​The Creators of The Ski Town Fairytale Speak About Their New Book

The Ski Town Fairytale is a new graphic novel from Ryan Stolp and Sam Morse that explores what it means to live in a mountain town.

Skiing has always been a very visual sport. Sliding on snow has been represented in just about every form of visual media possible: films, photographs, drawings, the list goes on. One place we haven’t seen much of it, though, is the world of graphic novels. That’s where author Sam Morse and illustrator Ryan Stolp come in. The two lifelong ski bums (who might not quite identify as such anymore, but let’s be real…) are excited to showcase their new project to the world: The Ski Town Fairytale. The 48-page comedic graphic novel tells the story of chasing the dream in a ski town. If you’re reading this right now, you might already know the story all too well, but give it a look. The book is now available in a limited first-edition Hardcover run.

You might recognize Sam Morse from his time writing for TGR as the author of our humor column The Bumion. His witty humor and subtle jabs at the reality of mountain town life have kept us entertained for years. If you’re a Jackson local or a connoisseur of humor in Instagram, you might also recognize Ryan Stolp – who’s behind one of our favorite serial cartoons, Lift Lines Comics. Both Sam and Ryan have spent a large part of their life chasing the dream of living in a mountain town and focusing on playing in the snow, but both have also come face-to-face with the challenges that lifestyle presents. I sat down with Sam and Ryan to hear more about their latest project, what it takes to create a graphic novel, and their take on modern mountain town life.

TGR: Ryan, who are you and what’s your relationship to this project?

Ryan Stolp: My name is Ryan Stolp, I'm the creator of Lift Lines comics that's been running for four years in Jackson Hole. It kind of takes a perspective on mountain life and the absurdities of a mountain town and ski culture. And Sam knew of my work. I actually knew of his work at the Bumion many years ago when I first moved to Jackson and he reached out to me, as they do these days… I think he “slid into my DMs” or you found my email somewhere and called me. So, I pitched this idea -this one really resonated with me. I thought it was witty and thoughtful and relevant and it turned out to have even kind of longer legs than I thought as far dealing with some deeper issues that I think mountain towns cross country have been facing in an ever more pressurized environment.

TGR: Sam, you don’t really need an introduction here at TGR, but why don’t you tell us who you are too?

Sam Morse: Ha, I’m Sam Morse, I’m a copywriter and humor writer. I came to this idea because I wanted to find a way to take all of the copy writing and humor writing I did for digital and social facing content and bring it into real life for people to actually relate to as a tangible product. I was always dissatisfied that my work writing essentially click bait for TGR was so dependent on social media algorithms. And, you know as a writer, you're only as good as your last piece, right? That last article you posted. And so, I always wanted to take the work that I was doing for TGR and other publications and bring it into the real world and actually provide something for people to enjoy physically.

TGR: How do you guys see your career trajectory bringing you to this project?

RS: I studied a lot of visual language in college. Throughout my professional work as a marketing and creative director getting to break out of a single panel into a storyline was a fun and exciting challenge for me. And it kind of lends itself to sprinkling in a really rich, tangible story, that maybe you don't get the space of the time to tell in a single panel. I think there's a ton of Easter eggs throughout this whole story with a kind of ‘show don't tell’ style that exists beyond the written word in it. And kind of getting to break out of my style, which at Lift Lines is meant to be produced quickly and three times a week for a newspaper, and getting to try something new was very exciting. And I think it adds a whole new layer of mood and emotion to the kind of rollercoaster reality of ski towns.

SM: My writing career was just the product of lived experience. I dirtbagged, ski bummed and river guided throughout my twenties. And I only started my editorial career around age 29 or 30. And as part of becoming a marketing professional, one of the biggest challenges for me has been being able to tell realistic, true to life stories, in an honest way. And I feel like no matter who you're representing, they always want you to spin it to present the best possible version of events or a brand or their product or whatever. I just wanted to create a product that was honest and authentic to the lived experience that people in ski towns go through on a day-to-day basis. So, in the instance of the Ski Town Fairy Tale, we try to replicate that through Sophie's journey. You know, she has a glamorized ideal of what living in a ski town would be like. But when she gets there, she runs into a lot of obstacles that are universally relatable for anybody who isn't a trust funder or has a really big marketing budget to play with. You know, it's not all powder turns and hot tubs and like après boozing. There's a lot of jobs and a lot of challenges along the way that people must wait for.

TGR: Can you define “the dream?” What’s the ideal of living in a mountain town all about?

SM: The dream is whatever makes you happy and makes you feel content in the moment and in the long run. And, in my early twenties, the dream look a lot different than it does where I'm at now. When I was in my early twenties, I woke up at 5:00 AM and tried to get first chair every day. Now the dream looks like trail running with my dog and going to hot yoga and maybe snowboarding, a few times a month during the winter. When I lived in Jackson, I would always see the 40 something single dude at the bar are who just never grew up. And his dream never changed and he just wanted to rip pow and he's going to die on that bar stool and that's his life. And I think some people want to have a whole plethora of experiences that they can tap into when they're an old person and look back on and be like, okay, I check all of these boxes. Some people want to check a lot of boxes and some people just don't need to do that.

