Jimmy Corrigan, or, The Smartest Boy on Earth - J's review

My latest graphic novel was Jimmy Corrigan, or, The Smartest Boy on Earth, by Chris Ware. Initially I wasn't sure if I was going to like this book, because the illustrations are quite busy, the writing tiny and sometimes hard to read, and it looked like it might be more kid oriented than the other books I had read thus far. Boy, was I wrong. I mean, the pages ARE quite busy (see above), and the writing was sometimes difficult to read (especially when italicized), but the story itself was sad and amazing. Jimmy Corrigan is approaching middle age, and has never met his father. His life is dominated by his mother, and he both needs her and wishes she would leave him the hell alone. And the rest of the time, he is alone. He lusts in a schoolboy way over a waitress in a local coffee shop, but is too shy to talk to her. He doesn't even notice the woman who worked on the other side of his cubicle wall for 6 months. He is the epitome of emotional isolation.

The book tells the story of his meeting with his father, which is mostly a dud. His dad is a bombastic blow hard, who tells inappropriate stories and gets excessively angry with a waitress who messes up his order...and Jimmy is passive enough to go fix the order with the waitress, but then ends up paying for the fixed burger, when it was the waitresses fault to begin with. The story weaves between the past, the distant past (the tragic story of Jimmy's grandfather's youth with an abusive father), and fantasies of being a superhero, a robot, anything.

Jimmy's coping mechanisms are heart-breaking, but his grandpa's story was the one that made me cringe inside. There's a scene where he goes to an immigrant friend's house with a group of kids, to make figurines out of clay or something, and the grandpa (also named Jimmy) waits and waits for the friend's father to irrationally lose his temper, to curse and yell and explode in his anger. When that doesn't happen, when the man shows actual warmth toward the kids, and praises Jimmy's horse figurine, Jimmy attaches himself to the man, and starts to fantasize about staying there forever. Of course, his father comes and drags him home, with him crying the whole time. Ugh.

Not an easy read on the eyes or the heart, but a touching and brilliant peek into the inner workings of an emotionally stunted character. Highly recommended, again. I might have to give a few more graphic novels a shot, I'm thinking.

The Tale of One Bad Rat - J's Review

The Tale of One Bad Rat, by Bryan Talbot, is a pretty amazing accomplishment. Mr. Talbot started out with the goal of writing a graphic novel that took place, at least partially, in the Lake District of England, home of Beatrix Potter and the characters of her children's books. From that beginning, he took the image of a young homeless girl being harassed by a bearded 'Jesus Freak', (his words) in the Tube, and constructed a tale around her. For the girl to be homeless, Mr. Talbot decides that she needs a reason to have left home. So his character is the victim of sexual abuse by her father, and neglect and uncaring by her mother. Left to many authors, this story might have been heavy handed, but Mr. Talbot clearly put a lot of time and work into researching the mental effects of incest upon children, and he brings his young protagonist on a touching journey from the streets of London to the English Countryside, where she seeks solace in the familiar surroundings of her favorite childhood books, those of Beatrix Potter.

Helen Potter, the young heroine of the story, suffered incest at the hands of her father, but like many victims, she blames herself. She feels herself to be 'one bad rat', someone deserving of her father's abuse and her mother's disdain.

The first part of the book tells of Helen's experiences in London, both good and bad. The book opens with Helen in the Tube, fantasizing about killing herself. We also meet her only friend, a little rat named 'Ratface'. Ratface is with her throughout the book, sometimes in reality, sometimes in her imagination, but he is her constant companion, and her conversations with him provide a peek into her inner dialog. She is befriended by some thieves, who rescue her from the creepy clutches of a man on the street (who they then rob). She stays in an abandoned house with the thieves for a month or so, but things there go wrong, and she moves on, deciding to find her way out into the country, to the home of Beatrix Potter.

The story of her abuse is seen in flashbacks, which aren't gruesome, but are guaranteed to make your heart ache for Helen. When she finally arrives in the Lake District, she is taken in by some friendly innkeepers, and through their acceptance and the peace of the area, she is able to finally understand that she did nothing to deserve the treatment she received, and she is able to confront her father. The freedom she feels after confronting him is a beautiful thing, and she is finally able to move on in her life.

