Batsheva Ingber Havlin: comics, depth, and intentional direction of flow
Paired together, words and pictures fuse into something magical. Comic books exploded onto the frum market in the last decade, and they’ve been getting increasingly sophisticated as kids get more and more hooked.
Batsheva Havlin is the author and artist of dozens of well-loved comic books including The Three Brothers, The Adventures of Hershele, and The Lost Prince. Far from one-dimensional, her comics combine the action of the format with character, humor, and rich historical backstories.
Art is in your blood, and you started in that space, doing illustrations for magazines. How did an illustrator come to join the writing world?
Comics are all about storytelling; I wanted to tell my own stories. I always knew I wanted to write my own books, but I wasn’t very good at it at first, so I focused on developing my drawing skills. But I’ve always been a big reader, and I got to learn from the great writers I work alongside, so eventually, I began to do my own writing.
How does the same person doing both the illustration and writing enhance your books?
Comic books are just like a movie or play, with all the elements of directing. Worldwide, the process is very divided; you have people doing the storytelling, coloring, and inking. The good thing about doing it yourself is that it’s easier to express what you had in mind. When you work with a writer, you often have conflicting ideas. When I do it myself, it becomes my own style and feels more natural and expressive without anyone else getting in the way.
Last year a director reached out to me and asked me to do a play on Balabusta, the adult comics I’ve written. We had animated male characters alongside the live female characters, so I worked on the drawings. It was a big production, with scenery, dancers, actresses, and everything. They did such a wonderful job, it was beautiful. They took my idea, but it came out differently than I imagined. That was the first time I felt like I was a tiny part of the project. Sometimes it’s nice not to do it all by yourself.
You've worked on so many different comics and different styles. What differentiates a superb comic from others?
The first element of a good story is conflict and characters that have depth. In the old comic books, characters did something spectacular, and then there was a good ending. The heroes of today’s stories, in all formats, not just comics, need relatable conflict, something that pulls the reader in.
When looking at a good comic book, I can tell if there was planning. Most artists just go page by page, but I first write the entire story in a file, all 60 pages of the comic book, word by word, describing what happens in each scene. This will happen in this square, this character will say this in the balloon, and this character will say that. Then I draw quick sketches of all 60 pages, like stick figures with balloons. I imagine each scene and decide on the angle - will the drawing come from above, from the side? I plan all the pages, and only then do I start drawing page by page. I think more and more artists started doing the planning work upfront.
What would a comic book look like if there wasn't any planning? What would that feel like to the reader?
Comic books have page limits. For the book to be profitable, you can’t have more than 56 pages because of printing costs. So without good planning, your story will come out much shorter or longer.
It also takes planning to get an interesting angle. The comic artist is like a director, pulling in the drawings to create movement through the page. Knowing how to start and what will be in the first square is an art. The story has to move along with the reader, so you need to draw the eye into the flow, reading from left to right. In an emotional scene, you usually see the character up close, we see her tears. You often see it in the movies, the camera comes from above like a bird, looking down at the people walking, and then goes closer into the scene, pulling the viewers in. The angle will depend on the role. But I can never be stuck with the same angle. If the page doesn’t move in and out and up and down, it's very boring.
In conveying a story, how does the format of comics restrict you? How does it free you?
Just like we say, “You don't say everything you think”, I say, “You don't write everything you say, and you don't draw everything you write.” Because a picture is stronger. You might be able to write about violence a bit and say that there were guns, shouting, shooting, and bombs. But when I do it, and especially when it's for children, I can't draw it, I have a limit. I have to tone it down a little bit.
But comics are very freeing. I've tried regular writing, I started writing a historical story a few months ago. And it's like, whoa! I'm trying to describe something, but why do I have to write it all down when I can just draw it and be done? Instead of describing his feelings, let's just draw his face. I suddenly need a different brain.
Your book Balabusta, as well as Mishpacha Magazines’s Kichels, are humorous societal commentary comic strips for adults. Do you think comics can play a more serious role in adult literature?
I’ve always wanted to develop comics for adults past just humor and take it to the next level. I’ve started doing comics in the Hebrew Mishpacha; the title is Psychology by Pen. It has a bit of humor too, but my goal is to bring an understanding of self-awareness and emotional growth. I also just started a new book on 12 steps for happiness, about optimism, realism, and the ability to think about the future and live in the present.
Another writer and comic artist, Miriam Yael, just finished a graphic novel for young adults called 1.0. It's also very psychological. So I think the movement has begun, and we are starting to make more comics for adults.
The challenge is that comics invite children. It’s not like other books where you could say, “Don’t read this, this book is for Mommy.” Because the eyes see the picture, and the message is quick. So when you have comics that aren’t age-appropriate for children, it's much more problematic. It's delicate, and you need to be gentle. I think Miriam Yael is doing it wisely, and I'm trying my best to deal with tough subjects. Comics are such a powerful tool, and we can use them for adults, too, if done right.
The Three Brothers series captivated kids and had them waiting with bated breath for a continuation. What led you to this era and story?