RS: I would say that I kind of came to the dream from outside of ski world. For me, it was kind of the hiker dream, or the rock climber dream. I think they all have a lot of the same themes. And for me, those themes are a work-life balance. So, being able to live a life that fills you with experiences and adventure, but not at an extreme cost. There's an inflection point, like you can work really hard to live in New York city if that's your dream. But at some point it's like does working 80 hours a week allow you to enjoy New York City? There's a trade off. And I think something I've come to terms with is that I'm super fortunate in how I've landed in Jackson, but it's changed more rapidly in the last year with COVID and my friends moving away, and prices skyrocketing. Maybe you can make the dream work for you in a place, but part of my dream is having people to share it with, and if these mountain communities are changing so rapidly, the dream becomes less of a being in a place and less of a single activity and more of a holistic balanced lifestyle that's authentic to who you are and not driven by outside forces.

SM: Put another way, the dream is what happens when you put away your phone and your camera and just enjoy what you're doing in the moment for the pure sake of what it is, what that activity is, what that flow moment is.

TGR: Tell us a little more about the book itself. It’s filled with humor, some of it quite dark, and it explores some deeper topics. Did the representation of the dream change at all while you guys were working on the book?

SM: I would argue what the dream looked like was always the same. However, throughout the creative editorial process, we just sanded down the rough edges and we tried to take some of the darker moments and put them into a more playful context. But from a storytelling perspective, I don't even like the word dark. I like the word honest. I feel like I set out with this book to honestly convey what the challenges are like for a young person to try to move to a ski town.

RS: I think if you went back to our first and second drafts, there was a bit of anger or cynicism in it. Like that's the easy answer, but I think it is a more nuanced experience that needs to be presented in a more honest way. However, I do think if you read between the lines, there is question about what the future of these prototypical ski mountain town dreams are. I think the arc of the story evolved a little bit with the later drafts. I think we really wanted to arrive at an answer to “why did I read that book?” Was it just to glean an honest perspective? And I think that's where we really polished and got to put our foot down to say something for which we stand.

TGR: Do you guys see yourselves in this story?

RS: Based on the fact that I drew my high school car, yeah. It was a very cool ‘83 Volvo wagon, and I think that's the sexiest car I ever owned. So I had to draw it in the book. There you go.

TGR: Well, there’s definitely another car that’s very recognizable in it!

RS: It's an easy one to draw! The setting is really all the places around town we frequent. For those of you who go to the Hot Springs all the time, everyone can relate to slipping down that hill after a snowfall and freezing your butt off and dogs shaking water on you. Yep. Or pulling into the village or town square on a snowy night. There's a lot while we don't want to show so it’s not so overtly Jackson hole. But it’s clearly based here because it definitely comes easily to me as an illustrator.

SM: I mean, moving beyond the geographic nature of it, like Stolp was just alluding to, I think of course I see myself in it, but the whole point of the book is that the experience of Sophie, the main character, transcends cultural bounds, gender, age, ethnicity. It's like if you're a young person who doesn't have a ton of money, trying to make it in a mountain town, you're going to run into the same universal roadblocks and the story can be identifiable and relatable to anyone who is in that circumstance. So, I think I definitely see myself in it. I bet you see yourself in it. Sure do. And pretty much anybody who has, has been in that situation will get it. It's funny, we had a couple of test readers like who, as city-dwellers didn’t quite pick up on some of the Easter eggs. But then we showed it to some local friends and they immediately got it. You know, like somebody who has done what Sophie does might get a lot more out of it than the layman. But we’re hoping the layman will enjoy it too. It's a visual and easy story to digest that maybe helps those people that have been removed for whatever socioeconomic reasons, cultural reasons from the privilege to pursue a self-led dream. Hopefully the book just kind of deepens that conversation.

TGR: Changing gears for the last question here. You guys are digital professionals, so what was it like to work in physical print medium?

RS: I actually work in physical mediums a lot for my marketing and agency work. So it was cool to get to do it on my terms rather than client terms. I think that this project had to be physical because of the kind of digital things in it. I think our culture's coming back around to tangible slower experiences. There is a value to being present. There's something about being in the same space as the physical thing that you're consuming that I think has a power and a draw, maybe a magic, to it in our era of not having that very much. Look at ski magazines, people still get them, because they're just fun to look at these big pictures. They're not distracted from it. No ads popping up. My Lift Lines published book is one of my favorite things I've done too. There's something about holding it and having it into your life whenever you pass through the room.

SM: It's tangible. It makes you mindful of it. You know, I think mindfulness is a theme of, of the dream, a theme of the book is “be present.” I mean I sometimes feel weird sending potential employers to my LinkedIn page or my portfolio and referencing all these page views that I've gotten. It's like, what have I actually built? What have I actually produced? That's what I want to show people. I want to show the feeling that I actually built. Crumpled, coffee-stained pages. That’s valuable. You appreciate with wrinkles.

The book is now available in a limited first-edition Hardcover run.

About The Author

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stash member Max Ritter

I manage digital content here at TGR, run our gear testing program, and am stoked to be living the dream in the Tetons.