"Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword" by Barry Deutsch

"Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword" by Barry Deutsch is the story of a young girl who's looking for adventure beyond the houses of Hereville. While her stepmother wants her to do the chores and learn to knit, Mirka looks for dragons and witches. Eventually she finds a talking pig, a witch, and a troll, and has to deal with them all, becoming, as the tagline states, "Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl."

The book is packed with details and characters.  Although we don't get to meet all eleven members of the Hirschberg family, Deutsch provides well-rounded versions of some of Mirka's siblings, her step-mother Fruma, and even the ghost of Mirka's mother.  He also intersperses the dialog with Yiddish words and sayings like "Dybbuk and "Drai mir nit kain kop!" (providing footnotes on the translation), giving us an insider view on the events in Mirka's life.

The Jewish culture is deeply woven into this story, but is never preachy or obstructive to the narrative.  
If anything it's an interesting alien world for most Americans, as well as opening a window into the lives of others. This article  from the "Jewish Daily Forward" says it best: "By normalizing the rhythm and values of Jewish life, rather than singling them out as a topic for discussion, he manages to make Mirka just another adventure seeking pre-teen who just so happens to be Jewish."

I emailed Deutsch with a couple questions about Hereville.

Comics Bin: These magical aspects of the story - the talking pig, the witch, the troll - are you working off Jewish cultural stories, or are they your own inventions?
Barry Deutsch: They're my own inventions. There are a lot of Jewish cultural ideas in Hereville, of course, but the magic isn't one of them.

CB: Why Hereville?
Deutsch: Although this never came up in the book, the town is actually named "Aherville." "Aher" is Yiddish for "here."

CB: Is Hereville in the past, present, where?
Deutsch: It's set in a small town in the present-day US (or the recent past).

CB: Do you know a girl like Mirka?
Deutsch: I don't know anyone quite like Mirka!

The way Deutsch has rendered Hereville it could be located in any slightly rural area, perhaps another country in the present-day, or outside of New York in the 1940s.  But the sepia coloration of the pages adds to the nostalgic, almost dreamlike qualities of the story. Deutsch never attempts to explain the pig, the witch or the troll, and although Mirka is surprised by them, she encounters them head-on, and thrives on the encounters. The ending is as satisfying as any tale from the Brothers Grimm or Aesop. I think that young and teen readers will enjoy the book through to the very end.

The art is clean, cartoonish, and consistent. Deutsch originally started drawing it as a webcomic for Girlamatic.com and then developed it into this book.  The 57-page webcomic is still available online.  The published book has been almost entirely redrawn and runs 139 pages.  You can see a 15-page preview here. He creates digitally, using a Cintiq tablet and Photoshop to draw and color the story.

In addition to his work on Hereville, Deutsch also drew one of the back-up pages in Brendan Douglas Jones's epic "Breakfast of the Gods" (the one about Super Sugar Crisp Bear).

Hereville was nominated "Best Publication for Teens" for the 2011 Eisner Awards.  The webpage is http://www.hereville.com/ and Deutsch's twitter handle is @barrydeutsch.