To Live or Die: Dash Shaw’s Doctors

I promise that this is my last Dash Shaw review for a while. I’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of Doctors, and alas, I have it and have been unable to maintain my patience to reasonably space out my reviews of Shaw’s books.

Of the Shaw works I’ve read so far, Doctors has an unsettling cynicism and darkness about it. Bottomless Belly Button and 3 New Stories contained some comments alluding to the occasionally malevolent and duplicitous nature of people but not to the degree of Doctors. Perhaps this change in tone is the product of the topic discussed in Doctors: death.

Cover of Doctors

Despite the general existential tone of Doctors, the overall narrative still has the absurd and occasionally comically strange moments characteristic of Shaw’s style. Doctor Cho and his daughter, Tammy, run a laboratory where they test the Doctor’s invention, the Charon. For a hefty fee, the Cho lab can bring a loved one back from the dead when they are in an intermittent afterlife between death and the final end known as “the fade to black.” When we enter the world of the Cho family business, they are in the midst of bringing back Miss Bell, a wealthy widow who died suddenly and whose daughter, Laura, would like back in the world.

Even though the Charon and its capabilities suggest that Doctors is a science fiction work, the device itself is hardly the subject of the narrative. The short novel contains short fragments from multiple narrators, ranging from Tammy to Will, the lab assistant, to Miss Bell, with each story describing the history of the character and building up to their current intersecting point in the revival of Miss Bell. And to add an additional layer of cleverness to the book, each fragment in the book is drawn above a different color to remind the reader of each different perspective and the changes over the course of each page.

From Tammy and Will’s perspective, we understand the severity and seriousness of their work: They are defying the rules of nature and do not quite understand how to tackle the consequences. What does not help is the callousness of Doctor Cho, a naturally distant man made more insensitive and cold by the murder of his wife. Unlike Tammy and Will, Doctor Cho looks at the Charon as purely a lucrative business, a way to make a lot of money with technology without considering any emotional disturbances experienced by the revival process of his invention. The Charon is simply a solution to a scientific question for Doctor Cho. Could he bring someone back to life from the dead? Yes, and that yes is all that matters to him.

On the opposite side of the Charon experience, we see Miss Bell’s attempt to re-integrate into her life after her revival. Unfortunately, her return to life is not quite what she had hoped. After her death, Miss Bell, in the intermittent state between death and nothingness, created an afterlife where she was in love and no longer alone; for the first time since her husband’s death, she felt joy and youthfulness again. Upon being ripped out of this pleasant state, Miss Bell is thrust in front of her attorney by her daughter to settle the details of her estate, which is a beyond disappointing welcome back message.

Gradually, Miss Bell’s psychological state degrades as she realizes the bleakness of her reality as compared to her afterlife. Rather than returning to warmth and love from her daughter, Miss Bell returns to her life as a lonely widow pent up in her house. Laura is not around and only seems to appear when money is involved, and Miss Bell longs for her previous afterlife, trying to seek elements to re-create it in her current reality.

At the heart of all of the trajectories of each character in Doctors is the question: If you bring back a loved one, is that going to be better for the individual than death? The Charon, in concept is a nice idea, but in execution it is not because those brought back to life already have death programmed to occur again, and conflicting decisions to dodge or face that second death lead to crippling mental instability, making the revival useless except for having the revived sign paperwork. Consequently, what is the value for the creators and the users of the Charon?

In addition, with the examination of Charon patients such as Miss Bell, a major philosophical question for scientists emerges: even if you can create or access a device that defies nature, should you use it? Inherent in the answer to that question is hubris. Doctors is somewhat of a tragedy, for Doctor Cho and Miss Bell’s daughter Laura exhibit the greatest amount of hubris, and they are met with tragic ends that damage their loved ones. They both believe they can overcome death to get what they desire without realizing that perhaps what nature intended was the correct course in the first place, and in turn, endure the most severe consequences of the Charon.

By the end of Doctors, you are left asking yourself who is more evil in this scenario, the scientists who create the nature defying device or the people who pay exorbitant amounts of money to use it for selfish purposes? I’m not entirely sure, but there is definitely some shared responsibility for the ill-fated consequences of toying with forces one does not understand. Doctors, on an initial read, feels like a naturalist piece of writing, but by the end, everything bad seems to fade away and life for the more accountable Will and Tammy seem okay but pretty directionless and meaningless in general, making the story much more of an existential one. Thus, if everything most likely means nothing, who is the most evil in the story? Who is the most irresponsible? Who is the most selfish? Who is the most myopic in their actions? What is the afterlife? What is death? Would you want another moment with a loved one who has passed on if achieving that moment could harm them? Those questions are much harder to answer in an existential world, and Doctors definitely will not point you in any direction, but it will make you think more carefully when you do attempt to answer them.

