Black-and-white artistry perfectly complements the noirish plot.
Taut, elliptical graphic novel serves as both existential parable and homage to an earlier era of classic comics.
Written and illustrated by Lemire, creator of the Essex County Trilogy (The Country Nurse, 2007, etc.), the story could hardly be simpler or more spare. A strange man arrives in the small town of Large Mouth: “Home of the World’s Biggest Bass! Population 754.” He comes without a vehicle, identification or much in the way of possessions. He is wrapped head to toe, arm to arm, and finger to finger in bandages. He wears glasses that are more like goggles, obscuring his eyes. He introduces himself as John Griffen. He is “The Nobody” of the title. The year is 1994. Explains 16-year-old Vickie, whose father owns the town’s diner, “All I know for sure is that after he came here, everything changed forever.” Well, yes and no. Though Vickie is the only one who develops a friendship with the bandaged stranger, the small town seems to absorb his presence until he’s almost part of the citizenry—or maybe part of the scenery. He keeps to himself; he doesn’t make trouble. Vickie works at the diner under her dad’s watchful eye; he has been particularly protective since his wife disappeared when Vickie was nine. Vickie has a hole in her life that perhaps the stranger can help fill. She takes him meals. She learns that he was formerly a professor in Chicago and that he remains involved with some mysterious chemistry experiments. He seeks in Large Mouth the peace of mind that he couldn’t find in Chicago, while she hopes to escape to the big city and leave her small-town boredom behind. When another woman disappears from Large Mouth, Griffen is the immediate suspect. Is he really a friend to Vickie, or is he a threat? Is he even John Griffen?
Black-and-white artistry perfectly complements the noirish plot.Pub Date: July 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2080-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Vertigo/DC Comics
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
Gorgeous and troubling.
Cartoonist Kuper (Kafkaesque, 2018, etc.) delivers a graphic-novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s literary classic exploring the horror at the center of colonial exploitation.
As a group of sailors floats on the River Thames in 1899, a particularly adventurous member notes that England was once “one of the dark places of the earth,” referring to the land before the arrival of the Romans. This well-connected vagabond then regales his friends with his boyhood obsession with the blank places on maps, which eventually led him to captain a steamboat up a great African river under the employ of a corporate empire dedicated to ripping the riches from foreign land. Marlow’s trip to what was known as the Dark Continent exposes him to the frustrations of bureaucracy, the inhumanity employed by Europeans on the local population, and the insanity plaguing those committed to turning a profit. In his introduction, Kuper outlines his approach to the original book, which featured extensive use of the n-word and worked from a general worldview that European males are the forgers of civilization (even if they suffered a “soul [that] had gone mad” for their efforts), explaining that “by choosing a different point of view to illustrate, otherwise faceless and undefined characters were brought to the fore without altering Conrad’s text.” There is a moment when a scene of indiscriminate shelling reveals the Africans fleeing, and there are some places where the positioning of the Africans within the panel gives them more prominence, but without new text added to fully frame the local people, it’s hard to feel that they have reached equal footing. Still, Kuper’s work admirably deletes the most offensive of Conrad’s language while presenting graphically the struggle of the native population in the face of foreign exploitation. Kuper is a master cartoonist, and his pages and panels are a feast for the eyes.
Gorgeous and troubling.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-393-63564-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Chwast and Twain are a match made in heaven.
Design veteran Chwast delivers another streamlined, graphic adaptation of classic literature, this time Mark Twain’s caustic, inventive satire of feudal England.
Chwast (Tall City, Wide Country, 2013, etc.) has made hay anachronistically adapting classic texts, whether adding motorcycles to The Canterbury Tales (2011) or rocket ships to The Odyssey (2012), so Twain’s tale of a modern-day (well, 19th-century) engineer dominating medieval times via technology—besting Merlin with blasting powder—is a fastball down the center. (The source material already had knights riding bicycles!) In Chwast’s rendering, bespectacled hero Hank Morgan looks irresistible, plated in armor everywhere except from his bow tie to the top of his bowler hat, sword cocked behind head and pipe clenched in square jaw. Inexplicably sent to sixth-century England by a crowbar to the head, Morgan quickly ascends nothing less than the court of Camelot, initially by drawing on an uncanny knowledge of historical eclipses to present himself as a powerful magician. Knowing the exact date of a celestial event from more than a millennium ago is a stretch, but the charm of Chwast’s minimalistic adaption is that there are soon much better things to dwell on, such as the going views on the church, politics and society, expressed as a chart of literal back-stabbing and including a note that while the upper class may murder without consequence, it’s kill and be killed for commoners and slaves. Morgan uses his new station as “The Boss” to better the primitive populous via telegraph lines, newspapers and steamboats, but it’s the deplorably savage civility of the status quo that he can’t overcome, even with land mines, Gatling guns and an electric fence. The subject of class manipulation—and the power of passion over reason—is achingly relevant, and Chwast’s simple, expressive illustrations resonate with a childlike earnestness, while his brief, pointed annotations add a sly acerbity. His playful mixing of perspectives within single panels gives the work an aesthetic somewhere between medieval tapestry and Colorforms.
Chwast and Twain are a match made in heaven.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60819-961-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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