Graphic Novels Reviews, May 15, 2011
May 15, 2011Tall, cheery Rob Berry came from behind the bar, bearing a tray with brimming pints for us. “Calypso is almost done,” he smiled to me and his co-conspirator, Josh Levitas. “It’s going live April 20th, 57 days before Bloomsday, a page a day like a daily comic.” So by B-Day, June 16th, Berry’s team at Throwaway Horse will unveil the second digital episode of Ulysses “Seen ,” James Joyce’s masterwork as graphic narrative. (See www.ulyssesseen.com and free iPad app.)
As one of the most respected and daunting of English-language novels, Ulysses is, for me, one of the holy grails for comics to attempt. Whereas Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past has been only excerpted in bandes dessinées (English edition: NBM), artist Berry is going full frontal for all Joyce’s 700-plus pages.
No print copies yet, but Throwaway Horse has been dancing with publishers. “We’re making it a New Year’s resolution to have a print edition of Ulysses ‘Seen’ by 2012,” Berry vowed on Facebook. And libraries will want to offer both electronic and print versions. Joyce’s multilevel story bursts with allusions and in-jokes from every imaginable corner of its author’s brain, not to mention ambiguous dialog and puzzling localisms and lingo. Berry and company believe that turning to pictures and speech balloons will help clear away the brush while enticing readers to decode further levels of meaning. And that comes via an e-linked readers’ guide about what Joyce was getting at, page by page. It should feel like a play where you can chat with the cast, mid-act, or a pub-style schmooze with fellow Guinness quaffers.
New media can enhance traditional media via comics, e-formats, and, coming soon, a Ulysses app for shared environments allowing reader groups to post internal comments, super for classrooms and book clubs. Eric Shanower’s Age of Bronze and Martin Rowson’s T.S. Eliot/Raymond Chandler mashup, The Waste Land, will see similar treatment from Throwaway Horse.
Back to full frontal: another stumbling block for Joyce’s novel has been its characters’ earthiness. They swim naked, joke about body fluids, beat off, screw around, and even make love. But Ulysses cleared early U.S. censors in a 1933 court case and lately gained an exemption from Apple’s iPad anti-nudity policies.
Librarians certainly side with Molly Bloom in saying yes I will Yes: yes, we will make the e-version of Ulysses “Seen” available in libraries and, after publication, will circulate a print version. So, now, Pynchon eventually? Umberto Eco? Yes we hope!—M.C.
Beagle, Peter S. & Peter B. Gillis (text) & Renae De Liz (illus.). The Last Unicorn. IDW Pub. 2011. c.152p. ISBN 9781600108518. $24.99. F
Beagle’s odd fable has collected millions of fans since its 1968 publication and is considered a fantasy classic. Fearing that she’s the last of her kind, a unicorn—accompanied by an incompetent magician and the former girlfriend of a cowardly outlaw—journeys to free the other unicorns from evil King Haggard. It’s a mashup of quest tales, heroic and otherwise, about seeking family (the Unicorn), love (Haggard’s son, Prince Lir), power (Haggard), competence (Schmendrick the magician), and adventure (Molly). Yet beyond archetypes, the engaging characters carry the narrative, which becomes a quasi-Rorschach for readers to find in it what they will. Gillis and De Liz’s adaptation succeeds with overall visual loveliness and striking design and coloring, although some details don’t quite fit. The Unicorn, for example, seems too My Little Pony about the head, while her human persona, Amalthea, looks childishly dim-witted. But De Liz shines with the ornamentally grotesque Mommy Fortuna and her harpy. VERDICT Many fans of the story should enjoy this comics version, and new readers will find it an easygoing and beautiful read. Recommended for tweens and up.—M.C.
Bertozzi, Nick. Lewis & Clark. First Second: Roaring Brook. 2011. c.144p. bibliog. ISBN 9781596434509. pap. $16.99. F/HIST
In the early 1800s, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the first official U.S. expedition from the East to the Pacific Ocean: three years of scientific discoveries, Indian encounters, drunkenness, fraying tempers, geographical surprises like the Rocky Mountains, lengthy and exhausting portage of gear between waterways, and an unenviably variable food supply. Tasked by President Thomas Jefferson to map a waterway passage across the country as well as soften up Indian tribes for U.S. trade and sovereignty, the manic-depressive Lewis and his more even-keeled partner commanded a boat crew aided by translator Sacajawea with her baby and Clark’s personal slave, York. Judiciously intercutting the emotional with the historical, Bertozzi (The Salon) dramatizes Native American dilemmas as well as those of the explorers in a nuanced and addictive account. Creative use of page layouts and speech balloons adds understanding. VERDICT Rightly described as “harrowing and hilarious,” Lewis & Clark should help tweens and up burrow into history through a visceral appreciation of the road trip from hell, 19th-century-style. Recommended for all libraries. This is the first volume of a world explorer series, with Shackleton up next.—M.C.