Doctors is now available via Fantagraphics Books.

Bovine Ska and Rocksteady 12/3/2014: The Emotions

On this past week’s episode of the Bovine Ska and Rocksteady, we started off the show with two full sets of ska, including some supremely danceable tracks from Prince Buster and his All Stars and The Pioneers.

In the first hour, we also played some unearthed rocksteady singles from The Merritone Singers and The Dynamites in preparation for the early rocksteady tracks from Max Romeo’s first musical endeavor with The Emotions, the vocal group for this week’s spotlight.

After his mother decided to immigrate to England, Max Romeo lived with his father near Wareika Hills. However, after continued disagreement between Max and his stepmother, he decided to run away at 14, living in the hills and trying to get by as best as he could.

In trying to get stable work, Max ended up working in a sugar cane field in Clarendon as a canal cleaner. In the field, he met Denham Edwards, and the two sang together at work. It was at work where Denham would write a song for Max to sing, which was his entry for a regional song competition. Max sang the track with Kes Chin and the Souvenirs at the contest and won, putting him on the track to a music career.

Eventually, Max moved to Kingston and met Lloyd Shakespeare through his friend Suckro. Then, through Lloyd Shakespeare, he met Lloyd’s singing partner, Kenneth Knight. Originally, the two were going to be the duo Ken and Lloyd, but given that they were not entirely ready as a duo, Max offered to join the group and lead.

Max would then become a salesman for Blondel Calnek, an importer of Chinese figurines. During this time, Blondel would open a record label and create a pseudonym for his persona as a record producer. This name was Ken Lack, his last name backwards. Lack’s label, Caltone would be the first label to record The Emotions, which was initiated by Lack when he heard Max singing one day at work. The first track to start the spotlight was, “I’ll Buy You a Rainbow,” the first track they recorded for Caltone

Lack decided to move to the U.S. in 1968, which caused the Caltone label to dissolve. After the dissolution of Caltone, the Emotions would travel over to Phil Pratt to record some pretty singles before Max decided to pursue a solo career in 1968. During this time he was replaced by Audrey Rollins. Audrey would eventually decide to work for Lloyd Daley at his Matador label and was then replaced with Lloyd Brown. However, when Max’s solo career did not flourish as much as he had hoped, Max re-joined the Emotions by the end of 1968.

Around the same time, Max Romeo worked as a salesman for Bunny Lee. Max wrote the now infamous “Wet Dream” and gave it to Bunny Lee to find a vocalist for the track. Bunny offered it to Derrick Morgan, John Holt, and Slim Smith, but all of them passed on it because of its salacious content. Bunny then told Max that he would have to be the one to record it, or else it would never be recorded. “Wet Dream” became Max’s track to put him on the map in music, with its notoriety pushing it up in the charts, especially in the U.K. where it was banned on BBC radio, but, regardless, it made it into the top ten of the charts. After the popularity gained by “Wet Dream,” Max toured England and recorded further innuendo-laden tracks and ended up staying there until 1970 when he returned to Jamaica to form his Roman record label and soundsystem.

Listen to the spotlight and the full show HERE.

Enjoy! The archived file will be available until 12/16/2014.

ODY-C: An Irresponsible Trip Into Space

ODY-C has so much promise: a stunning cover, a beautiful, enormous opening fold-out, and the name of probably one of the best modern comic book and graphic novel writers attached to it.

Branded as an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey set in space with genders of major characters swapped or transformed, ODY-C has a lot of flash, bang, and fury…….with very little in return.

Issue one introduces Odyssia, the war monger and queen warrior on her ship, the ODY-C, trying to return home. Mental unity of its female fuel operators power ODY-C, but as with most Greek myths and tragedies, the ship operates under the capriciousness of the universe’s gods and goddesses. In the world of ODY-C, women hold all of the power and exist as the dominant population while the few men left are relegated to facile companions of the women of highest ranking.

To accompany the narrative, ODY-C has some phenomenal artwork. The colors are vibrant and rich; the drawings are gorgeously layered and textured; the characters are amazingly larger than life. Even more than the Matt Fraction name, Christian Ward’s stunning illustrations lured me into purchasing the first issue of ODY-C.

