Marjane Satrapi’s recent death led me to reread Persepolis (2003), a brilliant reminder, if anybody needs one, of the powerful elasticity of the graphic novel. It can encompass both grand historical narratives and the most personal of stories; it can simultaneously reflect a wide variety of perspectives, with the words saying one thing and the pictures another. Some of my favorites this year address large societal forces in the form of epidemics—AIDS and Covid-19—or take place in outer space, but their canvases are much smaller than Satrapi’s, focusing tightly on personal relationships.
Emil Wilson’s The Nightingales (Avid Reader Press, Aug. 4) is set in 1985, when Wilson’s father, Don, invites a sick colleague to move into their family’s Oregon home; Jim had been kicked out of his own apartment because his landlord realized he was “one of those sick fruits.” Emil has already left for college, and the book is told through his 17-year-old sister Lou’s sketchbook—there’s a lot to look at on every page, but your eye is free to wander, unconstrained by panels or speech bubbles. Lou and Jim form a close friendship—Jim describes the scene at New York’s gay bathhouses to Lou, and cooks her an elegant birthday dinner, while Lou helps Jim turn over in bed when he’s too weak to do it himself. Our starred review says, “This graphic novel is stunning in every way.…The artwork has an intimacy and immediacy that complements the text beautifully, and the vibrant color palette communicates the joy that the relationship between Lou and Jim brings them both.…Absolutely gorgeous, visually and emotionally.” (Read our recent Q&A with Wilson.)
Fish and Water by Gengoroh Tagame (trans. by Anne Ishii; Pantheon, June 23) opens with a drawing of two men lounging on a sofa wearing comfortable clothes—baggy pants, T-shirts, slippers—and sharing a bowl of snacks. The whole scene is inviting—Tagame’s drawing style is clear and straightforward, pulling you right into the story. The next page shows a bunch of people in a field wearing masks. It’s the height of the Covid pandemic, and when Akira, a salesman, is given a gift of several large cabbages, he calls his friend Koji, who’s a good cook, to come over and share the bounty. “Tagame’s food illustrations look delicious,” according to our review, “displaying Koji’s creativity and making it easy for readers to connect with Akira’s intense excitement over meals with his friend.” They both think of themselves as straight, but the more time the men spend together, the more they realize they’re having a romance.
Jonathan Djob Nkondo’s Peaceful Remission (trans. by Mike Kennedy; Magnetic Press, Sept. 15) starts out with a totally different vibe: It’s night, and there are several pages depicting a dark interior. An older woman wakes her husband with long bubbles of haranguing text, telling him to go talk to their new neighbor, who’s creating a disturbance. We soon see that they’re on a faraway asteroid. As Wilson and Tagame do, Djob Nkondo uses the graphic novel to take a deep dive into a relationship, and he has a fascinating way of interspersing pages of no text and pages with lots of text to create a storytelling rhythm.
Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.
