Pompeii

By Frank Santoro (Picturebox)
ISBN: 978-1-939799-10-4

A short while ago I carped on about America not producing many historically flavoured comic strips and, as if by condemnatory return, this lovely cartoon chronicle cropped up in my review pile; not only a captivating yarn of ordinary folk trapped in one of the most tragically infamous events of all time, but also a boldly experimental and mesmerisingly effective exercise in reductionist visual storytelling.

Pittsburgh-based Frank Santoro has been a bit quiet since the release of his magnificent Storeyville (except for Cold Heat, Mome, the Comics Comics blog and about a zillion mini comics and other projects) but with the release of Pompeii proves the wait has been worthwhile.

The story is beguilingly simple: exploring not only the complex web of lies which entangle a philandering artist, his wife, new favourite model and naÃ¯ve assistant (still in the flush of first love), but also the very nature and layered reality of art itself.

The story opens in the blithely unaware doomed city – a flashy resort for Rome’s high and mighty situated in the scenic Bay of Naples – where keen Marcus acts as general dogsbody to the great Flavius, a painter of great renown and salacious appetites.

The lad’s duties include fetching and carrying, cleaning, grinding minerals to mix into pigments, painting backgrounds, and keeping the maestro’s wife Alba from discovering her husband’s infidelities.

There’s a particularly close call as Flavius and the Princess he’s immortalising are nearly discovered by the knowing suspicious spouse and, once the crisis is averted, the master makes his unwilling pupil a full partner in the deceptionâ€¦

Marcus has talent and dreams of being a great painter, but for the moment he and his beloved Lucia toil in relative poverty with little more than their love to sustain them. The hot-blooded girl has come with him all the way from distant Paestum, but now, just as the relationship deepens, Marcus is neglecting her: spending more and more time with Flavius.

Bored and lonely, she’s alternately talking about having children and returning to her family even though she knows her lover would rather die than go back.

During the next sitting the Princess wants to talk about the small earthquake that occurred that morning but Flavius is oblivious: in full swing he invites Marcus to work on the background whilst he is still finishing the figure.

That minor triumph is spoiled at home when Lucia again starts up about Paestum or inviting her mother to live with them in Pompeii. In a rage Marcus storms off to sleep in Flavius’ studio and accidentally overhears an assignation wherein the Princess begs the maestro to move with her to Rome. The besotted noble is even prepared for her artist to bring the inconvenient wife along tooâ€¦

Fearing the death of his dream and assured of the end of his relationship, the lad is surprised and gratified when Flavius invites him to accompany him to Rome. Everything suddenly stalls, however, when smouldering, somnolent Mount Vesuvius explosively begins spewing smoke and gas for the first time in living memoryâ€¦

The fates of the assorted characters is a grim and powerful reminder of the power of love in the face of death, and the rough, raw pencil illustrations and tone washes – all created at publication size rather than being reduced for publication – perfectly recall and invoke the loose, flowing style of fresco and pottery images of the time.

Santoro apparently translated his own experiences as student/assistant to painter Francesco Clemente to get inside the head of young Marcus and the result is a timeless and irresistible exploration of human relationships (master and servant, teacher and pupil, lovers, spouses and infidelities) all viewed through an intimate lens of storytelling in its purest and most intimately immediate form.

Share this: