Working closely with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Holland, Novel Graphics, Hill & Wang’s line of nonfiction comics, will publish, Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography by Ernie Colon and Sid Jacobson, a biography-in-comics of the celebrated Jewish teenage writer who went into hiding in 1942 along with her family before they were ultimately discovered and murdered by the Nazis.
Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography, will be published in September in paperback (50,000 copies) and hardcover (7,500) simultaneously. Hill & Wang, the nonfiction imprint of Farrar Straus Giroux, will be on hand in San Diego along with Colon and Jacobson to publicize and promote the new book. Located in Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House is a museum organized in 1957 to preserve the house where Frank went into hiding and where she wrote her internationally famous diary. The Anne Frank House also uses the house and the story of Anne Frank to offer warnings about the dangers of anti-Semitism and racial intolerance.
FSG publicity director Jeff Seroy said, Macmillan/FSG is also working with the Anne Frank House on publicity for the book. Macmillan is creating educational supplements as well as a timeline and other teaching materials for use in schools in Libraries. Seroy also said that FSG is working with the Association of Holocaust Organizations and the Jewish Book Council to promote the title through their education programs and the Anne Frank House has also set up a YouTube channel with interviews with the artists; Frank’s father Otto, animated sequences from the book and much more.
Thomas LeBien, publisher of Hill & Wang, emphasized to PW Comics Week that the new biography is “not an adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank,” Anne Frank’s world famous diary account of the Frank family going into hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex in her father’s office building. LeBien said that working closely with the Anne Frank House—which provided meticulous oversight for historical accuracy as well as a trove of photographs and extensive research materials—the creative team was able to provide a broader account of the Frank’s lives before they went into hiding and after they were captured, than what is provided in the Diary of Anne Frank.
“When you read the Diary you get Anne Frank’s recollections of a discreet period in time,” LeBien told PWCW, emphasizing that the new graphic biography provides broad social overview on the contemporaneous political forces surrounding Frank, Germany and the rise of Nazism as well as on anti-Semitism and the subsequent death of Frank and her family in the Nazis concentration camps. “The diary ends with her capture,” said Lebien. “We think the biography can provide a larger context about what happened before as well as what happened after her capture and death.”
“We were able to draw on the expertise of the Anne Frank House, their knowledge of Anne’s life and their mission, which is to raise the issues around intolerance and racial prejudice to a younger audience,” LeBien said. “We were able to use a great deal of information and distill it into an accessible core and look at the subtle changes going in the Weimar republic in German as well as the rise of the Nazi regime and changes that were going on throughout Europe at the time that ensnared the family and the Jewish people.”
The project began in the spring of 2007, LeBien said, when the Anne Frank House approached three publishers soliciting proposals for a graphic biography on Frank, before deciding on Hill & Wang’s Novel Graphics, launched by LeBien 6 years ago to focus on creating serious works of nonfiction and history using the comics medium. In turn LeBien picked veteran comics creators Colon and Jacobson to produce the work. Colon and Jacobson, artist and writer respectively, are also the creators of the 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, a comics version of the 9/11 Report and After 9/11: America’s War on Terror (2001- ), an original documentation of the progress of the war on terror following 9/11, done in comics and also published by FSG.
“They were my first choice,” said LeBien, “Ernie and Sid have demonstrated an ability to use a wide social lens that can be anchored in a remarkable story.” But LeBien also said that they were chosen because, “I knew it would be a demanding project—we’d have a body of experts alongside us approving every panel—and I needed an experienced team.”
Indeed, LeBien pointed out that “Ernie is now used to working in a paperless studio—all of the drawing, artwork and text are created in digital media—and we knew there would be late revisions and that he could make corrections electronically.” The process required chapter by chapter revisions and even physical recreations of situations in the book that were also checked against historical photographs.
LeBien emphasized that taking on the life of Anne Frank was an exciting challenge: “How do you use all of this information and still get the emotional response needed for a graphic novel and still keep it accurate.” The project faced a number of delays because of the meticulous process of review and revision, but LeBien said it was also, “fulfilling and we have set a high bar. Over the last 6 years I’ve learned a lot of lessons [about producing nonfiction comics} and all of them are in this book. “
“Most rewarding was learning how to work closely with a body of experts looking over your shoulders to guarantee a high level of accuracy on every page and to create an intimate biography of a remarkable woman,” Lebien said. “Anyone can read it and identify with Anne and the Franks and understand the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust.”
