"A long and winding road with a lot of unexpected turns" is how Terry LaBan describes the publication of his first graphic novel, Mendel the Mess-Up. It could also serve as a synopsis of the work itself: 12-year-old hapless Mendel is the bane of his shtetl, but through a series of coincidences and plans—the latter of which work by virtue of going almost totally awry—he ends up not only saving the day but acing his Bar Mitzvah. LaBan, a veteran of alternative, mainstream, and syndicated comics worlds, found himself at a career crossroads. “I’m not a superhero person,” he says, “which limited how far I could go.” Ideas for adult graphic novels weren’t panning out. Then he noticed that friends were having success with middle grade graphic novels, and he realized that the emotional struggles of the preteen audience resonated deeply. LaBan spoke with PW from his home in suburban Philadelphia about the book’s origin story, identifying with his protagonist, and world-building from a Jewish perspective
Was there anything in your background that gave you a running start on writing for middle graders?
I had never done anything for kids before on my own. But I used to write about 100 pages of Donald Duck comics a year, and those stories are middle grade stories. I'd always loved those comics, along with adventure books like The Lord of the Rings, The Black Cauldron, and the Tintin books.
I had other ideas for stories, but one popped into my head kind of randomly one day. I have done Jewish-themed work in the past: my syndicated comic strip, Edge City [which ran from 2001 to 2015] was about a modern Jewish family. But this idea was, “How my grandpa whipped the Cossacks.” It was just a title and I didn’t do anything about it for a long time. When I did write the story, it was originally a grandpa telling the Mendel story to a kid. I was in a critique group, and the response was, “We really like the story about the kid in the shtetl, but the framing story is boring.” So I dropped the framing story.
The things that Mendel goes through—those are issues that I had as a kid and still have now. My middle grade years were really intense for me, and I’ve thought about them all my life. The book is about self-esteem, which is true about a lot of middle grade books, but it’s a kind of self-esteem that I believe hasn’t been explored: the idea of, “There’s something wrong with me that I can’t change, and how do I accept that and deal with it?” Mendel feels like he’s cursed and he can’t change that, but he finds a way to use it to his advantage.
How did you find an agent?
I sent it to a bunch of agents, and didn’t get any bites, but during Covid in 2020, I reconnected with an old friend and told him I was trying to sell this book. His brother-in-law was really into Jewish middle grade books so I sent it to him, and he suggested sending it a certain agent, and she suggested sending to a small Jewish publisher. Right before I was going to write an email to the publisher asking what was happening—I figured they were going to turn it down—I got a call from PJ Library. The publisher had sent it to them, and they really liked it. They told me they were looking for more Jewish middle grade graphic novels.
They wanted me to make some changes and their recommendations were really good. For PJ Library to approve it, I had to create a script, like a film script: Panel 1—a description of what was happening, the dialogue. I hadn’t done that before for something of my own. Sitting down and making a script makes you think about the story in a different way, and I realized it was a crucial thing.
Then they gave me a letter that said they’d get behind it if it got published. I had met Denis Kitchen of Kitchen Sink Press [which publishes both underground and classic comics] years ago and figured he must have publishing contacts—and he offered to be my agent. He got me a deal with Holiday House in a couple of months. In fact, he told me we got the deal on Erev Rosh Hashanah 2022. And I was like, “Happy New Year!”
The book seems to draw on a lot of threads of Jewish comedy. Who were your comedy influences?
I don’t think of comedy as a separate thing. My favorite things are funny and scary and dark and dramatic; humor is an aspect of all the things that are going on. There’s not a big distance between comedy and horror. I really liked Breaking Bad—it was fast-moving and scary and disturbing and hilarious.
So I wanted to give kids something that was funny, yeah, but it’s also dark. There are serious issues that happen. The Cossacks are funny and then they’re not funny. They destroy this village, and they’re horrible and it keeps getting worse and worse. And that’s not funny.
It’s a challenging time to be a Jewish kid. How do you feel your book fits into the current landscape?
I started this book in 2019 and it was finished in 2020, so all of the things that have happened in the couple of years—that was not part of my thinking. I think the fact that there are resonances here is good and interesting. The story works if you can read things into it.
All Ashkenazi Jews have this notion of the past inside them. A lot of it comes from pop culture: I think of Fiddler on the Roof. I read the Sholem Aleichem books. I look at old photographs and they look like the people I know. My hope is that Jewish kids would find a similar connection to their history.
I’m also interested in making a Jewish fantasy world. There’s this default medieval world that a lot of fantasy takes place in, with castles and dragons and everybody understands it. I wanted to create a world of Jewish archetypes, a Jewish world. If a Jewish kid could read that and it resonated, that would make me very happy. But what I really want them to experience is an exciting story that they can’t put down. I try to end every page with cliffhangers so you'd want to keep turning them—even if you’re not Jewish.
One Jewish archetype is the schlemiel. Is that how you’d describe Mendel?
I feel like he’s a schlemiel who really cares. My impression of classic schlemiel-dom is that it’s unaware; there’s a doltishness to the archetype. Mendel isn’t a dolt. Mendel tries really hard, and he struggles with it. That’s how he’s different from the classic schlemiel.
What’s next for you?
I do have something on the table, but no one’s seen it. It’s not a Jewish story, but it’s historically based, it’s conceived as a series, and it’s adventure-y—for middle graders, that’s important. But I don't want to talk about it because I’m extremely superstitious.
Mendel the Mess-Up by Terry LaBan. Holiday House, $22.99 Dec. 17 ISBN 978-0-8234-5356-6; $14.99 paper ISBN 978-0-8234-5680-2
