Posts Tagged “history”
John Seven • 7th May 2010 • Comics • French comics, history, Jacques Tardi, World War 1
French legend Jacque Tardi’s absolutely remarkable “It Was A War of the Trenches” from Fantagraphics examines the conflict that began in Sarajevo but could not be contained — World War 1 — specifically from the French point of view.
Tardi’s narrative push is toward little stories of the soldiers involved, with the understanding that they would rather be just about anywhere else.
In a strange way, the style of story and the format of the presentation reminds one of EC horror comics from the 1950s — intelligently written and gorgeously drawn bits of gruesomeness in which the horror contained often had an ironic edge. Tardi gives this tactic a harsh foreboding, by which each incident becomes a slow, building trauma, marked by the stench of death wrapped around a close acquaintance.
That’s at center of what Tardi is addressing — a situation in which the old rules no longer apply, and familiarities can be ripped apart violently as a reminder that the soldier has been plucked out of his real life and into this semblance of hell.
In Tardi’s portrayal, soldiers are relegated to the role of rats skulking through the trenches in a dirty maze of hopelessness. They are made to fight, but they aren’t made to believe in what they are fighting for — and when one of them dies, if he is noticed at all, he becomes a gross annoyance to be disposed of as the remaining soldiers continue the work they’ve been coerced into performing.
The centerpiece of Tardi’s collection, though, is his beautiful artwork. In cluttered and sometimes muddy black and white, he captures the chaotic and devastated landscape of Europe in the War to End All Wars. The bleak dumping ground of mutilated human bodies and the rubble of destroyed civilization is a perfect manifestation of the horror each narrator feels.
It’s a terrible realization that the doom you feel in your soul is reflected in the reality around you — this is not just an emotional hell, but an actual one. You can’t close your eyes; you can’t keep them open to focus on one small beautiful thing, because there is not one in either place.
John Seven • 2nd Feb 2010 • Uncategorized • Alecos Papadatos, Annie Di Donna, Apostolos Doxiadis, Bertrand Russell, biography, Christos H. Papadimitriou, history, logic, Ludwig Wittgenstein, math, philosophy
It’s probably a given to most people that a sprawling graphic novel that concerns itself with the history of the field of logic — and the biography of eminent logician and philosopher Bertrand Russell — might not on the surface appear to be the most exciting subject matter ever put down to the form.
“Logicomix” — written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, drawn by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna and published by Bloomsbury — dares go into that very territory.
Amazingly, it comes out with an exciting chunk of a story that is entirely unexpected by wrapping the story around a lecture given by Russell in which he faces off with World War II protesters.
Also injected into the narrative are the arguments of the graphic novel creators themselves, as they struggle with the lessons of the story and how to present them alongside the towering work of logicians through the era.
As a focus, they settle on madness, which seems like it might be the exact opposite of logic. Instead, it is revealed to walk hand-in-hand with it to some degree.
That mental illness crept into the lives of logicians with such regularity provides the thematic dots for Russell’s story as it glides forward in time. If madness is the letting go of reality, the logic is shown to be the disregarding of it, and this same departure from the world manifests itself in mind similarly. By focusing on a singular line to be followed, despite the landscape surrounding that line, the journey of the logicians can sometimes be one of disconnection and disassociation to the wider context of life. (more…)
John Seven • 29th Dec 2009 • Comics • Adam Rapp, Antony Johnson, biography, Brian Azzarello, Charles Burns, Dan Clowes, Dan Zettwoch, Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, George O'Connor, history, Holly Black, Jeff Smith, Justin Madson, Kazu Kibuishi, Kevin Huizenga, M.K. Perker, Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Matt Kindt, Oni Press, Pantheon, Peter Bagge, Phil Noto, Rick Geary, Ross Campbell, Russia, Scholastic, science fiction, Toon Books
Amulet 2: The Stonekeeper’s Curse - Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
Creator Kibuishi certainly borrows from modern archetypes — Star Wars and Lord of the Rings in particular, as well as the films of Miyazake — but he is not content to let his own creations wallow in a bath of influences. Instead, his 
science fiction/fantasy epic for young readers leaps off the pages thanks to the natural quality of his storytelling — and having the story center around a cool girl character like Emily certainly helps. Kibuishi has so far skipped the lame supernatural fetishism and overwrought romance that taints too many young adult efforts, preferring story, character, and imagination in an exciting dance.
