By Zack Quaintance — Will McPhail, whose cartoons regularly appear in The New Yorker, has his first graphic novel, In, out now, and today he took some time to talk to us about the new book. The book (full review here) is a poignant and clever look at modern life, and McPhail was kind enough to share some insights about what went into its creation.

Check our our conversation below!

INTERVIEW: New Yorker cartoonist Will McPhail talks graphic novel, IN

ZACK QUAINTANCE: I wanted to ask about the form of this book and what the experience was like for you creating your first long-form graphic novel versus the individual cartoons you’ve done?

WILL MCPHAIL: I’d never done anything like it, to be honest. It was my very first crack. I do mostly New Yorker cartoons, single panel things, and when I started working on the graphic novel, it felt kind of freeing initially. With the New Yorker cartoons, I’ve got to squeeze this whole world into one frame: the premise, the setup, the punchline — all existing there in one caption and one frame.

When I moved over to the graphic novels, it felt like I was free. I had way more scope with the literal space on the page, and it was also in the fact that I didn’t need to be funny all the time. I also didn’t need to be as quick. I could take my time with arcs. It felt very free. Then when I was finished with the book and going back into The New Yorker cartoons — it felt like, ‘oh no, this is the freeing thing. I can just write about pigeons and rats and stuff.’ [Laughs]

It felt like two different gears. At first it was jarring to switch between them, but it was nice to have that variety in my work and my life.

ZACK: A thing in the book I wanted to specifically ask about were the facial expressions. I thought they were really emotive, to the point that many of the silent panels are the most powerful. How were you able to achieve such strong acting with the expressions in this book?

WILL: Yeah, there are like four lines of dialogue in the whole book. [Laughs] But that’s definitely a carryover from my New Yorker cartoons. All of my characters have got those same big expressive eyes. It’s interesting because I’ve actually just got there in more recent years. When I started off and was just ripping off every Calvin and Hobbes frame I’d ever seen, my characters had little dot eyes. My eyes got bigger and rounder, and I found this ability to find nuance and facial expressions that got across the points I’m not articulate enough to express in words. I’m really fascinated with how tiny changes in an eyebrow or the lower part of an eyelid change an expression. I just enjoy doing it.

And I’m not joking about that. In the book, I’m much better at expressing stuff visually than I am in words, and so I found it easier to get emotion across that way. It also lends itself to a thing I like in work I read, where it doesn’t spoon feed the reader too much. It lets you assume your reader is smart enough to interpret these things themselves and leave some space there for them to work out what they think the character is thinking.

ZACK: The book felt autobiographical. The main character is a cartoonist and all that. Could you talk a little bit about how personal the book is and how much of it is taken from your real life?

WILL: The truth is not much happens to Nick in the book that has actually happened to me. Aside from that opening swimming pool thing with the bowl, the rest of it — you know, I’ve lost loved ones like everybody else and I’ve had these transcendent conversations that feel completely different to performative conversations that feel sort of shocking in their sincerity. But I’ve never connected with a plumber in my bathroom like Nick does.

The book is fiction informed with real life experiences. The book is at its most autobiographical with the humor, maybe, because there’s a lot of humor in there I felt I was able to get away with because it was autobiographical. Like the pretentious coffee shops that Nick visits. I felt I was able to tease them about that because I actually love those and I go to them. It felt self-deprecating as opposed to mocking because it’s autobiographical. There’s a part where Ren teases Nick about being a woke boy, and the only reason I felt comfortable doing that is because I am, proudly, a woke boy. The autobiography is there at my own expense.

Sorry, whenever I answer that, I can feel people sort of going, ‘Who died?!’

ZACK: I didn’t want to ask exactly that, but I was kind of hoping you’d answer it…

WILL: Yeah, I mean, everyone has had people close to them who have died, particuliarly this year, and so it was drawing from that.

ZACK: Was the book informed a lot by the pandemic, or were the themes around isolation things you’d always been thinking about?

WILL: I wrote the book long before this year, so it was all written down. I finished the book during lockdown, so it would be foolish to say it hadn’t effected me, I’m sure it did, but honestly I’m a bit reluctant to tie the two together because I’m worried it might feel a bit exploitative.

But for me and my friends and the people we know, we all kind of felt directionless during the lockdown. All our lives were disrupted, so we didn’t have a thing to aim for. Whereas I had a book to finish, I knew where I was going, and I had this clear thing to aim for. In that respect, the book helped me deal with the pandemic, as opposed to the other way around.

ZACK: Let’s talk about the coffee shops you mentioned. That was a thing where I felt like I too was personally being attacked in a really fun way, because I love those places. When I go to a new city, I always stop in those places. Can you talk about your relationship with those coffee shops?

WILL: Wherever I go, that’s also the thing I gravitate towards. Like I said, there’s an autobiographical element there, and I really do hope it doesn’t feel like I’m mocking them. I love them. In the book, they sort of represent this lack of something Nick is looking for and that he’s hoping to find in artisanal places and almond-dusted croissants.

It’s interesting, with the people I’ve spoken to about the book so far, they’ve kind of all assumed that it’s set in their cities, which are all different, just because these type of coffee shops are in every place now. But no, my intimate knowledge of them is because I spend so much time in them, working in them. That tends to be where I go. When you’re a cartoonist and the well is dry and you’re looking for inspiration, you need to get out, and coffee shops are the natural places I gravitate toward.

Buy In - A Graphic Novel by Will McPhail is out June 8!

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.