Joe and Azat


By Jesse Lonergan (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-570-2

Here’s a wonderful little waste of time: cartoonist Jesse Lonergan drew upon his youthful experiences as an American Peace Corps volunteer in the nation of Turkmenistan in the days after the fall of the Berlin Wall when the Soviet collapse released many countries from seventy years of iron repression…

Granted autonomy and self-rule virtually overnight, a lot of Warsaw Pact countries didn’t fare well with instant democracy and Free Market Capitalism. In Turkmenistan, their new leader Turkmenbashy (with 99½ % of the vote because “everybody likes him”) was a real pip, renaming the days of the week after himself and using the nation’s entire budget to send a book of his poetry into space. In a pitifully arid country, he built a river through his capital city – because all great cities have rivers running through them. Images of the ruthless potentate are everywhere: it’s a shame nobody ever found oil in the country…

This is a charmingly subtle tale of culture shock and national misapprehensions as young Joe grapples with the outrageous differences between his liberal and wealthy homeland and the rules, laws and ingrained prejudices of a newly liberated society.

Nervous and alone the Yankee lad slowly finds a friend in the astonishingly upbeat and forward looking Azat: an ambitious convert and zealot for “The American Way”, although most of Joe’s time is spent futilely apologising and explaining that what that actually means is as far removed from the US Movies Azat is addicted to as the decades of Russian propaganda he grew up with.

Becoming almost part of the family (as complex and dysfunctional as any western one) he is caught in the tidal wave of Azat’s enthusiastic aspirations and daily frustrations, but never seems able or willing to staunch or crush them, even though he knows how hopeless they ultimately are…

Poignant, bittersweet, with an end but no conclusion, this is a superbly understated dissertation on the responsibilities and power of friendship, the poison of unattainable dreams and the unthinking cruelty of cultural imperialism, illustrated in a magically simplistic and irresistibly beguiling manner: a delight for any fan searching for more than simple jokes and action. Reading this would actually be time very well spent…

© 2009 Jesse Lonergan. All rights reserved.