Ball Peen Hammer - Adam Rapp and George O’Connor (First Second Books)
Ball Peen Hammer moves from the dark allure of post-apocalyptic science fiction into an unrelentingly grim realm populated by unexpectedly noble characters — all rendered with an animated beauty by O’Connor’s hand. The stereotypes are turned inside out, victims of their own personal failures, as humans face a monumental and deadly challenge — and at the center is the sad and too easy decision to exploit children and in the process not only kill hope but create heaps that stand as sad reminders of moral failure. As depressing as it sounds, that’s what makes it worth recommending.
Batman/Doc Savage Special (DC)
Brian Azzarello pens an alluring vignette like something out of the ’70s Brave and the Bold, with strong stylized artwork by Phil Noto. He captures Batman in his younger days and dealing with the authority figures of the time — hence pulp fiction legend Doc Savage slumming in Gotham City as a diversion. In all truth, nothing much happens here — the adventure is basically dropped by the heroes — but this story mostly serves as a prelude for the upcoming First Wave comic, which will feature great DC Implosion characters from Justice Inc. and Rima the Jungle Girl, among others. The tone here is just right — serious but not overwrought, dark but not posturing — and it bodes well for the upcoming series.
Best American Comics 2009 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Charles Burns sets the tone for this year’s edition with a compelling essay that recounts his artistic and professional development as a journey through comic book collecting, where each tangent is a revelatory moment in his embrace of groundbreaking creativity. That he’s mirrored this volume’s selections in the same way is no accident. Easily one of the best in recent years, among the highlights are: Dan Zettwoch’s fictional history of a Church cartoonist’s newsletter; Peter Bagge’s comical slice of pre-Revolutionary America, and Dan Clowes’ attack on film critics and movie fetishists.
Breathers 0-4 (Just Mad Books)
If you want to read the best science fiction comic around, don’t look in any of the obvious places — Breathers is a self-published work by Wisconsin resident Justin Madson that concerns a gritty world of tomorrow that isn’t so far 
removed from today. In Madson’s scenario, the air we breathe has been infected with a virus for the last 40 years and people use stylish respiratory masks called “breathers” to stay alive. Madson weaves the tales of several people together in a series of shorter entries that create a wider tapestry of this future. Some are concerned with their own problems wrought from the situation, while others grapple with larger one — is the virus even real? Check it out at Madson’s website.
Cancer Vixen - Marisa Acocella Marchetto (Pantheon)
Suffering through breast cancer will get my sympathy — and my appreciation for bravery and chutzpah in the face of it — but it does not automatically mean I will think the graphic memoir of your experience is readable. In full disclosure, I couldn’t actually finish this book, so grating is the voice and narrative, and so amateurish and plain awful is the artwork. I read several reviews to make sure I wasn’t missing something, with the full intent of going back and reading the rest, but everything I encountered only cemented my reaction to this book. In contrast to what a good memoir should be, the narrative is manipulative rather than honest. Marchetto takes great pains to control our impression of her by compiling pages and pages of how successful and admired she is before we even get to the cancer. I understand that she does not want her readers to define her as the woman with cancer and have that image be our lasting impression, but then why bother to write a cancer memoir? The reader should be given a chance to discover her best qualities as she fights cancer, not have them dished out in an attempt to circumvent any impression we might have of her as a non-fabulous person with cancer. I bailed out at the diagnosis after having been pummeled by almost a hundred pages of constant bragging Also, I’m really tired of artists who who look as if they are relearning their entire craft starting with kindergarten level work when they go digital — it made an irritating story unbearable. This is a low point to the usually high standard of Pantheon’s output.