Capp, Al. Li’l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays. Vol. 2: 1937–1938. IDW Pub. (Library of American Comics). 2010. c.250p. ISBN 9781600107450. $49.99. F
From 1934 to 1977, cartoonist Capp took newspaper readers deep into the “mountings” of Kentucky for the crazy and highly popular misadventures of the poor and undereducated but honest and superstrong Li’l Abner Yokum and the other hayseed residents of Dogpatch. This second oversized volume in IDW’s handsome new reprint series features feuding families, cruel villains, mistaken identities, amnesia, psychic powers, dream sequences, world traveling, fortunes won and lost, Li’l Abner attending a girls’ school in a sailor uniform, and the introduction of Sadie Hawkins’ Day, on which the unmarried women of Dogpatch win the hand of any man they can catch (on foot). But the pining, beautiful Daisy Mae doesn’t win her dense, on-again-off-again beau Li’l Abner yet. VERDICT The strip shows the first inklings of its famous satirical bent here. Capp’s characters—like the scrappy and wise Mammy Yokum (a sort of female backwoods Popeye, right down to the corncob pipe)—are largely a hoot, as is the mountain folk’s hilarious dialect, and plots often play out in unexpected comical ways. Another classic done justice by IDW’s “Library of American Comics.”—S.R.
Ciaccia, Jason (text) & A. Norhanian (illus.). The Sinister Truth: MKULTRA. Pop Industries. 2010. c.102p. ISBN 9780615314679. pap. $11.95. F
When the Freedom of Information Act allowed access to formerly classified Cold War documents, the door flew open for the eagle-eyed to discover the stranger-than-true Project MKULTRA to develop mind-control techniques and Operation Good Times to end the life, beard, and/or sanity of Fidel Castro. While this account certainly fictionalizes day-to-day details, the bare bones appear, alas, real. Between the 1950s and 1970s, the CIA tested a loony list of medical and psychological brainwashing approaches on unwary citizens and made numerous bizarre assassination attempts against the Cuban leader. In one long ministory, a scientist on LSD attempts to mastermind a hapless Cuba-centered operative through a complex anti-Castro plot involving a drugged cake, LSD in the ventilators, and poison for saturating his shoes. VERDICT This wild ride down the roughest back roads of U.S. intelligence (so to speak) belongs in most academic and many public libraries. Ralph Steadman–channeled grotesque drawings, full nudity, and splatter violence make it best for adult collections. Key documents are footnoted and excerpted at the end, but a short bibliography of other print resources would have been useful. A Village Voice pick for 2010’s Best Graphic Novels.—M.C.
Ollmann, Joe. Mid-Life. Drawn & Quarterly. 2011. c.172p. ISBN 9781770460287. pap. $19.95. F
“This is largely a work of fiction except where it isn’t,” warns Ollmann. It just so happens that alter ego John also has a young second wife, two grown daughters from marriage number one, a toddler son, and a massive midlife crisis. Spilling all via voice-over, John starts with sh*t: three cats and a baby make lots of it. And he has to watch that &**%!! because of little Sam within hearing. Further, as a seemingly certified Adult older than his family and most coworkers, John’s stuck with handling complications poured on by his job and his two daughters. What’s the harm in emailing that pretty children’s performer, Sherri Smalls, as a stress-buster? As for Sherri, she’s confronting her own crapola, including an unstable partner and parched love life, so a mature man looks really inviting. VERDICT This could go tragic or funny, but Ollmann—having gone angsty for his award-winning This Will All End in Tears—opts for the comic. Quite funny indeed for most of us over 40, Mid-Life makes a good pick for adults new to graphic novels. With angular black-and-white drawings; recommended for public libraries.—M.C.
