Michael DeForge: The transformation was there from the start. Had you initially planned for the book to be a more realistic work, or was the tree/twig divide there from the beginning? Paste: Big Kids begins as a very realistic coming-of-age story, and then takes a significant turn for the surreal. Big Kids debuts next week from publisher Drawn & Quarterly.
Paste talked with DeForge ( First Year Healthy, Any Colony) about the book’s origins, his approach to its unusual character designs and the role that online fundraising has had in his work. The end result makes for a haunting take on growing up and discovering that life is a much stranger journey than one could ever imagine. This dreamlike twist provides a showcase for DeForge’s artwork, which shifts from cartoonish to psychedelic and intricate (and back again) repeatedly over the course of the book.
Adam begins to see the world differently-a place where humanity is divided into trees and twigs with unusual methods of perceiving stimuli. Then Adam’s parents take on a boarder, a young college student named April, and things take a turn for the surreal. Framed as the recollections of an older Adam-with occasional narrative pauses to apologize for ambiguity in certain memories-the tale hits any number of beats associated with Bildungsromans where a youth begins to discover him or herself. The story follows teenage narrator Adam as he contends with the intrusions of his police officer uncle, his secret relationship with his classmate, Jared, and his growing awareness of a world outside of everyday family and high school drama.
Readers can be forgiven for anticipating a familiar coming-of-age story after looking at the first few pages of Michael DeForge’s new sucker punch graphic novel, Big Kids.
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