ODY-C Cover

Sadly, all of the grandiose art has been wasted on this poorly recycled mythology under the guise of female empowerment. Homer’s The Odyssey has been adapted for modern times for decades. Ranging from Walter Hill’s The Warriors and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the fundamental framework of The Odyssey has never left popular culture. Consequently, yet another version of the tale in space (even with the gender changes) is superfluous.

Furthermore, what infuriates me the most about this series is its heavy-handed, irresponsible messages about female empowerment. In various press interviews, Fraction claims that he wants to create a huge adventure with superheroes that his daughter can look up to. However, this goal has led to a lackluster product with nothing insightful or new to say about women rising above. For example, ODY-C runs into trouble when one of its mental fuel-sources stops believing in the battles that Odyssia continuously enters, disconnecting the unity amongst the other “sisters” steering the ship. When this callow metaphor appears, it’s clumsily handled and manipulative, purely entered to achieve the gender politic rather than adding any narrative value to ODY-C, and these politically overwhelming interruptions render this series down to a frivolous piece of female empowerment propaganda.

By reversing genders in ODY-C, Fraction fails most to understand the historical context of the original Homer narrative, and in turn by using the same one, creates a narrative that is fundamentally gender digressive. The Odyssey was written in an era where patriarchy reigned. By using the same story and reversing characters’ genders, ODY-C’s core narrative is still fundamentally male-centric because none of the characters actually capture the experience of being a woman. Essential to the experience of being a woman is interacting with men in a man’s world, and this defining relationship between men and women is entirely missing from ODY-C. A female superhero is not a woman if she is simply a man whose exterior has a female form.

As a result of merely the physical gender replacement, Odyssia and all of the other powerful women in the world of ODY-C are completely unrelatable. They do not motivate me to rise above. If anything, they tell me that a woman-centric world is what I should try to achieve, which is a dangerous message to send out because it will further exacerbate gender strains already embedded in today’s society.

If Fraction really wanted a superhero for his daughter and for the young women of the world, he should have rooted the female protagonists in a place with realistic gender barriers. A new mythology should have been in his mind, one based in a current patriarchal world and one able to fully capture how a woman, consequently, must navigate it. ODY-C is perfect for male readers who think that they are gender progressive and for female readers who fantasize about a world that is run by women. Both of those audiences are problematic and completely misinterpret the realistic female experience and the methods by which women must figure out how thrive in a society where many standards and practices work against us. If I want to see women rising above and succeeding under dire situations (i.e. the ones who truly warrant my respect and admiration), I’ll watch The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Winter’s Bone, or Jackie Brown instead.

Changes Forced by the Loony Family Reunion in Bottomless Belly Button

A little over two months ago, I ranted and raved about Dash Shaw’s 3 New Stories. Excited by his experimental approach to graphic novel/comic book illustration and storytelling techniques, I have looked forward to the opportunity to explore more of the Shaw catalog.

Bottomless Belly Button back cover, spine, and front cover

On the surface, Bottomless Belly Button, a novel conceived from 2005 to 2007, looks like a conventional family drama. Upon the decision to divorce after forty years of marriage, the elders of the Loony family, David and Maggie, call their children and their respective families to the Loony headquarters (a beach house on a mysteriously desolate strip of sand) to break the news to everyone. As expected with any sort of major change, each member of the Loony family reacts in distinctive ways based on individual age and experience.

Dennis, the eldest brother, launches into a full adult tantrum and hysteria, determined to get an answer to why his parents decided to split. As the next-in-line head patriarch, Dennis feels a responsibility to understand his parents split and to try his best to keep the Loony family somewhat together by getting a reasonable answer. Accompanied on this trip by his wife, Aki, and son, Alex, Dennis unfortunately abandons them more and more as he delves deeper and deeper into his investigation of his parents’ relationship history and trajectory from the beginning up to the present.

On the other hand, Claire, the middle sister, remains unflinched. As a divorcee herself, marriage dissolution does not phase her; however, this indifference may stem from her current difficulty in returning to a romantic life and inability to release some residual feelings for her artist ex-husband. In addition, Claire must raise her awkward adolescent daughter, Jill, who also arrived with her mother for the family reunion before family disbanding. On the Loony beach, Claire and Jill both attempt to better understand themselves and escape their current situations, steering their focus away from Grandpa and Grandma Loony’s divorce.

