Gamerville, Johnnie Christmas's new graphic novel, explores friendship and pushing your boundaries
The author and illustrator discussed his new graphic novel with Christa Couture on The Next Chapter
Gamerville is the latest middle-grade graphic novel from author Johnnie Christmas exploring human connection and pushing yourself to try new things.
In Gamerville, video gamer Max is sent to Camp Reset by his parents, forcing him to miss the championship of his favourite game. At Camp Reset Max trades late night gaming sessions for group activities, sun and fresh air but he longs for the chance to take his shot at the Gamerville title. Devastated and frustrated, he plots his escape. As he invents ingenious ways to bend camp to his will, Max discovers that maybe the real world isn't so bad after all.
Christmas is a New York Times best-selling author and illustrator currently based in Vancouver. He previously illustrated Margaret Atwood's Angel Catbird and is the creator of Swim Team. In 2022 CBC Books named Christmas a writer to watch.
He spoke with The Next Chapter's Christa Couture about representation, friendship and getting out of your comfort zone.
Max, he's a typical child of his generation in that he spends a lot of time online, specifically gaming. How does that shape how he sees the world?
He sees the world through the screen and the screen looks back at him and all of his validation comes through the screen, there are metrics for every accomplishment that he makes. With him, everything is kind of quantified in that way and there's always an eye looking back and there's always him looking at something.
His mom comes from a world where things were a little bit more sloppy and messy, you can make mistakes and have fun and bruise a knee every now and then, she sees this very safe world that Max is living in and it worries her. He spends all his time in his room, he doesn't have a lot of real world friends and he's getting quite obsessed with this digital video game world.
At the start, because of his life in the online world, Max starts out as a bit of a loner. He's a former homeschooled kid, he likes to do his own thing. He does eventually see the value in teamwork. Can you talk about how he grows and changes throughout the story?
Max comes up with this crazy scheme, he decides he's going to game-ify summer camp. He's like, you know what? I don't know how to do all the summer camp stuff. What I do know how to do is beat a video game, so I'm going to treat summer camp like a video game. I'm going to game-ify everything in this place, and I'm going to use that to get myself out of here and get to Gamerville. That becomes his new goal and in so doing he starts trying to make allies and he starts making friends at camp.
The deeper he gets into his scheme of trying to get out, the deeper he gets into camp itself.- Johnnie Christmas
He starts becoming part of the fabric of camp and then he faces another kind of turning point as to well, actually, I kind of like this place, it's actually kind of cool. The deeper he gets into his scheme of trying to get out, the deeper he gets into camp itself.
In your graphic novels you write about young Black protagonists whose Blackness isn't their defining character trait. In this case, Max, he's an avid gamer. What are you hoping to achieve by presenting your characters this way?
Oh, just reality. Black is always presented as equivalent to race instead of just Black. We're just Black people, you know, and instead of fighting the dragon as many white protagonists get to do, we get to fight the system or we get to fight the man. Sometimes we want to go fight the dragon too. The journey that a lot of white protagonists and others get to engage on is a journey within, because the dragon is within, right? But our journeys, as presented in a lot of media, is a journey without.
Instead of fighting the dragon as many white protagonists get to do, we get to fight the system or we get to fight the man. Sometimes we want to go fight the dragon too.- Johnnie Christmas
A lot of Black characters don't have a lot of self-reflection, that I found. Everyone has a journey of self-reflection, everyone's going on a journey and I want Black kids to see themselves on a journey that's about themselves in relation to whatever challenges may present themselves in their lives at any given moment.
Sometimes the challenge is racism, let's not get that wrong. But when 90% of the stuff that's presented about Black life is about race we're missing so much.
What message do you hope young readers ultimately take away from Gamerville?
I think the message is to engage in your world. There's a lot of world out there and there's a lot to discover. I encourage them to go out and discover it because when you're online you can choose your exact adventure. But if you go down the street and you go for a long walk with your friends, there ain't no telling what you're going to bump into. There's no telling who you're going to meet. There's no telling what you're going to discover.
Most of the insights that I've had with relation to story or life comes when I'm just walking around. I walk past this dilapidated old house and the paint's flaking off of it just this certain way and the steps are worn and I can see the paint wearing away from the steps. That triggers something in my mind that wouldn't happen if I was just at home clicking on the stuff that I want to see. It's almost like you're just bouncing back and forth between yourself. It's a little strange.
Bump up against people, bump up against the world.- Johnnie Christmas
I encourage young people to get out and get on out there and experience some of that friction. Bump up against people, bump up against the world. Learn some new stuff, get some fresh air.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Produced by Ashly July.
