Life Legacy of Princess Diana Now a Comic Book
Latest Entry in Female Force Series About Successful Modern Women
In the wake of the automobile crash that took her life in 1997, Princess Diana's life became the subject of countless books, magazines, television specials and movies – not to mention the rewritten Elton John ballad, Candle in the Wind.
Now her story has also been immortalized in a completely different medium, and one that might seem unlikely on first glance. Female Force: Princess Diana, a biographical comic from Bluewater Productions, was deftly written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Andrew Yerrakadu.
With a journalist’s care, Princess Diana follows the fair lady from her childhood through the fractured fairytale of her marriage to Prince Charles, her troubled relationships within the British Royal Family, and eventually to the sudden tragedy of her premature death. In lesser hands, the more scandalous details of those years could have been played for shock value. As told by Arrant and Yerrakadu, however, the focus seldom strays from those qualities that allowed Diana to rise above her loss of station post-divorce to remain the “People’s Princess.”
“Yes, she was a celebrity, with all the baggage that it entails,” Arrant explained via his comic script, one page of which depicts the writer breaking the fourth wall, talking directly to the reader. “But although she was born of noble blood and married into royalty, Diana, Princess of Wales, became so much more than a royal figure from a far-away foreign country.”
Tales of Strong, Successful Women Open New Doors
The publisher of Female Force: Princess Diana, Bluewater Productions, is fairly new on the comic book front, carving a niche apart from the superhero mainstream. It has printed adaptations of classic myths, and licensed sci-fi properties including Tom Corbet: Space Cadet, Logan’s Run, William Shatner’s Tek War, and Roger Corman’s Black Scorpion.
But the company’s strong suit is its line of biographical comics focusing on famous and successful modern women. The Female Force series has presented the life stories, the triumphs and tragedies, of women including Hillary Clinton, Caroline Kennedy, Stephanie Meyer, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Condoleezza Rice, J.K. Rowling, Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey and more.
For the Princess Diana project, Arrant searched out every source he could locate on the former Diana Spencer. He studied literally hours of video (movies as well as news reports and interviews), and stacks of biographies from his local library. He conducted personal interviews, including “some fruitless phone calls to the various offices of the British Monarchy,” he said.
It helped that Diana was one of the most-photographed women in history, as Yerrakadu made good use of the range and variety of photo references. His careful line work gives the scholarly narrative a documentary-like immediacy without losing sight of the chosen format.
“I began plotting out a rough timeline of Diana’s life, earmarking certain pivotal and picturesque moments that needed to be captured,” Arrant said. “Given that the biography was to be done in comics, I paid careful attention to specific visuals that would evoke memories conducive with the overall push of the book.”
An Artist’s Writer Plumbs His Own Past
A writer and graphic designer based in Panama City, Florida, Arrant says writing about a person he’d never met proved a challenge. However, his considerable experience as both a journalist and comic writer combined for the unique project.
His journalism credits include work for MSNBC, Newsarama, Publishers Weekly, Marvel Comics and AdHouse Books. His comic book stories have appeared in the award-winning Tori Amos’ Comic Book Tattoo, 24Seven, No Formula and Negative Burn. He also self-published an anthology of four short comic stories called, appropriately enough, Four Stories.
Arrant said he discovered his love of writing and drawing while in the back pews of a Southern Baptist church. When he learned later that people did this for a living, his fate was sealed.
“I always wanted to be an artist,” he said. “Comics let me combine my storytelling and drawing. Now I kind of focus on the writing - there are people who are a lot more talented artists than me that I can work with.”
Cover of Female Force: Princess Diana
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