Peter, the youngest of the Loony children, displays the least amount of distress of all. As the youngest and the outcast of the family (with his isolation exacerbated by Shaw’s illustration of Peter as a young man with a frog head), Peter has never felt any serious emotional connection to his family. His distance is further highlighted by the blueprints of the Loony beach house, showing how Peter’s room stands as the only room on the fourth floor of the house, far away from the rooms of his family and any communal rooms. As a failing filmmaker at the age of 26 whose inability to relate to his family transferred to a general inability to interact with other people with any modicum of social grace, Peter reacts to the divorce of his parents like a stranger invited to a family dinner where the uncomfortable news is released.

Consequently, Peter wanders, as usual, on his own course. Peter walks the beach with his kid niece Jill and eventually meets Kat, a girl who Jill bullies him to speak to. As his parents’ marriage ends, Peter begins a flourishing new relationship with Kat, a beach camp counselor who may be far younger than he is. Peter and Kat’s relationship has some truly awkward moments because of Peter’s inexperience, but their growth towards each other serves as a strong foil against the disintegration of David and Maggie Loony’s marriage.

Again, from what has been described, Bottomless Belly Button seems like a standard relationship drama for a white, middle to upper-middle class family. What I have yet to mention, though, is the presence of some undescribed, unidentified supernatural force that carries through the narrative, gradually smoothing away tensions, fears, and hatred. As Bottomless Belly Button progresses, every member of the Loony family reaches a level of acceptance of their situation; the Loony parents’ break up galvanizes a period of growth for all members of the family, and this mysterious force of nature or force of calm, be it from a deity or from elsewhere, pushes each Loony member onto a track that forces each person to experience something new and also reflect on past actions, allowing each member by the end of the book to have the resolution to return to their separate lives with a new perspective and a better ability to care and support the people in their lives.

Beyond the strength of the core narrative, what really makes Bottomless Belly Button special is its ability to weave in artifacts of each character into the story, ranging from childhood pictures to love letters between David and Maggie to even a review of Peter’s failed film. By entangling these seemingly trivial pieces of memories, Shaw immerses the reader into the characters, allowing us to understand the motivations and the full perspective of each person at the beginning of the visit, which then allows us to compare the shifts in demeanor and viewpoints by the end. Further supported by some brilliantly expressive, yet simple illustrations, Bottomless Belly Button sets a consistent tone and mood that pulls the reader into the full world of the Loony’s, making the reading of the somewhat intimidating 720 pages feel like a drive where the end is unknown, but there is a general synchrony with the surroundings that forces you to pull your eyes away from the clock and speedometer, causing you to release your thoughts and engross yourself in the small microcosm currently existing around you.

Loony Family Pictures found in Dennis’s search for answers

Bottomless Belly Button, despite its many quirks, is overall a serene and meditative work. It reminds the readers of the different stages of life in which we can attain further development and how that growth impacts the people in our lives. Though not a read for children (as the spine of the novel warns), Bottomless Belly Button is a graphic novel that should be handed to any person currently approaching a major shift in their lifestyle or in their perspective of the world.

Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw is available via Fantagraphics Books.

Bovine Ska and Rocksteady 11/18/14: Roman Stewart

Great rhythm and vocals of “Never Too Young To Learn”

After a whirlwind of a fundraising show, we wanted to present a very special thank you show for all who donated and all who tune in each week to the Bovine Ska and Rocksteady.

We grabbed some great tracks, which have never been played on the BSR, to share with you this past week including “Everybody Rocking,” a sensational rocksteady from Hopeton Lewis and an excellent cover of The Beatles’ “Rain,” courtesy of Tomorrow’s Children.

To mix up the format of the show, we also played a full set of Jamaican soul tracks, including “Today” by Boris Gardiner, a too cool soul track perfect before a brand new spotlight of rare tracks from the reggae artist Roman Stewart (a.k.a Mr. Special).

Known for his later tracks, particularly “Rice and Peas,” Roman Stewart recorded some phenomenal reggae songs in the early to mid 70s.

As the younger brother of Tinga Stewart, songwriter and singer who saw popularity in Jamaica in the mid-70s, Roman Stewart had a parallel successful career to that of his brother’s. Born in 1957, Roman began singing at a very young age. As a young boy, Roman would sing with Freddie MacGregor by cruise ship docks to perform for the tourists as they arrived and left Jamaica. Like his childhood singing partner Freddie, Roman also began recording at a very young age, releasing his first track, “Walking Down the Street”, as an eleven year old for George Murphy and his Tennors label.

