“Comics are both simple and complicated at the same time.”

Sandra Marrs and John Chalmers, aka Metaphrog have been creating graphic novels together since 1996. A Franco-Scottish alliance, they have been responsible for the gloriously rich and strange Louis series of graphic novels.

This month sees the publication of their latest graphic novel, The Red Shoes and Other Stories, their distinctive adaptation of fairy tale classics including the Hans Christian Anderson story that provides the title. What better time, then, to ask them about how they collaborate.

Sandra: The way we work together has evolved over the years and is also different from book to book, but nowadays is usually a lot more complex than “John writes and Sandra draws”. When we first started working together over 20 years ago the process was slightly more straightforward: we agreed on an idea, John wrote a script, we did page layouts together, and then I rendered the artwork. We worked like this on Strange Weather Lately and on the first Louis book.

Then we realised that it was better if I did the layout on my own. At first John used to give me the script in chunks along with a diagram of the story direction, but I didn’t always know what was to come next in full detail.

Nowadays I much prefer to have a full script in hand before completing the page layouts, as it takes me time to incubate it and I often do several draft versions. John also brings his ideas to the layout, and I only go ahead on the final artwork once the layout sits right with both of us.

Throughout the story writing we’ve always discussed scenes, giving each other ideas. I like a script to be clear, vivid, and heartfelt, and John doesn’t tell me what to draw (unless it’s essential for a script point), as I need to have the freedom to put my own artistic imprint, otherwise, the story would turn out flat or unfelt.

What I like about John’s scripts is that they are often unexpected, funny, sad, dramatic and surreal all at once, especially with the Louis books. His dialogues are always very natural and I like the way he constructs sentences, taking you to a special place. Sometimes I change things in the script, if something doesn’t seem right to me - I’m very critical of every phase of the creation of the story, but we’re lucky that we are both on the same wavelength; we usually both feel a story in the same way.

For the new book, The Red Shoes and Other Tales, we worked a bit differently: first of all the basic story was written by Hans Christian Andersen, but we wanted to interpret his story rather than do a straight adaptation. For this book I did a lot more of the actual script writing.

John: Initially I was writing for Sandra – in the hope that she would find it entertaining and stimulating, amusing and inspiring. We are lucky to get on so well and working together is always exciting – it’s always different with each project.

One thing is constant: we always walk and talk about the story ideas.

Although I am still writing for Sandra the process is complex and she brings a lot of writing to the projects by laying out the script. And, while I might have visualised something a certain way and thought it obvious in the script, two heads can be different from one and Sandra might see something differently when she reads it. Even if we’ve talked things through there are things that can be misunderstood or given too much or too little emphasis visually. So, after Sandra has drafted pages of layout it takes careful reading and discussion to figure things out until we are both satisfied.

Comics are both simple and complicated at the same time and the basic unit of two pages has to function in a way that enhances the story, underlining the themes and helping to build the right atmosphere. Each panel and single page should, we both feel, be in service to the story. Of course with comics, and visual story-telling, such fundamental things as the art style and look of the character can completely change the reading. For the world of the Louis books I often did doodles that sometimes became characters or formed the basis of characters and also took time to hand-letter the pages.

I always look forward to seeing the story take shape visually. Seeing Sandra working on the pages and reading them as we progress makes the story even more alive for me. All the Louis pages were hand-painted, hand-made on paper with pencil, paint and ink.

There’s something reassuring about work in progress. It’s pretty much impossible to explain what Sandra’s cartooning brings to the pages – there’s always something hilarious and surprising as well as a feeling that the characters are completely inhabited, very much alive. With the Louis stories Sandra uses an economical line and can even bring expression with just dots. Always the art invites the reader to spend time in it and that’s an amazing thing. Sandra always asks me advice, needing a fresh pair of eyes to see if a drawing is right, or some colouring, or a design.

Our new book, The Red Shoes and Other Tales, has a very different art style and looks wonderful. It features two different adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen tales that we have modernised and modified somewhat to bring out, in the main story, The Red Shoes, themes of hope, dreams, obsession and guilt.

The Red Shoes and Other Tales, published by Papercutz, is out in the UK on November 1st 2015.