I really loved this book...I checked it out from the library, and I may decide that I need to own a copy. The author took such a difficult, heartbreaking subject, and with his beautiful drawings and sensitive touch, made it a story of redemption and the power of believing in ones self. Highly recommended.

Persepolis - J's review

Persepolis is a story told in two graphic novels, The Story of a Childhood, and The Story of a Return. It is also the name of an award winning animated film based on these graphic novels. The stories are the autobiography of Marjane Satrapi, a woman born in Iran in 1969, and they follow her through his overthrow, and give voice to the crushed hopes of the Iranian populace when things go from bad to worse under the fundamentalist rule of the Ayatollah.

Marji's family is very progressive and open minded, and they encourage her to be a free thinker, to read and understand the events going on around her. They participate in demonstrations against the Shah, and then in demonstrations against the Ayatollah, wanting desperately to bring Persia back to the cultural haven it once was. Watching the news today, of course, you wouldn't know that modern Iran was once a bastion for intellectuals and free thinkers, for artists and authors and architects. We only see little snippets of life in Iran, and that is of the extreme fundamentalist regime currently in power. The impression is that all of the free-thinkers left Iran during the revolution, to escape the Ayatollah and his rigid and intolerant policies. Reading books like Persepolis, or Reading Lolita in Tehran, one sees the cultural underground that is still very much alive and well in Iran.

But I digress. Back to Persepolis. The first book tells the story of her childhood in Tehran, of the oppression felt by the Iranians under their government, of the relatives and friends who suffered torture and death for their beliefs. If you don't know much of the history of Tehran, it is a fairly simple account of events, yet it packs an emotional punch. At the end of the story, Marji's parents decide to send her to Austria, where she will not be punished for her outspoken ways, where her spirit will not be suppressed by the crushing regulations imposed on citizens, most extremely upon women and girls. The last page of the novel is heartbreaking, Marji at the airport, watching in horror as her parents leave, her mother in her father's arms, because she has fainted in grief and fear for her daughter.

The second novel tells of her time in Austria, as well as her return to Tehran. There, she feels like an outsider, like an immigrant who will never fit in. She finds a group of anarchists to hang out with, maintains her ability to get in trouble, and never stops missing her family and her homeland. After a few months living on the streets, she returns home to Iran, where the crushing oppression of the regime, and her inability to cope with it, send her into a depression. Eventually she overcomes her depression, goes back to school, finds love, and finally, herself. The final page of the novel mirrors the first, with her again leaving her family behind, this time as an adult, leaving for Paris, where she hopes to write and draw for a living.

The stories are so well told, I was engrossed from the first page. Marji is the kind of kid we would all want, though she doesn't recognize that in herself. Her parents see a curious mind, a keen sense of humor, and an indefatigable spirit. She sees a slacker who spends weeks at a time stoned and checked out of society. Even if they had known of her drug use in Austria, however, I suspect that they would have not thought her any less the perfect child...they would see this as a mistake, and mistakes are how we learn. And learn she does, painful lesson by painful lesson.

It's hard not to like a kid who remembers how to defend herself. Though her parents sent her to live with a friend, that friend promptly left her off at a Catholic school, to be taught by nuns. When left behind at school during the holidays, when all of her schoolmates are free to go home to their families, and she is left behind with the nuns. She comes down to the TV room with a pot of pasta to eat (she was too hungry for one serving, so brought more so she could enjoy it while watching TV), and is reprimanded by one of the Sisters for her gluttony. The nun says, "It's true what they say about Iranians, they have no education." Marji, her blood boiling, retorts, "It's true what they say about you, too. You were all prostitutes before becoming nuns!" Go, Marji.

I really liked these novels. Give them a try, or, perhaps the movie, which looks to be fairly similar, though the white subtitles on a white background make me wish I spoke French.