Origen, Erich & Gan Golan (text) & Ramona Fradon & others (illus.). The Adventures of Unemployed Man. Little, Brown. 2010. c.80p. ISBN 9780316098823. pap. $14.99. F
In Goodnight Bush, Origen and Golan turned Goodnight Moon into a less-than-fond farewell to George W. Here, they take unorthodox economic revenge on Wall Street fat cats with a side-splittingly hilarious tale that’s affectionate superhero parody by day and stinging political satire by night. In a country where every citizen is a costumed hero, self-appointed self-help guru The Ultimatum is ejected from his superteam, the Firing Squad, and enters the outcast ranks of the jobless, where he meets student debtor Master of Degrees, single mom Wonder Mother, poor immigrant Fantasma, and others who have tried to get ahead by doing the right thing but find themselves stymied by the Invisible Hand. Meanwhile, the Lemur Brothers, Golden Sack, and the Free Marketeers are hatching a dastardly plot. VERDICT Aided by a top-notch art team (including Rick Veitch and Ramona Fradon), Origen and Golan demonstrate a firm grasp of both economics and comics via incisive spoof ads, biting “Fantastic Facts” features, and spot-on homages to Jack Kirby, EC Comics, and many others. Thoughtful, uproariously witty, and brilliantly successful on every level; one of 2010’s best graphic novels.—S.R.
Ottaviani, Jim (text) & Leland Myrick (illus.). Feynman. First Second: Roaring Brook. Aug. 2011. c.266p. ISBN 9781596432598. $29.99. BIOG
Ottaviani’s Two-Fisted Science includes several anecdotes drawn from the remarkable life of Nobel Prize–winning theoretical physicist Richard Feynman (1918–88). Those incidents are repeated here, woven into a full-length biography of this brilliant, irreverent, and insatiably curious man, moving from his early years when his father encouraged his interest in science, to his recruitment into the Manhattan Project, and on through his groundbreaking work in quantum electrodynamics and his career as a Caltech professor. Along the way, he also became a safecracker, a samba percussionist, the godfather of nanotechnology, and the key investigator of the space shuttle Challenger explosion. VERDICT Ottaviani casts Feynman, a renowned raconteur, as narrator of his own story and reveals his expansive personality and his inner emotional life in a wealth of well-chosen details and anecdotes—most movingly in an account of Feynman’s despair in the wake of his first wife’s death and the horrible destruction caused by the atomic bomb, and how the simple fun and joy he found in science helped him move on. A fine introduction to a great character; recommended for teens and adults.—S.R.
Tomine, Adrian. Scenes from an Impending Marriage: A Prenuptial Memoir. Drawn & Quarterly. 2011. c.54p. ISBN 9781770460348. $9.95. MEMOIR
The challenge facing Adrian and Sarah: navigate their Wedding Adventure without breaking up. In extended vignettes that suggest unpacked New Yorker cartoons, Tomine walks us through the major milestones. Guest list: should an invitation go to “the ex-boyfriend who cheated on you”? Reception venue: “It’s my favorite combo: Hideous and expensive!” Invitation: “I can design an invitation with my eyes closed!” Epiphany: “WAAAAH! ... We’re getting sucked into a black hole of nuptial narcissism!” Remedy: Sarah talks Adrian into doing a little minicomic as a favor for wedding guests: “It would be so CUTE! You could do a bunch of short strips about us getting ready for the wedding!” The result delighted everyone, of course. And so Tomine expanded the wedding favor minicomic into this charming and tender line-drawn collection. VERDICT Tomine, known more for psychologically darker stories like Shortcomings than for straight humor, reveals considerable talent with goofy comedy. Scenes is far too short, and hopefully Tomine will draw more comedies to come. Recommended for all public libraries and, of course, as an engagement gift for this season’s bridezillas and groomzillas.—M.C.
Yslaire, Bernar & Jean-Claude Carrière. The Sky Over the Louvre. NBM/ComicsLit. 2011. c.72p. ISBN 9781561636020. $19.99. F
In this fourth of a series of graphic novels commissioned by the great museum, Yslaire and Carrière conjure up a part-real, part-fanciful origin of a real painting: Death of Joseph Bara (1794). With France’s Reign of Terror in full sway, revolutionary leader Robespierre charges the great painter Jacques-Louis David with depicting a pure Supreme Being to replace the Catholic Church’s pantheon of the Trinity and its saints. But then young revolutionary Joseph Bara dies in the streets, and Robespierre charges David also with painting the lad as a people’s hero. David has been approached by Jules, a mysterious androgyne, and he has been trying to paint him as the god-figure. Then Robespierre is beheaded, and Jules as well. The distraught David, by then obsessed with the youth, exhumes his corpse and recognizes a perfect model for Bara. VERDICT With gorgeous art intermixing beauty and weirdness, the story turns on the capriciousness of both history and art while providing a sense of a time and place where art ranked up there with liberté, égalité, and fraternité for an entire nation. With nudity and mature content; for academic and adult collections.—M.C.