Ganges #3 (Fantagraphics)
Kevin Huizenga’s Every Man Glen Ganges faces a sleepless night and what unfolds is a mix of incoherent night rambling and time-passing mishap. Huizenga delivers a quiet tour de force that shows confident cartooning that thrills through its ease and craftsmanship, rather than stylizing the hell out of anything. His Ganges stories function as the American equivalent to Michel Rabagliati’s Paul stories, documenting a normal life with a sharp eye and a penchant for gentle revelation.
The Good Neighbors 2 - Holly Black and Ted Naifeh (Scholastic)
Spiderwyck co-creator Black continues her coming-of-age fairy-style saga as our heroine Rue starts to find her otherworldly family is beginning to take a toll on her friends, the resident Scooby Doo gang, and also that her mother isn’t as helpful as she’d hoped. Black’s first foray into the graphic novel format makes what is the now standard supernatural YA adventure more kinetic than most. and yet toned down in the histrionics and dramatics departments in such a way that grown-ups will have fun with it as well as teens. I confess that I’ll be glad when the supernatural wave in teen fiction dies down and a more open field of subject matter exists again — and also the standard plot of a kid hits a certain age and discovers he/she is secretly a wizard/vampire/fairy/spy/whatever becomes less overused — but Good Neighbors is at least agreeable in its use of these newly-minted chestnuts.
Insomnia Café - M.K. Perker (Dark Horse)
It isn’t a perfect work, but Turkish artist M.K. Perker’s stylized surrealist suspense tale — his American writing debut — 
has a lot to recommend it. Kolinsky is an expert on rare books whose shady past sends him on a downward plunge in the world, sleepless and at a job he hates. When he becomes involved with a coffee shop girl, he gets the opportunity to hide from his problems even as they snowball without his attendance. All is not as it necessarily seems, though, and Perker investigates the manifestations of that very concept from the eccentric to the unhinged. Perker is definitely one to watch.
Little Mouse Gets Ready - Jeff Smith (Toon Books)
If you’ve never considered that a children’s book about a mouse getting dressed would charm you into giddy happiness, you might want to pick this up. Combining the sweetness of old style Golden Books with a modern twist of a punchline, Smith has crafted a fun and funny little sequential picture book here — and Toon Books never disappoints, anyhow.
Skin Deep - Charles Burns (Fantagraphics)
Charles Burns offers a glimpse of what might happen if EC Comics existed today with three tales of intrigue and absurdity in this softcover reissue from the 2001 series collecting his early work. A master of the unearthly atmosphere — David Lynch has nothing on him — Burns unleashes tales of a man transplanted with a dog’s heart, a failing marriage with an alarming secret, and, best of all, an evangelist’s son’s encounter with God and his path to millions because of it. At once cautionary, creepy and curious, Burns is consistently one of comics’ deepest thinkers.
3 Story - Matt Kindt (Dark Horse)
In this somber and beautifully realized tale, Matt Kindt recounts the life of a real giant as seen through the eyes of the three women most important to him — his mother, his wife and his daughter. It’s Citizen Kane meets Gulliver’s Travels. As with Super Spy, Kindt’s styles are multiple and thoroughly accomplished, as is the depth of the biography that measures the perception of a man by the opposite sex. It is an area of mystery where expectations can outgrow and overtake the self that lurks within. In this book, Kindt comes up with a protagonist who is truly as big as the author’s ideas.
Trotsky: A Graphic Biography - Rick Geary (Hill and Wang)
Geary, one of the best practitioners of the non-fiction comics form, tackles the life of Communist thinker and leader by examining his ideas at a time when such radical naivete seemed like just the answer to oppression. Though it’s hard to say that Trotsky comes off as likable, Gear isn’t afraid to present the harsher side of the man in a fight for his own principles and some level of government fairness towards ordinary human beings, even when it involves executions of peasants who refused to fight in the revolution. A person like Trotsky is unlikely to exist again — we’re less tolerant of intellectuals and anyone with foibles — but Geary does a fantastic job at bringing the era to life.