Promethea - Alan Moore (3)

I can say I absolutely loved Promethea by Alan Moore. Promethea is a cool heroine. She’s also of the imagination so she can’t be killed! (at least that’s the scuttlebutt so far) Promethea was originally from 411 A.D Egypt, her father a Hermetic Scholar who is killed by Christians, she escapes and is taken by the gods into the Immateria. Over the years, different women with enough imagination and enthusiasm for her have written about her in newspaper comics or pulp novels, and bring her forth from the Immateria, and the two merge to create superheroine. It’s happening again in 1999 with a college student Sophie who was writing a paper on Promethea. Again there are evil forces after her to kill her, because those with power in the physical world, and little imagination fear that Promethea will destroy the world and their power. But ideas and imagination are not easy to kill. But Sophie is new to this and has much to learn about the Immateria and her history (her different incarnations) and she has to learn it and stay alive. I am absolutely in love with Promethea.

Pyongyang: A Journey In North Korea - Guy Delisle

Guy Delisle, the author of this brilliant graphic novel, describes the capital city of North Korea as "A phantom city in a hermit country." He spent two months there on a work visa supervising the editing of a children's cartoon, and also made sketches of things in Pyongyang that he found hilarious, depressing or just plain jaw-droppingly bizarre.

If you really enjoy graphic novels, this one is not to be missed. My whole review is over at Naked Without Books!

I Killed Adolf Hitler, by J

*
*click picture to enlarge
I Killed Adolf Hitler, by Jason, is my first book for the Graphic Novels Challenge (links to my list on my blog). I've never tried graphic novels before, and haven't been a huge fan of comic books since my days of Betty and Veronica, with the exception of the Buffy, Season 8 comics, which is more about needing more Buffy, less about the genre. So here I find myself treading into a new medium, where an entire book can be read during lunch, and more is said in pictures than in words. The example I chose for a graphic, I suppose, isn't a good one to show this, since most of the frames contain words, but there are pages in the book that don't contain any. Pages where the deadpan expressions of the characters say more than pages of words could say.

In I Killed Adolf Hitler we find a world where hiring someone to kill your neighbor because they play their music too loud is perfectly legal. Where there doesn't seem to be much joy. The protagonist is sent back in time by a scientist to, you guessed it, kill Adolf Hitler before he comes to power, thus preventing the rise of World War II, and making the world a better place. He goes back, shoots Adolf, but then things go awry. I won't ruin it for you by telling you more, but I'll tease you by saying that there's a kinda sweet little love story in there about the protagonist and his girlfriend, and what they find out about themselves and each other in the process of trying to correct history.

J's Challenge

My blog is Thinking About..., and I go by 'J'. I'm here to confess that I've never read a graphic novel, and haven't had much interest in them. But there's a film out right now, Persepolis, which the review in our newspaper said is so much like the graphic novel, you get pretty much the same experience by reading the book that you do watching the film. That kind of intruigued, me, and then I saw this challenge on Dewey's blog, so I decided to give it a shot. I'll try to see what this genre is about, and if I can get into it, and I'll read 6 graphic novels in 2008. Here are my choices, not particularly in any order:

I Killed Adolf Hitler, by Jason
A contract killer goes back in time to kill Hitler...and fails spectacularly. Recommended by Dewey herself.

Jimmy Corrigan: Or, the Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware
Ware's book is a semi-autobiographical account of his first contact with the father who abandoned his family. I get the feeling it didn't go very well.

Beowulf, by Gareth Hinds
I read Beowulf in High School, and talk about your epic tales! This is not like the recent movie version, I hope, but I'll let you know after I finish.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, by Marjane Satrapi
This is the story that sucked me into this challenge, so you know I'm looking forward to reading this one. :)

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return, by Marjane Satrapi
This is the continuation of Persepolis. The two stories together are about a young Iranian girl, whose family decides to stay in Iran after the revolution, but as she is not the kind of quiet, unassuming girl that can assimilate easily into society under the new regime, they decide to send her away to Europe for her own safety. The Story of a Return, I can only assume, is about her experiences when she is grown, and returns to Iran.

The Tale of One Bad Rat, by Bryan Talbot
This one is another that I found on Dewey's site, and it looks really interesting. It's the story of a girl, Helen, who is a runaway, and I think the victim of sexual abuse. The drawings are in the tradition of Beatrix Potter, and the character is named Helen Potter. I don't want to read more about it until I actually read it, so you'll have to wait and see what I have to say.