I read the story of Three Brothers when I was 9 or 10 and really loved the story. The real story is a fantasy written 200 years ago in Warsaw, Poland by Yaakov Morgenstern. It was a period when Jewish fantasy was popular. So he didn't name any real places or names. My idea was to take the story and try to make it historical, based on a real place.
I needed to pinpoint a year, say 800, 900, or 1000 CE. So I looked at what happened each year and I found characters in power in 902 that fit the original story. I really like to do historical research: what happened, who the people were, and then the story built itself. In the original story, the characters just go around fighting and running, and the main idea was to keep the mitzvah, and the mitzvah will save you. I try to portray that in every book. There has to be a message, they’re not just running around like heroes. They’re fighting for an idea, and I try to give them purpose through the missions they got from the Khazar king. That also added a suspenseful aspect that will connect everything at the end.
I have a drawing of those three brothers I did when I was 17. I told myself then that I would do a comic book of it one day. I waited for my drawing and story-writing skills to improve and then I did it. But when looking back, I always think, “Oh no, I could have done it better. Maybe I should have waited longer.” Today I see that back then, I held back from portraying emotion through drawing. It felt weird to spend a third of the page describing a feeling, especially in a magazine that only had three-page installments each week. They’d tell me, “You can't put in three pages where he's crying and sitting, you have to make him run away for his life.” So in the first two books there was a lot of running. And then the third book, I decided that I don't care, I'm doing it with all the emotion and movement the way I want it.
I’m thinking of the squirrel in The Lost Prince 2 as an example of how you’ve been able to mix and match genres and styles. How do you balance the lighter elements while retaining the more sophisticated mood of historical fiction? What do these lighter elements add?
I have a template for writing a story. I start by first giving myself heads-up on the story's message. Second is the elements the story needs: the characters, the conflict, and how it ends. Then I add the details, and then I color-code my notes. I don’t always do that, but I did it for my first books. The message is purple, the funny parts are yellow, and mysterious or scary parts are orange. That way, I can look back to see if it's balanced - a third funny, a third message, and a third story, so I have a good cocktail.
These days I don’t do it because it’s a more natural process. But I want there to be some mystery, there's got to be a good question in the stories, something that will pull the reader in. Then there is the message, and then there is this fun part, a joke every two pages. After a serious event, there's got to be a joke because you need to lighten up the mood. So creating a balance is a part of the writing process.
I am a big fan of processes and templates. Of course, if you stick to it too much it will get boring. Some books feel like a clock ticking, like tick, tick, now it's time for fun, now it's scary. So you need to be a bit more spontaneous, but a good template can be very helpful.
In what ways is the second book in a series easier to write than the first? How is it more challenging?
It is a bit difficult because you’re bound by what you wrote before. You made promises, put the foundation, and now you must follow it. And you also built up the audience's expectations, and you have to top that. The storyteller always has a problem with the audience. Once you've given them something good, you have to do something better than what you have done. And if you had the luck and did something marvelous the first time, how will you top that? So I try to keep the second book in mind when I plan a book. The trick is to quit when you are at the top. Don’t drag it down.
Since you've started publishing comic books, so much has changed in frum publishing, and comic books have exploded in popularity. What do you think led up to this trend?
Firstly, it's actually something technical. When I first wanted to do comic books, people told me, “Don’t do it, it's not profitable. It was hard to earn anything from comic books back then.” Publishing comic books used to be very expensive, but printing costs have gotten very low since then.
And then there is today’s visual media. Children worldwide read less now. All the research shows that our attention spans are shorter. As much as we tried to postpone it from entering our doors, it came in. Everything is visual, and children, especially, don't have the patience for reading. Comics are the gate before real media. Parents in our community try to keep their children from screen time, so comics are the answer. It's short and colorful, giving the message we want for our children.
What would you tell parents who discourage their kids from reading comics and tell them to read “real books”?
I'm one of those parents. I think it's very important to develop their ability to read regular books, but my children only want comics. But I don't think they’re not reading just because they have comics. I think they simply don't read, and comics fill the gap. I would tell parents to encourage their children to read, but not by avoiding comics. Tell them to read three comics, and then it's time to read one book.
I once researched the effects that reading comics has on children. and found that there actually are a lot of benefits. Reading comics develops the part of our brain that makes connections. Reading comics trains children to connect pictures and text, and it develops their brains to make connections with other things around them, like facial expressions.
What's coming next for you?
My main project now is doing more comics for adults and teens, especially related to psychology. We learn so many things in our late twenties and thirties, and we wonder, why didn’t anybody tell us these things in school? I think if somebody had told us, we wouldn’t have been emotionally mature enough to understand it. By doing it with comics, I think it will be easier to understand the complicated feelings that develop in young adults.
I also just began writing another long story like The Three Brothers. It's more fantastical and less historical. Twenty years ago, I was afraid to do fantasy because I wasn’t sure if the community would go for it. That’s why most of my stories are historical. But people are more open-minded now toward fantasy or stories that couldn’t happen, so I finally can do what I wanted to do with this and widen my horizons.