An intriguing pop-culture artifact—more so for its background than its execution.
With help from comedian Heidecker (Tim and Eric’s Zone Theory, 2015, etc.) and illustrator Pertega, “pop-culture archaeologist” Frank (The Good Inn, 2014, etc.) adapts into a graphic novel a never-produced film collaboration between surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and classic-Hollywood absurdist Harpo Marx.
The first 40 pages of this graphic novel are mostly straight-text exposition, detailing how Frank came to reconstruct the unproduced film and explaining the brief time Dalí and Marx spent together in mutual admiration. This sluggish start sets the stage for what is to come: an illustrated adventure that kicks off in 1930s New York but eventually engulfs the world, thanks to “the Surrealist Woman,” an enigmatic beauty with fantastical reality-altering powers. We first encounter her through visionary businessman Jimmy, who discovers an artistic self he never knew was inside him when the Surrealist Woman arranges an otherworldly musical performance. As Jimmy and the Surrealist Woman fall in love, the happiness she feels triggers global chaos (the Great Pyramid floods, Venice runs dry, the streets of Paris suddenly all go in one direction). Jimmy’s vulgar, ambitious, unfaithful fiancee, Linda, becomes enraged by the attention the Surrealist Woman receives—both from Jimmy and from society—and rallies the forces of order to prosecute the Surrealist Woman. The story is a bit on the nose about freedom of expression versus societal oppression and expectation. Most enjoyable are Groucho and Chico Marx, who work on behalf of the Surrealist Woman; their playful, punny dialogue contrasts with the stiff exchanges between Jimmy and Linda or Jimmy and the Surrealist Woman. Pertega’s art shines in detailed close-ups and as the story delves deeper into surrealism (dripping wax effects, rivers of hair, complex page layouts), while the plainer scenes and more distant perspectives render the characters flat.
An intriguing pop-culture artifact—more so for its background than its execution.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59474-923-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
An original project worth watching as it shapes up to something that may be quite magnificent.
This black-and-white historical narrative, written and illustrated by Lutes, collects eight volumes of his ongoing comic book set in Berlin during the late ’20s. It’s a multilayered tale of love and politics at the beginning of the Nazi era, as Lutes follows the stories of three characters: a 20ish art student from the provinces, a textile worker, and a young Jewish radical. Their lives intersect in only the subtlest way—Lutes depicts them crossing paths at some great public events, such as the Mayday march that closes this part of his book. And Lutes plays with perspective in a visual sense as well, jumping from point-of-view frames to overhead angles, including one from a dirigible flying above in honor of the Kaiser. At street level, Lutes integrates his historical research smoothly, and cleverly evokes the sounds and smells of a city alive with public debate and private turmoil. The competing political factions include communists, socialists, democrats, nationalists, and fascists, and all of Lutes’s characters get swept up by events. Marthe, the beautiful art student, settles in with Kurt, the cynical and detached journalist; Gudrun, the factory worker, loses her job, and her nasty husband (to the Nazi party), then joins a communist cooperative with her young daughters; Schwartz, a teenager enamored with the memory of Rosa Luxembourg, balances his incipient politics with his religion at home and his passion for Houdini. The lesser figures seem fully realized as well, from the despotic art instructor to the reluctant street policeman. Cosmopolitan Berlin on the brink of disaster: Lutes captures the time and place with a historian’s precision and a cinematographer’s skill. His shifts from close-ups to fades work perfectly in his thin-line style, a crossbreed of dense-scene European comics and more simple comics styles on this side of the Atlantic.
An original project worth watching as it shapes up to something that may be quite magnificent.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-896597-29-7
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.
Continuing his apparent mission to refract the whole of English culture and history through his personal lens, Ackroyd (Thames: The Biography, 2008, etc.) offers an all-prose rendering of Chaucer’s mixed-media masterpiece.
While Burton Raffel’s modern English version of The Canterbury Tales (2008) was unabridged, Ackroyd omits both “The Tale of Melibee” and “The Parson’s Tale” on the undoubtedly correct assumption that these “standard narratives of pious exposition” hold little interest for contemporary readers. Dialing down the piety, the author dials up the raunch, freely tossing about the F-bomb and Anglo-Saxon words for various body parts that Chaucer prudently described in Latin. Since “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale,” for example, are both decidedly earthy in Middle English, the interpolated obscenities seem unnecessary as well as jarringly anachronistic. And it’s anyone’s guess why Ackroyd feels obliged redundantly to include the original titles (“Here bigynneth the Squieres Tales,” etc.) directly underneath the new ones (“The Squires Tale,” etc.); these one-line blasts of antique spelling and diction remind us what we’re missing without adding anything in the way of comprehension. The author’s other peculiar choice is to occasionally interject first-person comments by the narrator where none exist in the original, such as, “He asked me about myself then—where I had come from, where I had been—but I quickly turned the conversation to another course.” There seems to be no reason for these arbitrary elaborations, which muffle the impact of those rare times in the original when Chaucer directly addresses the reader. Such quibbles would perhaps be unfair if Ackroyd were retelling some obscure gem of Old English, but they loom larger with Chaucer because there are many modern versions of The Canterbury Tales. Raffel’s rendering captured a lot more of the poetry, while doing as good a job as Ackroyd with the vigorous prose.
A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-670-02122-2
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
PERSPECTIVES
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