DMZ: On the Ground - Brian Wood(2)

DMZ, formally known as Manhattan, is the setting for this graphic novel about an American civil war, between the United States of America (barely holding on to the eastern part of the country) and the Free States of America (who control most of the country). Matty Roth, an aspiring photojournalist is stranded in this DMZ with only partial knowledge of what's really been going on. The news in the USA is that the DMZ is full of insurgents but he's been learning that many civilians have been abandoned here and are surviving by whatever means necessary. He's learning how to survive here, who to trust, and what are the "real stories". He continues to report for Liberty News, the "official news" of the United States of America, but as time goes on he realizes that what is going on is different from what had been reported.

The story is continued in DMZ: Body of a Journalist and DMZ: Public Works, of which I read all three because the story was engrossing and deals with issues taken from today's news stories. The second focuses on how far the military and the powers that be would go to create a situation for military invasion. Matty learns that all is not as it seems and trying to do the right thing sometimes leads to following a different path and that truth is more important than family. The third volume deals with reconstruction firms, private security forces, terrorist cells and who can you believe?

I was pulled into the story and had to read all three volumes, the graphics were colorful, and depicted a war torn New York that was quite depressing to see. The characters were varied and interesting and I'm very curious as to how the story is going to end.

A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography Of Emma Goldman - Sharon Rudahl

Emma Goldman (1869-1940) lived a long life, and every bit of it was dramatic stuff. She immigrated to America from Lithuania when she was a teenager. While still in the old country, she had read What Is To Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, a novel about an affluent husband and wife who decide to sacrifice everything and dedicate themselves entirely to the revolution. This novel remained an inspiration to her for the rest of her life.

Shortly after her arrival in America, the Haymarket Riot attracted Goldman to anarchism, and she never looked back. A gifted public speaker who first gave speeches in Yiddish and German, then English, (after perfecting her language skills during a stint in prison), Emma Goldman was still traveling the country and speaking out against government corruption and war and for birth control in the final year of her life.

Since Goldman was possessed of a seemingly boundless energy and never shied from controversy, even though jail and death threats were common, this superwoman seems like an excellent choice for a graphic biography. Author Sharon Rudahl did both the text and the art. The art is terrific, but there's so much to explain since Goldman's life was all about history in the making that the text is a little overwhelming. Rudahl has a neat way of capsulizing history at times -- in one panel, she has newly elected President Theodore Roosevelt holding a copy Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and saying "Let's hurry up with those reforms, boys! I don't want to find a finger in my meat!"

At other times, it seems clear that even Rudahl is overwhelmed with too much text, because she has speech bubbles and commentary going all the way around the panel. This was confusing. I would keep reading, then shortly, in a lower panel, would read something that seemed out of context, but familiar, belonging to the above panel. This repeatedly broke my reading concentration, but I can't really fault Rudahl -- Emma Goldman was continually fascinating and it would be wrenching to have to make editorial decisions about the narrative.

Emma Goldman was married briefly, but she didn't care for the institution and was a proponent of "Free Love" all her life. A Dangerous Woman features three or four panels in which a naked Goldman is holding her lover at the time in a sexual embrace, so this is not a graphic biography for young readers.

In spite of the text-graphics balance problems, A Dangerous Woman is a well-done study of an immensely interesting American anarchist and radical.

The Jew of New York, by Ben Katchor

A review in two parts....

Tuesday I left my copy of Great Expectations in my office, and I had absolutely no intention of going to work on Wednesday when a) I didn't have to b) it's a 40-minute drive there and back and gas prices are stupidly high. So, I just had to make arrangements for a short, temporary book to read in the between time.

I picked up Ben Katchor's much-praised graphic novel, The Jew of New York, which I chose for this challenge after hearing about it in a multi-ethnic literature survey course I guest-lectured in a year or two ago. It's a short book, only 94 pages, and given my usual speed at reading graphic novels, I expected to finish it over the course of Wednesday afternoon and evening.

Not so much.

This graphic novel drags like no other I've ever read. Seriously, I'm amazed at how much I dislike it. Especially since Katchor, a cartoonist for the New York Times, The New Yorker, Metropolis Magazine, etc. is highly praised in every comics forum I've ever run across. The Comics Journal, various reputable 'zines, my grad school professor who works in Jewish lit and multi-ethnic studies ALL praise him like he's the high priest of innovative comics. He's a talented guy...apparently.

I am, in fact, woman enough to admit that maybe...likely...I just don't get it. Stacked on top of that, is my admission that I generally don't really care for absurdist literary works, and Katchor's work is highly absurd. Some of the characters include a disgraced kosher slaughterer, an importer of religious articles, a man with plans to carbonate Lake Erie, and an anonymous man in a rubber suit. At first glance, this sounds like something I would enjoy. I enjoy weird characters, but not when they just wander around, wear bed sheets, sleep on lawns and skin beavers (hmmm, maybe I should spend more time examining the sexual implications).

The Jew of New York is essentially a series of character sketches, disjointed threads, that supposedly all come together in the end. How do I know? I consulted Google. I was so thrown by how much I dislike this book and don't get its "greatness" that I went a'Googling for nuggets to keep me going.

Until further notice, I'm going to assume that this book will come together in some thoughtful, meaningful, genius way that makes me admire it. But for now, I'm just sort of dazed.

Stay tuned...

Addendum:

I finished it. I sort of get what Katchor was going for. It's all very weird and ironic and tongue-in-cheek, and it was just painful to read. Additionally, I didn't find it a terribly well constructed example of graphic narrative. The text practically overtakes the images, the images generally don't help propel the narrative, and it was tiresome and frustrating for those very reasons.

Rating: 4/10 - Ugg.

Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

A graphic novel that serves as the autobiography of author Marjane Saptrapi. I read the complete edition which contains "The story of a childhood" and "The story of a return". Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969 in Iran during the Shah's reign. During her lifetime she has witnessed first hand the takeovwe by the Revolution, the war between Iran and Iraq and the compulsary wearing of the veil by all woman in Iran. Her parents were very liberal and she grew up with an immense curiosity and drive to speak her mind which often got her into trouble in such a strict society. At the age of 14 her parents send her alone to Austria where she goes to school but doesn't fit in. She associates with punks and nihilists where she experiments with drugs and has her first relationship which sadly doesn't end well. After spending some time living on the streets and nearly dying she decides to return home, but starts to suffer from depression when she is back. In Iran she feels like a Westener and in the Western world she feels like an Iranian so struggles to find her place.

This was an excellent novel beautifully illustrated and told with warmth and humour despite the often tragic subjects. I am not really one for politics and don't know more than the basics, but this has given me a thorough grounding in Iranian culture and the wars going on in and near by Iran. The Western view of Iran is of oppression, particularly of woman, and it was lovely to see that behind closed doors there are parties, make-up, relationships (both straight and gay) and everything pretty much the same as over here. The only difference is if caught the penalty can range from interrogation to whipping to death.

If you don't read graphic novels, I urge you not to be put off reading this as you will miss a great story and a great piece work of politics too.

The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones - Alan Moore (writer) and Ian Gibson (artist)

This isn't one of my official picks for this challenge, but as I read it and it is a graphic novel I thought I would cross post my review of it here if that's ok.

Halo Jones is an ordinary girl living in The Hoop. The Hoop is where the poor are put so that anyone with money doesn't have to look at them. It is no solution to poverty and unemployment, it is just a place to be. Nothing is really known of Halo's parents and it is assumed she was born on The Hoop and that they died when she was very young. She lives in the house of Brinna (considered to be a wealthy woman), Ludy a musician, Rodice another girl similar to her and Toby an animatronic dog who belongs to Brinna. Halo has always dreamt of leaving The Hoop and when Ludy becomes one of the Drummers and Brinna is murdered she siezes her chance to board a space ship as a hostess and travel to other planets.

She has became something of a legend in the future. She was supposed to be a war criminal who aided in the slaughter of millions and that she met many of the famous people of her time. The reality is somewhat different, she was more in the wrong place at the wrong time (or the right place depending on your viewpoint). Her real story sees her losing many of her friends and fighting in a strange war at super slow speed due to a different gravity on the planet Moab.

