Brigham Young University alumna, Anna M. Wright, launched her first graphic novel, “Apos,” at The Compass Gallery in downtown Provo on Thursday, May 7.
“Apos” is an anthology of true stories from returned missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These stories focus on the issues and dilemmas some millenials said they faced during their missionary work. The Compass Gallery hosted the graphic novel’s launch after four years of development.
“It’s just a whole big celebration of all this work that she’s put into telling these stories,” Courtney Olsen Serrano, The Compass Gallery manager, said.
The Compass Gallery and Anna M. Wright came together to make the launch feel like a traditional art show while also being a party.
“There are so many components that I’m stoked about and that I want to get right,” Wright said.
The launch displays included large-scale excerpts, original artworks, a read-along slideshow and stacks of preordered copies of "Apos."
“This idea totally aligns with our mission and that we’re able to offer a community space for events like this,” Olsen Serrano said. “Our motto is spirituality, symbolism and storytelling.”
The spirituality, symbolism and storytelling of "Apos" began as a final project while Wright was studying illustration at BYU. The project was a mass reflection of Wright’s experience as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“It just started as a handful of comics I had blown up and put them on the walls of the HFAC,” Wright said. “My illustration professors were so supportive.”
This support from Wright’s professors was crucial to the unconventional tone surrounding her project, as she had not felt that support from authority figures during her mission.
“The mission just broke something very fundamental in me. That took a while to rebuild and get back to feeling like myself again,” Wright said.
Instead of creating art highlighting the good times from her mission, Wright depicted moments that had chipped away at the joy she had once felt in the Gospel.
However, she did not intend for the project to be a criticism of the Church as a whole. Rather, she said her art was an expression of the darker aspects of missionary work that were considered taboo during the 2010s.
“I was a little bit nervous because I didn’t want people to think this was, like, anti-Mormon. It was just complicated,” Wright said.
To her surprise, Wright received positive feedback for her project, with viewers sharing their own difficult missionary experiences and asking if she would be expanding her work into publishable material.
Starting with a notebook of contacts she received from her project, Wright began conducting interviews with returned missionaries willing to be vulnerable with her.
“I had so many interviews. I did write part of it, but it was mostly taking the raw material of those transcriptions and trying to shape them into a narrative flow,” Wright said.
Wright interviewed 116 returned missionaries for "Apos," focusing on the millennial generation.
“If a millennial had a bad mission, you wouldn’t talk about it. Because the implication was, if you said that, you were a bad missionary. You were disobedient. You didn’t make the best of it,” Wright said.
A slang term for such “bad missionaries” is “apos,” a shortened version of “apostate," or someone who denies religious beliefs. This term stuck with Wright throughout her mission, inspiring the title for her graphic novel.
“From the beginning, ‘apos’ was a word that jumped out at me, even from my earliest sketches,” Wright said.
"Apos" follows a structure based on common slang terms used by missionaries and phrases often used within Latter-day Saint communities. Though returned missionary readers may recognize "apos" and its negative connotation, Wright developed a launch display board crossing out "-ate," and replacing it with "-tle," transforming "apostate" into "apostle."
“That’s where the title comes from, because it’s short for both ‘apostate’ and ‘apostle,’” Wright said.
She said her goal with the wordplay was to challenge the harmful attitudes that missionaries and members of the Church can enforce through such slang. She also included an in-depth glossary in the back of the graphic novel for readers unfamiliar with the niche vernacular.
Wright described how this challenge gave space for those struggling with feelings of shame and loneliness with empathy and transparency.
“It really did feel like a work of God. I felt myself being guided by God throughout the process, and I felt the Spirit,” Wright said. “There was this sense of sacredness about this shared feeling of, 'We are not alone. We can mourn with each other, and that’s OK.'”
Wright has received positive feedback in both local and online communities for her work.
“It’s someone being vulnerable. That’s how you create connections, especially in a spiritual sense,” Olsen Serrano said.
The Compass Gallery was filled with about sixty visitors, excited to chat with each other about the book, participate in a reading from Wright herself and get their preordered copies of "Apos" personally signed.
“This is the most I’ve ever felt seen and understood about my mission experience,” launch attendee, Lillian Sampson, said. “I just want to take this book home, curl up, get cozy and read.”
Though “Apos” has a friendly and approachable art style, Wright didn’t shy away from real-world situations that the missionaries she interviewed ran into. She shared that young readers should approach the graphic novel with caution.
“There are some very heavy themes and mature topics. So I would definitely say parents should read it first and decide if it’s okay for their child’s maturity level,” Wright said.
Wright shared that though most of the reactions she’s received have been from returned missionaries, future missionaries have also expressed that they’ve felt comfort from her art. Former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also attended the launch party, expressing their love for “Apos.”
“I hope, for someone who has left, that they feel comfortable (and) that they feel safety in the book,” Wright said.
Though the book cover features a depiction of a sister missionary with a recognizable tag on the cover, there is a disclaimer at the front of the book saying that it’s not sponsored by or directly connected to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I have no clue if the Church, the big institution, knows I exist. But BYU definitely does, which is really fun,” Wright said.
Associate Librarian Trevor Alvord, from the Harold B. Lee Library, has reached out to Wright to add “Apos” to BYU’s library acquisitions. Other missionary-related comics at the library include “Dendo” and “Served.”
“We have historically collected many Latter-day Saint-themed comics, especially those about missionaries,” Alvord said.
Wright shared that “Apos” will soon be available at The Compass Gallery, Barnes and Noble and at the library's Special Collections.