After his first single, four years passed until Roman Stewart emerged as a solo recording artist. In the early 1970s, he would record for a range of producers, ranging from Derrick Harriot to Glen Brown to Augustus Clarke, not quite scoring a hit with any of them, but certainly showcasing his vocal talent. But, in 1974, Roman would gain much more popularity with “Hooray Festival,” a song penned by his brother Tinga, and the track that won that year’s Festival Song Contest. Until 1976, Roman would continue recording in Jamaica, recording Phil Pratt, Leonard Chin, and even taking a try at producing his own work.

In 1976, Roman moved to New York, where he would live until he passed away far too young from heart failure in 2004. During his time in New York, Roman would gain the nickname “Mr. Special” from his great stage presence but also his amiable nature off of the stage.

We were delighted to present the spotlight on Roman Stewart. Listen to this past week’s show HERE.

The archive will be available until 12/1/2014. Enjoy!

Imagination and Reality in Lowriders in Space

I must confess that I have a secret admiration for cars, all kinds of cars.

Sports cars. Muscle cars. Hot Rods. 1930s, 1940s, 1950s cars.

There is something fascinating about the engineering behind a car. And, there is always something alluring about a beautifully designed car.

Consequently, when Generoso woke me up on Saturday morning to say that local artist Raúl the Third would be at our local comic book store (huzzah Hub Comics!) signing copies of his newest book, Lowriders in Space, we rolled out of bed on a cold, pre-winter Massachusetts morning to pick up our copy.

Cover for Lowriders in Space

Lowriders in Space written by Cathy Camper and illustrated by Raúl the Third follows the restoration process mechanic extraordinaire, Lupe Impala, auto detail wizard, El Chavo Flapjack, and dazzling auto body artist, Elirio Malaria, endeavor to win the Universal Car Competition. The competition carries recognition and fame for our team of auto transformation champions, but most importantly, it awards enough prize money for the team to open up their own independent garage, a goal that would be impossible with their currently non-existent funds.

After gathering spare parts to get a stalled (and well forgotten) car up and running into at least the base of a good lowrider, the team take their new ride on a test drive, and rather than traveling down the block, their lowrider rockets into space, where they receive the assistance of the constellations and the planets of the universe to add the final, perfect touches to make their entry into the Universal Car Competition completely unforgettable.

Lowriders in Space is a fun and imaginative adventure tale for children and adults written about a culture that is rarely discussed in children’s books. We’re used to the knight battling the dragon, the children deceiving the witch, and the princess who needs rescue in children’s tales, but rarely do the protagonists in a child’s tale have a goal of realistic creative freedom gained from skills diligently and independently developed, as our auto team in Lowriders in Space do. Furthermore, in works created for mass consumption, lowrider culture has rarely been portrayed in a non-caricature fashion, and these historical portrayals almost never delve into the mechanical details and efforts taken to create the lowriders that people adore.

Lowriders in Space, while containing a clearly fictional component with the team’s space travel in a car, conveys the hard work, care, and passion dedicated to achieve the independence to create on one’s own terms, which is a nice, realistic, non-abstract message for all audiences. It’s a simple, effective narrative enhanced by some spectacular artwork, making it a perfect read on a Saturday morning or anytime you need a reminder that regardless of your current circumstances, reality does not need to be bleak.

Lowriders in Space is written by Cathy Camper and Raúl the Third is available via Chronicle Books.

Bovine Ska and Rocksteady 11/11/14: Stax versus Motown

On this week’s edition of the Bovine Ska and Rocksteady, in honor of Fundraising Week at WMBR, we decided to pick a special theme for the show. After a few weeks of debate, we finally settled on the winner in the wee hours of the morning a few days before the show….Stax versus Motown covers!

The rules were as follows:

Each artist from each label would get three songs to be represented by covers by Jamaican artists.
One Motown artist would face one Stax artist at a time

Heralding from the famed Hitsville U.S.A., our Motown competitors were:

The Temptations
Smokey Robinson and The Miracles
The Four Tops
Stevie Wonder
The Jackson Five

And, battling against those Detroit giants were the Memphis Stax champions:

Booker T. & the M.G.’s
William Bell
Eddie Floyd
Otis Redding

With brilliant source material from these American soul champions, Jamaican stars such as The Heptones, Pat Kelly, Ken Parker, and Bob Andy recorded some incredible interpretations that we were thrilled to share for this special occasion on the Bovine Ska and Rocksteady.

Decide who should win the battle between Stax and Motown by listening to the show HERE.

Enjoy! The archive link will be available until 11/24/2014.

