Illustrator Bizhan Khodabandeh and author James Moffitt’s graphic novel, “The Little Red Fish,” publishes Aug. 8.
The creative journey for artist, designer and Virginia Commonwealth University instructor Bizhan Khodabandeh and writer James Moffitt began when they met during a book signing event at Richmond’s Velocity Comics.
“I really liked his magic realist tales,” Khodabandeh recalls. Moffitt wrote a favorable review of the artist’s earlier comic for young people, “The Little Black Fish,” adapted from a Persian story about an inquisitive fish, which the artist says is about keeping the powerful accountable. “I’m not confident about my writing. So, we got to talking, and I thought maybe he’d be interested to go in together with this comic.”
Their conversation turned into the 2014 publication of what became six chapters of “The Little Red Fish.” On Aug. 8, the titles will arrive on shelves as one volume, published through Rosarium, a Maryland-based independent press.
“It was an incredible collaboration,” Moffitt says. “Bizhan had already done a mountain of research when he approached me to write the book. I added my own research, and we were able to find a thread of a story in all of that information and make it our own. I personally didn’t have much of an understanding of the history or the events prior to the project, so it was an intensive and enjoyable learning experience for me.”
The story — using fish, eel and herons as characters — uses as its framework the tumultuous history of Iran, beginning with Iran’s progressive elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalizing the nation’s oil industry in 1951 to keep it from Western control.
The CIA orchestrated a coup in 1953 against Mosaddegh. That event set into motion a stronger monarchy for Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the 1979 revolt against him, the ascension of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the seizing of the United States embassy by Iranian college students in the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which led to the 444-day crisis with 52 hostages. The ramifications of these events resound in headlines today.
Moffitt describes “The Little Red Fish” as an allegory set in a specific time and place but with a universality of experiences. “We see these types of conflict again and again,” he says. He introduced to the tale a powerful orb representing people’s will to fight against oppression.
Khodabandeh feels compelled to examine these fraught issues through this illustrated medium.
A collaboration in 2021 with Bill Campbell, a writer and Rosarium’s publisher, resulted in “The Day the Klan Came to Town.” The fictional adaptation told from the perspective of a Sicilian immigrant concerns how, in August 1923, thousands of KKK members from across the country descended on Carnegie, Pennsylvania. A few hundred citizens stood against the Klan. Violence ensued. The artist and Campbell will travel to Carnegie for a discussion marking the centennial of the event.
After these serious topics, Khodabandeh says he wanted to draw “weird monsters.” He’s creating a serial “Yasamin,” a rite of passage story about a young woman in training to combat nightmares — representing various phobias — and prevent them from emerging into the world.
These are time-consuming processes, amid life, family and work, but Khodabandeh enjoys what is often a painstaking artistic course.
“It’s scary to start something new, but fun, too. People have said horrible things about my art — it isn’t going to make me rich. I’m doing it because I’m enjoying myself.”