Wasteland Vol 5 - Antony Johnson, Carla Speed McNeil, Joe Infurnari, Chuck BB, and Christopher Mitten (Oni Press)
The originally invigorating Wasteland series suffers another sidetracking setback — Vol. 4 with its foray into nomadic dog tribes was irritating enough. In that, the main characters and their stories were largely relegated to minor purposes, leaving them tied up for the duration of the story. In this volume, four flashback stories are presented, filling in details of the post apocalyptic word and leading up to the stories in the first volume. The problem is that no matter how well done these stories are — and they are extremely well realized, particularly with Mitten’s stunning color work on the final story — they are mostly superfluous. A nice time passer but I hope Johnson will get back to what made this series truly interesting. To that end, I highly recommend the first 3 volumes of the series if you haven’t read them already.
Wet Moon Vol. 5 by Ross Campbell (Oni Press)
Campbell’s ongoing series of graphic novels follows a loose group of industrial-goth art school students in a mysterious Southern swamp town. Based on his own experiences at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Campbell weaves a network of gossip, doubt, and confessions that creates a mystique of experience in those transition years between high school and adulthood. Campbell shows an uncanny respect and sympathy for every character who enters the story, which keeps it down to earth even as the strange feeling in the air begins to wrap mystery around the story in ways you can’t quite put your finger on, even as it careens into an wholly unexpected event.
Year of Loving Dangerously - Ted Rall (NBM)
Unapologetically frank memoir of the year Rall spent as — there is no delicate way to put this — a gigolo who traded his favors for a roof over his head and a bed. Not just one — multiple places of action and rest were his in 1980s New York City, and this maze of mattresses serves as a stellar travelogue to life at that place and time. If Rall comes off as a bit of a rogue, he’s a least one with an interesting tale to tell — a series of misfortunes that saw him kicked out of college and on the streets during one of the scariest times in NYC history to be a homeless person.
John Seven • 7th Dec 2009 • Film • communism, Czechoslovakia, Facets Video, history, home movies, Jan Sikl, Nazis, Russia, Soviet Union
Director Jan Sikl’s Czechoslovakian epic of love, family, betrayal and political struggle “Private Century” — which saw a screening at the Museum of Modern Art earlier this year and is now released by Facets Video — captures decades in the lives of several families, peering into their personal nooks and crannies with a precise passion.
Most astoundingly, not only is every story presented true, but their on-screen realizations bypass actors and sets, opting instead for the original players.
How is this done? Through hours and hours of original home movies, letters and diaries, piecing together the ups and downs of ordinary citizens living through both world wars and the communist takeover — revealing that, no matter the political and social climate, personal lives the world over are essentially the same.
“Private Century” runs in eight episodes, each covering one specific story, with the various pieces brought together by Sikl into cohesive wholes. The general timeline of the series follows citizens through World War 1 on through World War 2 and the Nazi occupation, into the aftermath of the war and up to the late 1960s and the corrupt domination by Russia and the communists. Despite the heavy rumbles of history through their lives, the people revealed still have time to love and to cheat, to bicker, to raise children, to have hobbies, to struggle with parents — to be real, whole people. (more…)
John Seven • 30th Nov 2009 • Art Articles, Book Articles • history, robots
History and art are commonly brought together, but seldom in the way that “Boilerplate” accomplishes the feat. Part gentle satire of the American war machine and part example of what Big Brother could do with some accomplished Photoshop skill, “Boilerplate” manages to critique history even as it rewrites it.
Starting from the conceit that in 1893 Professor Archibald Campion built a mechanical man for the Victorian era, “Boilerplate” documents the history of this lost piece of technology which, through its value at the time, is swept into conflicts and turning points at various stages. Some are well-known, while others are downright enlightening — whoever heard of the First Korean War? Not me, I confess, but it happened in 1871. It serves not as a Boilerplate adventure, but the scene in which the purpose of the robot is born — a substitute for flesh and blood in armed conflict. It’s an interesting peace-keeping notion, the idea that humankind is unlikely to abandon the tendency, so turning the practice into one that causes the fewest levels of fatality might serve as the best bandage to severe wound in the traditions of our species.
