Now Read This!

 

By Dave Gibbons, Ivan Reis & Marc Campos (DC Comics/Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84576-231-2

It’s sad to say that sometimes even the most talented creators have bad days. This tie-in to the DC Infinite Crisis publishing event features all the space-faring components of the company’s current continuity, butting heads as a galaxy-wide war breaks out in the chaotic period leading up to the crisis itself.

Despite the best efforts of all involved the uneasy mix of political intrigue, cosmic conflict and evil soul-sucking demons proves too much for the likes of Adam Strange, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Captain Comet, the Omega Men, Starman, the Green Lantern Corps and just about every other hero who’s had to suck hard vacuum in his/her/its career. The resultant morass of histrionics, ray-blasts and fist-fights is actually a chore to wade through by the end.

One more thing, and this I fear I’ll be saying an awful lot in years to come: I don’t much care for fashions or traditions in narrative and publishing, but I do think that some things should be treated as Givens. So when I get to the end of a book I expect there to be at least some semblance of a resolution to the narrative. I don’t like being told it’s not over yet and I need to read another book for an ending – especially when that succeeding book hasn’t been published yet.

Is that so unreasonable?

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Marjane Satrapi (Jonathan Cape)
ISBN: 0-224-07440-7

In the sequel to Persepolis – the primitivist reminiscences of a girl whose childhood spanned the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Fundamentalist theocracy in Iran – Marjane Satrapi continues her life-story, but concentrates more fully on the little girl growing into a woman. This idiosyncratic maturation unfortunately acts to somewhat diminish the power of simple, unvarnished observation that was such a devastating lens into the political iniquities that shaped her life, but does make the narrator/illustrator into a fully concrete person, as many of her experiences more closely mirror those of an audience that hasn’t grown up under a cloud of physical, political, spiritual and sexual oppression.

The story recommences in 1984 where the fifteen year old Marjane is sent to Vienna to (ostensibly) pursue an education. In distressingly short order the all-but-asylum-seeker is rapidly bounced from home to home. She is billeted with Nuns, distanced acquaintances of her family, a bed-sit in the house of an apparent madwoman and eventually is reduced to living on the streets, in a catastrophic spiral of decline before returning to Iran in 1988.

Her observations on the admittedly outré counter-culture European students, and her own actions as she grows to full womanhood would indicate that even the most excessive and extreme past experience can still offer a dangerously seductive nostalgia when faced with the bizarre concept of too much freedom too soon. When she returns to her homeland her adult life under the regime of the Ayatollah is still a surprisingly less-than-total condemnation than we westerners, with our agenda-slanted news media, would probably expect. The book concludes with her decision to move permanently to Europe in 1994.

The burgeoning field of autobiographical graphic novels is a valuable outreach resource for an industry desperately seeking to entice new audiences to convert to our product. As long as subject matter doesn’t overpower content and style, and we can offer examples such as Persepolis to the seekers, we should be making real headway.

© Marjane Satrapi 2004. Translation © 2004 Anjali Singh.

 

By Marjane Satrapi (Jonathan Cape 2003)
ISBN: 0-224-06440-1

The image of a child, the stylings of a child, the remembrances of a child have a captivating power to enthrall adults. Marjane Satrapi grew up during the Fundamentalist revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran and replaced him with an Islamic theocracy. She chose to relate incidents from her life with the stark direct drawings and sharp, unleavened voice of a child. Her simple, direct reportage owes as much to Anne Frank as Art Spiegleman when she relates the incidents that shaped her life and her identity as a thinking female in a society that increasing seemed to frown on that sort of thing.

Persepolis is the kind of graphic novel that casual and intellectual readers love, focusing on the content of the message and decrying or at best ignoring the technical skill and craft of the medium that conveys it. Yet graphic narrative is as much an art form of craft and thought as it is the dustbin of sophomoric genre stereotypes that many critics relegate it to. Satrapi has created a work that is powerful and engaging, but in a sorry twist of reality, it is one that comics fans, and not the general public have to be convinced to read.

© Marjane Satrapi 2003.

 

By Alan Moore & Zander Cannon with Andrew Currie (ABC)
ISBN: 1-4012-0325-6

Here’s a delightful return to sardonic, edged humour for Alan Moore in this spin-off from the superhero crime series Top Ten. When big blue strong guy Smax is summoned to his home dimension, he drags along cute punkette co-worker Toybox.

The place they find themselves in is a land of magic and fable, full of Elves, Dwarves and Dragons. It’s a perfect setting for street-smart super-cops to crack wise and act baffled as they go through the Tolkienian motions of a quest, traditional and emotional.

Moore’s ironic and twistedly absurdist comedy successfully delivers a swift and long overdue knee to the cods of the ubiquitous Fantasy Fad. Parents and overly sensitive Christians might want to vet this before buying it for the kiddiwinks though, as it contains some sexual concepts that might pummel their world-view.

© 2004 America’s Best Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Carl Burgos, Bill Everett & others (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-7851-1884-5

Unlike their Distinguished Competition, Marvel Comics have taken a very long time to get into producing expensive hardbound volumes reprinting their earliest comic adventures. In the cold hard light of day it’s often fairly clear to see why. The sad truth is that a lot of Golden Age Marvel material is not only pretty offensive by modern standards but is also of rather poor writing and art quality. A welcome exception, however, is this collection of the quarterly super-hero anthology, All Winners Comics.

Over the course of the first year’s publication (from Summer 1941 to Spring 1942) the stories and art improved exponentially, and in terms of sheer variety the tales and characters excelled in exploring every avenue of patriotic thrill that might enthral ten year old boys of all ages. As well as Simon and Kirby, Lee, Burgos and Everett, the early work of Mike Sekowsky, Jack Binder, George Klein, Paul Gustavson, Al Avison, Al Gabrielle and many others can be found as they gushed out the adventures of Captain America, the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, the Black Marvel, the Angel, The Mighty Destroyer, and The Whizzer.

Modern readers might blanche at some of the racial and sexual stereotyping, and the propaganda machines that can generate titles such as ‘Death to Nazi Scourge’ and ‘The Terror of the Slimy Japs’ is one that obviously needs to be read in an historical as well as entertainment context, but that, in essence, is the point. This is populist publishing at the dawn of a new and cut-throat industry, working under war-time conditions in a much less enlightened time. That these nascent efforts grew into the legendary characters and brands of today attests to their intrinsic attraction and fundamental appeal. This is a book of much more than simple historical interest.

© 1941, 1942, 2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.