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO PLEDGED! SPECIAL THANKS TO KEVIN DAVLIA, SABINA MADDILA, and ELLE TRAIN for answering the phones.

The Killer Does Not Care

Created in the tradition of Jean Pierre Melville’s impeccable Le Samouraï, The Killer has some high standards to live up to.

Cover of The Killer Volume One

In The Killer, our unnamed anti-hero spends the bulk of the first volume justifying his lifestyle as a high-class hitman. The spitting image of Jean Reno in The Professional, our main assassin introduces himself and his occupation as he endures a prolonged stake out for a target. A character seeking existentialism, the contract killer pays no loyalties to anyone, with his cynicism and cold demeanor colored entirely by the notorious impact of the Nazi movement.

Beyond the explanation of our assassin’s motivations (or lack thereof), the first volume of The Killer (in the American release, issues 1-4) follows our assassin’s fall from grace as a pure mercenary as he becomes trapped in an investigation by police and an operation of betrayal by his partner after a hit goes terribly wrong in Paris. With a villa awaiting on a remote island in Venezuela, our assassin has waited his entire career for his last big hit to finally retire, but once he realizes that a police officer has been on his tail and that his partner has hired another hitman to take him out, our main character needs to find out further details about his last target and also try to figure out his next courses of action as a hitman past his prime who is now completely alone in the world.

What makes a film noir like Le Samouraï so successful is its carefully calculated distance. Throughout the film, we get a sense of Alain Delon’s motivations, but we never really get too close to him. In addition, we rarely ever hear him pontificate about his existence, for his actions reveal his quiet ethical code. Jef Costello in Le Samouraï has no need, no desire to explain himself.

Unfortunately, our counterpart in The Killer does not maintain the same distance with the audience. His constant explanation about his ambivalence towards human life and his justification of his occupation by comparing himself to other examples of genocide and human rights atrocities suppresses the interesting plot line surrounding the betrayal and the mistake of the last target. Despite his unrelenting explanations about his own morality, as the narrative continues, our main character does have some level of humanity, as seen by some of his actions, but he must continue to persuade himself and his audience that he is an existentialist without any care for others.

With this constant explanation of the assassin’s morals, Matz completely misses the essential nuances and the general silence that make a film noir and a character study of an assassin engaging. When an author presents a flawed and villainous character as the protagonist, the audience does not need to hear rhetoric about why the life of the seemingly evil character is not as immoral as expected. The audience must gain empathy with the character by his/her actions and interactions with the surrounding people. The audience must have the ability to relate to the character in some way beyond his/her explanation of politics and morality. Matz’s assassin is fundamentally not a relatable character; he is less of a regular man trying to survive and more of a priest standing and preaching on a pulpit.

What’s a sin in all of this is Jacamon’s artwork. All of the art is drawn with a certain richness in its color and simplicity in its lines. Jacamon’s illustrations are simultaneously realistic and cartoon-like, making the setting of The Killer feel brilliantly fictional but not too far away from reality. Sadly, Jacamon’s fine illustrations become the understudy to the heavy handed political and moral discussions of the narration.

Sadly, The Killer does not achieve the status of the historical works it attempts to embody. Matz needed to make a decision about his work; should this be a didactic noir, or should this be a philosophical essay? He cannot seem to make that decision, and consequently, The Killer becomes a trite and heavy handed narrative about a sanctimonious killer who delusionally believes in his own existentialism. Yes, the assassin is in serious trouble. Yes, the assassin has been betrayed by his inner circle, which is never a pleasant scenario. Yes, the assassin has a point about other heinous actions in the world surpassing the ugliness of his own. However, by the end of his sermons, I simply do not care about his life or his ethics. I guess the nothingness he preaches has come to fruition.

The Killer is available in its English translation via Archaia Studios Press.

The Human and Uncanny World of Ripple

Ripple is strange. Very strange.

Well, maybe not.

Cover of Ripple

Martin, the narrator of our story, is an uninspired illustrator. After failed attempts at making underground comics, his entire existence has morphed into a cotton candy malaise as he spends his days illustrating facile children’s books for a post-Barney generation. Upon the notice of an unexpected grant award, Martin’s stupor of indifference quickly ends.

In trying to muster up any piece of inspiration, Martin decides that his grant will produce paintings for an exhibit tritely titled, “The Eroticisim of Homeliness.” What begins as a dull concept of trying to paint conventionally unattractive women in an erotic light spirals rapidly out of control when Martin meets his first model, Tina.