And so Boilerplate becomes mixed up in an array of adventures, each incident delivered with sober prose recounting these important moments in history that have become sketchy in our memories in time.
Only, they never happened.
Well, a lot of things in the book did happen — the World’s Columbian Exposition, the building of the Panama Canal, the hunt for Pancho Villa — and as near as I can tell, the history contained is impeccable. Boilerplate, however, did not happen — nor did any of the robots in the lovely final chapter that recounts a history of automated men in the 20th Century — despite the level of photographic documentation within. And it is gorgeous, flawless visual documentation, taking old photographs and inserting Boilerplate seamlessly into the proceedings or presenting period artwork with the robot included, thus fashioning an unusual and very beautiful art book built around manipulated imagery.
This makes “Boilerplate” two things at once — a fun way to introduce kids to 20th Century history and a rather insidious primer on how a dictator can change history. Oh, I know, there’s little chance anymore that one book would change the collective memory of any society on this Earth, but there is plenty of precedence for control in such an area that even if it’s not totally applicable anymore,
“Boilerplate” is an amazing testament to what the technology can fashion these days. The masters behind the Iron Curtain would have killed for this sort capability half a century ago.
John Seven • 5th Dec 2008 • Book Articles, Comics • Appollo, First Second Books, France, history, Lewis Trondheim, pirates
Pirate tales are all the rage these days, but French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim — along with creative partner Appollo — doesn’t take the ironic, fantasy route that has proved so popular. With “Bourbon Island 1730,” the team has crafted a multi-layered story filled with intellectual depth as it examines the mythologies of pirate life as contrasted with the realities — good and bad.
The story is taken from real history — the sprawling tale of Bourbon Island, passed along through the ages as the property of several nations, here a French territory — and fictionalized. The island was known for its pirate amnesty policy — the local government saw pirates as trade and business opportunities and wanted to encourage such interactions. This meant a great deal of pirate integration into the population and, eventually, lead to pirates giving settling down their upon making their fortunes. Mix these circumstances a thriving coffee business reliant on plantations and slaves — as well as settlements of escaped slaves and some ne’er do well pirates stirring things up — and you have an obscure historical drama begging to be told. (more…)
John Seven • 7th Nov 2008 • Book Articles, Comics • Charles Lindbergh, history, NBM, Rick Geary, true crime
Rick Geary treads creepy crime territory again with “The Lindbergh Child”
, a recounting of the famous Lindbergh kidnapping in which the title character hardly appears and the reader is instead introduced to a landscape inhabited by disturbing opportunists and macabre unanswered questions.
In 1932, American hero Charles Lindbergh once again captured the country’s imagination and found himself constantly in the headlines — this time around, it was due to tragedy. His 18-month-old son, Charles, was kidnapped from his bedroom — the only clues were some footprints, a carpenter’s chisel used to pry open shutters, a handmade ladder with three sections and a ransom note written by someone “unfamiliar with the English language.”
What seemed possibly to be an open and shut case — pay the ransom, get the child, nab the kidnappers at the drop-off — turned into a prolonged and bizarre process that brought in a parade of go-betweens and side stories. It soon becomes apparent that what makes this story important in the annals of crime — aside from the obvious tragedy — is its status as a major media event. It’s not just a an isolated incident but a transgression against a celebrity that interjected its way into the lives of average Americans. The cast of characters who become involved in the peripheries of the case — purportedly to either move the investigation forward or commandeer the safe return of the baby — are really people who want to touch that hem of greatness and try to divert that spotlight in their direction, even momentarily.
Years later, the mad rush to recognition did not die away. The unsolved case yielded a number of young men claiming to be the kidnapped Lindbergh baby returned. Were they only after the fortune, or were they also enthralled by the attention?
Geary lends a foreboding tone to the entire incident — there’s a mist of gloom that clouds the vision of many people involved. It’s one that never really lifts and Geary understands how that mist still sits on us all. Its latest incarnation has an election worker faking an attack — crime is just another way to express yourself and try to capture the nation’s imagination.