I really enjoyed this graphic novel. The heroine Halo was most interesting as she was so ordinary. She "could have been anyone" (her most famous quote). It had many elements of more male based comics like spaceships, guns, war etc, but she was strong in her own right and didn't succumb to many of the female stereotypes like taking her clothes off and fainting a lot which was something Moore and Gibson felt important. The ending saw some earlier storylines tied up nicely and there may even someday be a fourth book (this collection is made up of the three books previsuly published) to continue her story which I would definitely read. I also liked that dolphins ended up taking over the earth, being more intelligent and sensitive, very Douglas Adams.

A Contract with God by Will Eisner

“A Contract with God” is a collection of four short stories, all set in tenement at 55 Dropsie Avenue, The Bronx, New York, somewhere in the 1930's. According to Will Eisner, the stories are semi-autobiographical - they were based on his memories of growing up in New York city at around that time, among other immigrants, many of which of Jewish origins. The stories are based both on his experiences and on those of the people who surrounded him. In the preface to this edition, he says, Call me, if you will, a graphic witness reporting on life, death, heartbreak, and the never-ending struggle to prevail...or at least to survive.

These themes are indeed present in all four stories. In the first one, which gives the novel its title, a man, heartbroken over the death of his 16-year-old daughter, feels betrayed by his God. He believes that he had a contract with God, and that God did not honour the terms of the contract. Therefore, he decides that he is going to break the contract as well, and cheats his way into a rich and luxurious life. Things take a turn, however, when the man decides to make a new contract with God.

"Cookalein" is about a summer at a Jewish country getaway, where some of the tenement's inhabitants spend their holidays. It is a story about social ambition, love, passion, and betrayal. Like in the other stories in this collection, there is quite a bit of irony in the way things turn out.

"The Street Singer" is about a poor street singer just misses his chance of becoming successful… or does he? The singer will never know, nor will the reader. A perfect illustration of life’s much too common “what ifs”.

Finally, "The super" is about – you guessed it - a super who suffers the consequences of his just for young girls.

Like I said, I really liked the way all these stories perfectly illustrated how ironic life can sometimes be. The stories are full of disappointment and heartbreak, but also of hope and joy – they tell us how harsh defeat can be, but they also celebrate life’s little triumphs.

It was only some four years or so ago that I began to read comics and graphic novels more or less regularly. And because I am so used to reading text only books, I really have to push myself to give the artwork the attention it deserves. It goes without saying that, unlike in an illustrated novel, in a graphic novel the art is not just a companion to the text. It’s a fundamental storytelling tool that says as much – and often much more – as the words. All this to say that I am in awe of Will Eisner’s art. His drawings often say much more than words ever could. He is especially masterful when it comes to the character’s expressions – they can be powerful and subtle, intriguing and deeply emotional. Whenever I read one of Will Eisner’s comics, I always make sure that I go slowly enough to truly take in everything that is on the page, and read the bits of the story that are not written down.

David Boring review by Athena

A graphic novel about the eponymous character looking for love at what might be the end of the world. My first exposure to Daniel Clowes's work, and even though I may not love this graphic novel, it was definitely interesting and I look forward to reading Ghost World (I liked the movie). DB is modern, has subtle characterizations, but the minute details and the style of the illustrations really draws you in. It's alienation and the search for love in the 21st century with a large dose of black humor involved. Having read Shortcomings the day before, the two have very similar styles in plot, characters, and storytelling. Adrian Tomine and I suspect other young graphic novelists are influenced by Clowe's modern stylings and characterizations. I did not really feel too much for the characters, but I did find David intriguing. Maybe it was his constant searchings for love, his father, and the end of the story. The graphic novel is a bit meta which I tend to like. Crossposted from aquatique.net

Emo Boy - Steve Emond (1)

The word "emo" has been associated with being emotional, sensitive, introverted, depressed, angsty or suicidal.


And Emo Boy is extremely emo. Typical emo boy going through several high school experiences - being picked on because he doesn’t fit in, the big dance, is he gay or not, not being athletic, etc. His “power” is exploding emo (no other way to explain it)

Basically, it wasn’t very interesting, there were some great poems and thoughts about being emo, being self-absorbed, being a geek, not fitting in, not “getting it”. Typical teenager behavior and perhaps other emo kids enjoy it, but it was more than enough emo for me. I'm not big on the whole emo thing, so perhaps for others it won't be too much.