Tina, by no means, is a physically attractive woman. She has the grace of a boar. She is unkempt and slovenly. She has the most peculiar canines, almost like those of a dog. She is completely untamed.

Tina’s personality does not have much to allure either. She’s not quite the sharpest girl. She lacks manners. She lacks tactfulness. She lacks the ability to consider the feelings of others. She is completely hedonistic in her philosophy of behavior.

Regardless of Tina’s lackluster, almost grotesque image and persona, Martin becomes completely infatuated with her, in a suffocating and overwhelming way that he cannot understand. His obsession is both carnal and transcendent. He physically longs for her and simultaneously hungers for her love. He is completely enamored.

Ripple is the complete recounting of Martin’s obsession with his subject Tina and their resulting relationship: their meeting, their physical encounters, and their end. It is more than just a tale of an artist-subject infatuation; Ripple is a character study of Martin, the artist, in the confines of his vacuum of a world. As Martin becomes more and more enraptured by Tina, we slowly begin to understand his seemingly mysterious, irrational desires for her.

Prior to Tina, Martin’s life lacked any emotional dynamic range. He lived at a stasis with his art, with his apartment, and we can assume with his love life. Love was abstract to him, derived from books and poems and never from any human encounter. He lived a life of complacency, rarely emoting and experiencing the feelings that are unique to humans.

Consequently, in facing Tina, Martin’s stasis ended. With Tina’s purely hedonistic sensibilities, Martin finally experienced and felt the highest range of excitement, joy, and lust and the lowest embarrassment, sadness, and disappointment. Though Tina was not his normal, “type,” Tina’s inability to even be classified leads Martin to his first time to actually experience the full emotional range of a person in love and to achieve the concept of the Ripple, the sensation of a complete disconnection from reality and the entrance into a world of complete consumption of another person. The Ripple is the heightening of pure sensuality in a way that is completely incomprehensible unless you have experienced it. For him, the Ripple is a completely abstract concept at first and one that Tina mocks him for until the two finally enter the Ripple at the climax of their relationship.

Regardless of the outrageousness and possibly sensationalistic sexual encounters between Tina and Martin, Ripple is a study of the compromises we make in life and how they affect our perceptions and preferences of sexuality, a topic well discussed by Bertrand Blier’s Too Beautiful For You, a film where a wealthy car dealership owner has an affair with his homely secretary. In living a complacent life, free of any major imperfections or traumas, one’s irrational desires and tendencies get displaced. All of the paths it travels are unknown, but in Ripple and in Too Beautiful For You, it goes toward sexuality.

By the end of Ripple, for Martin, love is no longer a flowery concept, no longer an abstracted, holy, sacred concept. It is tied to the earth, tied to Tina and the reality of all of her imperfections. The book itself is his attempt to pull apart this phenomenon of his desire for her, but she is gone, leaving him with a new sensation, irreconcilable love and longing.

Martin is certainly not well. His encounters with Tina were definitely unsavory, but, he has now at least experienced something more human than anything else in his normal, pallid life and can perhaps return to illustrating children’s novels without such complacency and maybe, just maybe, can create something inspired. This book is at least a good start.

Ripple by Dave Cooper is available via Fantagraphics Books.

Love and Faith and Growing Up in Craig Thompson’s Blankets

PREFACE: My dearest friend Samantha Fleitman brought up the graphic novel I am about to review two summers ago when she found out that I was beginning to delve into the medium. The seasons progressed, and I began to read more and more and constantly forgot to read Blankets. I must admit that it was somewhat due to the intimidating length, but that’s a lame excuse. Alas, on Friday, I determined that THIS was the weekend that I started and finished Craig Thompson’s Blankets, and it is thus the subject for this week’s review. Many thanks to Samantha for the recommendation!

Blankets Cover

Released in 2003, Blankets is a bit older than what I normally review here, but given the relevance of its message and narrative, it is by no means a dated novel (after all, all of the 2000s seem kind of like a blur to me anyway). An autobiographical coming of age story for Craig Thompson, the creator, Blankets intimately follows Craig’s transition from a young boy to a young man. A hybrid of the Bildungsroman and the Künstlerroman, Blankets simultaneously weaves Thompson’s more abstract battles with his spirituality with his very Earth-bound battles with family drama, bullying, and love. In the process of mixing these two realms of conflict, Thompson’s persona as an artist and voice as a storyteller emerge.

