Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox are usually understood as American mythology, the heroes of tall tales spun by 19th-century lumberjacks, and they are—but their broader truth is more complicated than that. Bunyan didn’t become a household name until the Red River Lumber Company used those stories as a promotional tool, which is where Paul Bunyan: The Invention of an American Legend (TOON Books/Astra Books for Young Readers, Aug. 8) begins.

The core of the book is Noah Van Sciver’s comic about passengers on a stalled train in 1914 Minnesota entertaining each other with tales of legendary lumberjacks and a lumber-company adman joining the fun with the wildest yarns of them all, about Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. But Van Sciver also notes those stories’ roles in deforestation and the displacement of Native Americans, and the book surrounds his narrative with work from Native creators: an introduction by Lee Francis IV (Pueblo of Laguna), an essay by Dr. Deondra Smiles (Leech Lake band of Ojibwe), and writing and artwork by Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota). A starred Kirkus review calls the book “an accessible and important reminder of how easily the truth can be co-opted.”

Van Sciver and Myles talked to Kirkus about Paul Bunyan via Zoom from their respective homes in South Carolina and Minnesota. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Noah, you previously drew a book about Johnny Appleseed. Did the Paul Bunyan project come from a similar place?

VAN SCIVER: When [TOON Books’ Editorial Director] Françoise Mouly approached me to do something on an American legend, that was one of the ideas she was interested in. I guess those two projects are related—they’re both about getting behind-the-scenes information on where a legend comes from.

How did you go about researching it?

NVS: There were four of us working on it, just for the cartoon parts! We’re doing it again now for another book—everybody scrambling together as much information as we can and then cross-referencing and comparing notes with each other. I went in blind—which is a good way to do a project like this. When I did Joseph Smith and the Mormons [2022], I went in not knowing anything and drawing as I learned. You make a lot of mistakes that way, but what motivates you to keep going are the discoveries you’re making. I think readers pick up on that momentum.

You focus the story on William B. Laughead, the lumber-company advertising manager whose collections of stories about Paul Bunyan popularized the character in the 1920s. But folktales about Bunyan and other loggers had been circulating for decades by that point, and you work some of those other names into your story too.

NVS: We were just going to tell the story of Paul Bunyan as an advertising tool, a cartoon way to distract from what was really happening. And when we looked into it, we discovered there were all sorts of versions of him beforehand. Paul Bunyan, as we know him, is really an amalgamation of these legends.

What Laughead added seems to have been mostly naming the blue ox Babe and creating the way Paul Bunyan is visually represented. As a cartoonist, what do you think of Laughead as a visual artist, and how did you develop the look of the character for your own book?

NVS: Laughead was a good cartoonist! He had a style that probably would serve him well if he were around today. The scale of Paul Bunyan changes depending on what the story is. Sometimes he’s just above the tree line, sometimes he’s so big that his hand falls down on the ground and that forms the Finger Lakes! He really is a figure for whatever you need to get across. I wanted him to be an idealized version of [the book's depiction of] Laughead—he’s big and muscular, whereas Laughead is short and chubby.

What was the process of developing the book like?

NVS: It was really difficult. I think I did four different scripts with thumbnails—I basically drew the book four times. But I was working with Françoise Mouly, who’s one of the greatest editors of all time, and it was such a good learning experience for me. For me, [Mouly’s 1980-1991 comics magazine] RAW is the top of the mountain, so working with Françoise was like a Marvel fanboy working with Stan Lee. She’d take what I did and dissect it—“this is not necessary, let’s go in a different direction here”—and then I’d redraw it based on her edits, and then she’d tighten it up even more. It was a lot of editing, but I’m really proud of it.

How did the additional material in the book come together?

NVS: We had to bring in other people who could give it context that enriches it. They were able to really complete the story and fill in its gaps. American legends are a really important part of America, but we need context for them so people can understand what they’re based on, or what they’re reflecting, instead of just throwing them out. That was an important part of this book: We keep Paul Bunyan, but we let the next generation understand exactly what Paul Bunyan is in a way that my generation didn’t know. We just had the Disney cartoon.

MARLENA MYLES: The curator of the children’s library research collection at the University of Minnesota recommended me to Tucker Stone, the executive editor at TOON Books. They emailed me and said that they were working on a book about Paul Bunyan, and right away I thought, that’s a problematic icon! But then I saw that’s what they were actually discussing. I thought that was really cool.

Marlena, how did you decide on your contributions to the book—your map of Dakota landmarks and stories about Little People?

MM: I’ve been creating those land maps to help people see Dakota history here in Minnesota. When some places do land acknowledgements, they like to use my maps—it lets people see a story of the land without even needing to be told a lot about it. Growing up, I always heard Native stories of the Little People, and I thought people should hear the kind of stories that are kind of erased by this other icon. When people see the Paul Bunyan stories along with Native stories, it helps them to build an understanding.

You also have a publishing company of your own, Wíyouŋkihipi Productions.

MM: Our first books are going to the printers in the next couple of weeks. They’re a way for Dakota people to tell our stories, and illustrate our stories, without needing non-Native publishers telling us what they think our culture should be about. I think it’s about time people hear it from us directly. The name Wíyouŋkihipi, in Dakota, translates to “we are capable, we will achieve this, we’ll win this.” We were originally going to publish the first books in fall 2021, but I wanted to schedule them so that people would actually travel and come to events indoors. We believe in something called “Indian time”—things happen when they’re meant to happen and not on our human schedule.

Douglas Wolk is the author of All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told.