John Seven • 10th Oct 2008 • Book Articles, Photography • history, Nakki Goranin, Photography
In the efforts of ordinary Americans to document their own visual history, a consumer-level camera has always been the most common tool for any of us, whether it’s an old Brownie or a Kodak Instamatic or a Polaroid or an inexpensive digital camera. There is another receptacle for the average person that we’ve all encountered at one time or another as a novelty — the photo booth. It’s hard to say what it is about photo booths that inspires glee.
When I was a kid, they were the sort of thing you didn’t find everywhere — maybe a traveling carnival. As I grew up, they became more common, they’d pop up in K-Marts and malls. Eventually, I noticed them getting placed in big city hipster boutiques and night clubs. It never occurred to me to ask where in the world these things came from — they were like phone booths, permanent marks on the American landscape. (more…)
John Seven • 29th Jul 2008 • Film • Baltic region, communism, documentary, Estonia, Finland, history, Russia, Soviet Union
When Estonia won its independence from the Soviet Union after half-a-century under its thumb, it was largely through peaceful resistance that was fueled by one of the most important obsessions of their culture — singing. In the film “The Singing Revolution,” directors James Tusty and Maureen Castle provide a thorough overview of the the Soviet chapter in Estonia’s history that highlights its musical enthusiasms. (more…)
John Seven • 3rd May 2008 • Book Articles • American cuisine, American history, eating disorders, food, history
In titling his book “A Short History of the American Stomach,” Frederick Kaufman is certainly cutting to the chase. Though it seems prior to cracking the book open that this will be another in the spate of books and documentaries examining the food we eat and what it means, Kaufman’s goals are more abstract, more psychological. Instead of revealing an ethical or healthy way to eat, Kaufman’s goal is to trace why we eat the way we do and his success at doing so is a wild ride through American absurdity born from one singular trait in the history and present day of our country: repression.
As documented through Kaufman’s work, America is the the ultimate binge and purge society and the whole of the book suggests that anorexia and bulemia are diseases ingrained in the psychology of Americans that only need an appropriate zeitgeist through which to ignite them. With a society birthed of Puritan mores, national days of fasting were common in our country up through the 19th Century, often declared by our presidents as a way of reflection on national issues of the day. Add to this the common medical misconception that all ills — physical or psychological — were centered around your diet and the only way to cure anything from a cough to a coma was to vomit, and you’ve created a dysfunctional relationship with eating that goes across a society.
Kaufman opens the book comparing food shows to pornography and he is right on the mark, going as far as sitting down with a porn filmmaker to dissect the camera techniques. In a binge and purge society, the excess of cooking shows is directly comparable to the idea that something so physical can be experience indirectly, that the visual suggestion can elicit savory excitement within the soul. You can’t eat it, but you sure can watch it.
Such is America’s self-flagellating relationship with sex and food — indeed, pleasure is something we overload on, even as we condemn others doing so. We like to blame the victim of the same temptations any of us have — we aren’t a kind lot. The diseases of being overweight are viewed with the same disdain as sexually transmitted diseases — it’s all their fault. Still, most of us are overweight, few of us have total self-control and the national obsession with dieting is an organized form of psychologically troubling binge and purge that is not only directly from the medicinal scrawls of crazy Puritan Cotton Mather, but a loud mixed message beamed out to every person suffering from an eating disorder in present day society. And it’s no accident that so much of the craziest dietary advice throughout our history have come from people who mix religious thought with food, suggesting that religion should be considered the third sensual pleasure we overload on and abuse.
As American history moves on, so does Kaufman’s sight, taking readers through the early American urge to eat anything that walks and in great abundance — something that culminated in insane, gluttonous meat parade through the streets of New York — through to the American obsession with dieting. His efforts reveal that the same conversations and outrages we have today are ones we’ve been having for a century or two.
Unlike other works that share the same territory, there is little finger pointing in Kaufman’s work, more a commiseration, an understanding. It’s like a clandestine meeting with your siblings where instead of complaining about your lives or your parents, you just look at the way you were raised and they way they were raised and just nod your heads during the analysis — it’s past blame and we’ve moved onto the acceptance and understanding phase of the discussion.
