By Megan Kelso (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-344-6 (HB)
Megan Kelso has been producing unique, idiosyncratic, thought-provoking comics stories for over 30 years; the very best of which can be seen in her award-winning collections Queen of the Black Black and The Squirrel Mother. In 2004 she edited exclusively-female comics anthology Scheherazade: Stories of Love, Treachery, Mothers, and Monsters, following up in 2007 with weekly strip Watergate Sue for The New York Times Magazine.
She works far too slowly for my greedy nature to be completely happy with, but as the results are always superb, I should just be patient and count myself lucky whenever something new hits the bookshelves. Until then, though, here’s another look at my personal fave-rave, happily still available in both hardcover and digital editions…
Artichoke Tales is a generational saga which recounts, like film run backwards, the aftermath, events of and build-up to a tragic and devastating civil war on a serene, stable agrarian culture: a land of farmers, foragers and fisher-folk who all look like they’re sporting vegetable hair-dos. Don’t be fooled though – despite the stalks sprouting from their skulls these are not Arcadian vegan characters dreamily dwelling in their own sylvan Pogle’s Wood: these are people, gullible, fallible and intensely complex.
Kelso first created her artichoke people for a tale in anthology comic Girlhero, before beginning this epic in 1999; citing such thematic influences as the Little House on the Prairie books, Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds and Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain for her gently compelling, beguiling story of the Quicksand family – apothecaries to the village of Ladle – and how an insane and unwelcome split between North and South sorely wounds not only the nation but three generations of women caught up in it…
Young Brigitte was gathering herbs for her grandmother when she once again met the dashing soldier Adam. Military types weren’t particularly welcome and Northerners even less so, despite all the years that had passed since the War, but young hormones and the promise of something fresh and exotic always win out over common sense…
Torn between imminent passion, a sudden hatred for her boring old life and fear of the unknown. Brigitte forces Grandma Charlotte to tell the previously unspoken history of the conflict and how it shaped the Quicksand family: a tale of pride, high-handedness and avoidable mistakes that led to those bitter prejudices which still scar people on every side.
Told in a stunning minimalist manner demanding the reader’s closest scrutiny and collaboration, the refined drawings unfold stories within stories, like the skin of an onion, with truths peeling away to reveal some depressingly universal truths about families, society and the use of power.
Be warned: despite the engagingly simple art and storytelling style, this is not a book for younger readers, so parents should read this beautiful parable before you let your kids at it…
Those of you without impressionable progeny can just go right ahead and dig in: Artichoke Tales is truly magical and awaits your avid, appreciative attention and consumption…
© 2010 Megan Kelso. All Rights Reserved.