American Born Chinese review by Athena

American Born Chinese has three separate stories that connects at the end. All the stories have a strong message of self-acceptance. It also deals with racism, friendship, and growing up. The stories are well told; my favourite of the stories is the one on the Monkey King from the famous Chinese legends. Like the author Gene Luen Yang, I also grew up with these tales. The author has a very whimsical and funny take in his art and panels. The illustrations are on the lighter side, but still poignant. The dialogue understated but to the point. This is a graphic novel which both adults and young adults can read and appreciate. Crossposted from my aquatique.net

Laika by Nick Abadzis

Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We did not larn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog.
Oleg Georgivitch Gazenko, 1998

As the title indicates, this graphic novel is a fictionalized retelling of the story of Laika, the soviet dog that, in 1957, became the first living creature to be launched into orbit. She was never brought back. Although at the time the official story was that she survived for 4 days in orbit, and then was mercifully euthanized, the truth of the matter was that Laika died a mere 5 hours after the launch, due to stress and the overheating of the cabin she was in.

Sputnik II, the vessel Laika was launched in, was built in only a month. The goal was for it to be ready for launch in time for the celebration of 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Soviet Space Program was supposed to symbolize the triumph and superiority of socialism. Although this story portrays the political environment of the time in detail, its focus is, above all, the emotions of those who were, in one way or another, touched by the little dog Laika.

I have mixed feelings about the sacrifice of animals in the name of science. While on an emotional level it can horrify me, intellectually I do know that certain things would be impossible to discover otherwise, and that medicine and biology wouldn't be as advanced as they are today if it weren't for it. What is so tragic about Laika's story, though, is that she wasn't sacrificed in the name of science. Nothing much was learned from Sputnik II. She was sacrificed in the name of a political game of chess. It was the desire to make a political statement that rushed the launch of Sputnik II, and made Laika’s safe return be disregarded.

Nick Abadzis explores the futility of her death brilliantly in this story. We follow Laika - or Kudryavka, as she was initially named - from the day she is born into a family that is too poor to keep her. She is given away to a careless boy who ends up throwing her into a river. She survives, and wanders the streets of Moskow until she is picked up by an animal shelter. There she is selected for training, and ends up being chosen as the occupant of Sputnik II due to her resilience and docile temperament.

I suppose that an easy way to tell this story would have been to anthropomorphise Laika. However, this was not the path that Nick Abadzis chose to follow. While Laika is undoubtedly at the very centre of the story, the human characters are just as important, and their emotions are what carries the story along and gives it the depth and resonance it has. The fact that Laika remains “only” a dog increases her fragility, and therefore the strength of the characters’ (and the reader’s) reaction to her fate.

As for the human characters, there is Liliana, the little girl at whose house she is born, and who never forgets her even after she is forced to give her away. There is Yelena Dubrovsky, the caretaker of the dogs on the Space Program, and the person who feels closest to Laika, and is arguably the most affected by her death. There is Oleg Gazenko, the main scientist behind the program, whose scientific neutrality slowly shatters, and there is Korolev, the ambitious Chief Designer of Sputnik II.

The way these characters’ emotions and motivations are portrayed is subtle and complex, and the final result is exquisite – a story that is very poignant without ever becoming overly sentimental. A touching account of the way certain choices take a greater toll on us than we could foresee. Highly recommended. (Originally posted here.)

Shortcomings review by Athena

By Adrian Tomine (2007). A short graphic novella about Ben Tanaka, a cynical antihero Japanese-American. He is not very likable and has quite a few issues which leads to a deteriorating relationship with his long term girlfriend Miko. The novella looks at racial issues, stereotypes, and the breakdown of a relationship. It also touches on the issue of sexual identity, conformity, and fear of change. While Ben is often hypocritical, Miko is not free of hypocrisy or shortcomings either. While their relationship breaks down, they seem to be more sides of the same coin. A realistic portrayal of an ending relationship where both people are not necessarily in the right. The illustration is all in black and white, but poignant in its simplicity. Coupled with good dialogue, the experience is more akin to watching a movie rather than reading a book. A short but reflective graphic novel that is realistic in its portrayal of relationship breakdown. From a longer review over at my blog.