Born to an evangelical Christian family, Thompson grew up in rural Wisconsin as an outsider, with his family’s lower middle class status and his mother’s extreme evangelicalism casting him as a pariah among his secular and Bible school classmates. The first eighth of Blankets gathers and develops the context of the creation of Thompson’s voice through non-linear moments from his childhood and adolescence. From a very early start, Thompson has a strong connection with the Bible and a complementary guilt complex nourished by his family and his conservative church. He is a quiet boy often picked on in school, and in turn, is often the catalyst for arguments at home with his brother, Phil.

After the introduction of young outcast Thompson, the narrative begins to linearize as a teenage Thompson meets Raina, his first love, at church snow-camp. As the other campers ski and snowboard, Raina, another outsider, and Craig ditch chapel hours and spend time getting to know each other. After the end of camp, the two begin their enamored long-distance relationship.

The blossoming and growth of Craig and Raina’s relationship dominates the rest of the novel, which seems like it could lead to boring or stereotypical comments and details about young love, but Blankets opts for a much different course. Thompson, in the narration of the relationship between him and his first love, ties in fragments of his childhood and moments of her childhood, building their relationship in a naturalistic, anti-hyper-dramatic, and even in an anti-sexual way. As their relationship progresses, Thompson builds Raina into a nearly saint-like character with the way he worships her for her natural beauty and poise in the midst of handling her parent’s divorce, caring for her mentally disabled older brother and sister, and nurturing her niece whose parents completely disregard. Mixed into all of the storyline of Craig and Raina are moments of Thompson’s reality as a soon to be high school graduate considering ministry school and as a young Christian who is perpetually connected and disconnected with the Bible and afraid of disappointing God, making this coming of age tale more layered than a basic story about a young person trying to deal with his or her current circumstances at home or at school.

By the end of Blankets, much of the original dogmatism of Thompson’s Christianity has eroded, with the method of the erosion being the grand strength of the novel. In the process of placing Raina up on a pedestal after spending two weeks with her in her home in Michigan, Thompson feels conflicted between earthly love with carnal desires and divine love with reverence of a superior, perfect being. In worshipping Raina, his love for her is that of into divine love instead of love between two partners, making it almost too suffocating and overwhelming to Raina when the two are apart.

When Raina calls Craig to end their romantic relationship, he begins to attempt to reconcile the concepts of earthly love versus divine love which then transitions into reconciling religious fervor versus piety. As Thompson becomes enraptured by the book of Ecclesiastes, his faith moves away from the blinded, fervent devotion of a divine, infallible, omnipotent being who must be worshipped in the Church with song and ritual. Gradually, he begins to discover more of the gifts and powers of God through the earth itself through his admiration of all of God’s creation, with the understanding that it is all fleeting and transforming.

From this enlightenment of faith, Craig also realizes that his love for Raina is unsustainable and ends their friendship, for his abstract love for Raina prevents him from understanding how to love her as another fallible human being. In a moment of parallel symbolism, Craig destroys all of the gifts Raina had given him (with the exception of a quilt) that have become idolatry for him, paralleling his concurrent distancing from the church and the eventual hiding of his Bible. By placing God, Christ, and Raina on a pedestal of perfection, Craig is unable to fully develop his true sense of faith in God and love for another human, stunting his ability to make a decision to move forward with his life because he views himself as an inferior being. With the discovery of his faith and his understanding of his relationship with Raina, Craig makes the final change in his path with his decision to go to art school after graduation, a decision which he could not make because he once feared that going to art school would be sinful.

By the end of Blankets, Craig returns to his home as an adult, and re-discovers his Bible and his quilt. His faith no longer involves the devotion to a perfect being and the consequent fear of offending God, and in parallel, his thoughts of Raina become more bound to his experiences with her. By the end, Craig’s faith and belief stems from learning the teachings and actions of Christ on earth, reminding him that the beauty and admiration of Christ lies in his interactions with people, and not as simply an omnipotent deity in the sky. And simultaneously, the beauty of his relationship with Raina lies in their time together in each other’s company as human beings, and his admiration of her lies in her character’s strength in being able to gracefully continue with love and affection through a difficult time rather than her existence as a pure, perfect saint.

Blankets is a beautiful coming of age story that captures so much more than just a first love or a first major conflict. It weaves together multiple crises of familial, societal, and spiritual origin to allow us to comprehend how the growth and shift of our individual belief systems manifest into our actions and our relationships with the people and the world around us.

Blankets is available via Top Shelf Productions.

LILY & GENEROSO 4EVER!

Author: LILY FIERRO