face as if his head was raining.

  The speech bubble coming from his mouth in one panel said, “Why am I such a big fat klutz? Our comic is ruined now! WAAHH!!!”

  The other kid in the picture was colored in to look darker-skinned. In another panel his speech bubble said, “It must be your PITUITARY GLAND! I know 10,000 boring facts about the pituitary gland! Let me tell you all of them!”