April 24 – Well, I didn’t foil a terrorist plot to derail a train in Ontario today — nor did I sternly warn North Korea to cease its reckless behavior. The big news in my world is that my very first shipment of political comic books came in the mail today.
Beginning in May, I will be tabling at a variety of cultural and political events to talk and sell political comics in Toronto. Why have I decided to launch as a distro? There are a couple of reasons… I love recommending books to folks, and I like being able to provide a way for me to pass on what I’ve read to others (the distro will include both new and used stuff), I think political comics are like most specialty comics: you can find a few at any given comic shop, but almost never a full and decent selection–I want to do this. And now for my favorite reason: activists, history buffs, and political junkies don’t go to comic shops. Comic book people go to comic shops. I want to bring political comics to folks who don’t think there’s anything for them in the medium.
If you’re in the Toronto area and have an event that you believe could benefit from such fine graphic literature, please drop me a line–thanks!
Fellow Torontonians, I hope you’ll join us on Friday May 10 for an incredible presentation on political cartooning, political comics, comics journalism, and more at Ad Astra Comix’s first event: The Political Comics of Matt Bors. Matt will be in town for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) happening that weekend at the Toronto Reference Library, and to promote his new book, Life Begins at Incorporation.
Here is a copy of the poster we’ll be putting up beginning this week:
In conjunction with the event, Matt has agreed to have his book distro’d by Ad Astra Comix here in Canada, which is pretty exciting. So the event is also a launch for Ad Astra to begin actively distributing political comics!
I’m also extremely grateful to the kind folks at the Comic Book Lounge for inviting us into their space. It’s so nice to have comic shops that are not only supplying me with my next fix of comics, but also see themselves as an integral piece in an active and vibrant community- and Comic Book Lounge is an enthusiastic believer in this.
In addition to a presentation, where will be a book sale and signing, a bar lovingly stocked with local beer and wine, and free snacks. I can’t emphasize enough that there will be free snacks.
Title: Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story Author: Mat Johnson Illustration: Simon Gane Published: 2010 by Vertigo Comics
Dark Rain is a fictional heist story set against the backdrop of an historical moment in both time and space—a flooded New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. When Katrina hit, I personally thought it was an event of such a magnitude that it would find its way into more comics. After all, it’s a medium that has a long reputation for wrapping current events and recent history into its story lines. What I find interesting about Dark Rain, though, is that it is more true than most readers realize while they’re reading it.
There are two fundamental elements taking place here. The first is that there is a fictional narrative of Dabny and Emmit, two ex-cons who, despite a recent history of bad luck, now see a golden opportunity to rob a flooded bank. This comes into conflict in two ways. They are physically confronted with the reality that Dark Rain, a private security contractor (read: mercenaries) have been deployed to protect the bank, and their twisted Colonel has a similar heist plot in mind. They are also socially and morally confronted with the reality that the people around them, their neighbors and fellow community members, desperately need their help.
The second over-arching element is a political and social commentary of how Hurricane Katrina was handled: how the event intervened in millions of lives, and subsequently, how opportunists intervened in the disaster for financial gain—a reality that has been under-reported, largely because it was in the aftermath of the disaster, after camera crews and reporters packed up and went back to their regularly-scheduled programs.
Seriously, I have yet to find a review of Dark Rain that points out what, to me, was so obvious it made me buy the book—the fact that the name Dark Rain is an allusion to Black Water, the largest private military contractor in the U.S. at the time. They have since changed their company name to Academi, in the face of horrifying investigations into their practices both in the U.S. and particularly Iraq (as of right now, in 2012, there are more private military contractors in Iraq than there were U.S. soldiers, ever. A reminder that the Iraq War is still going on—it has just been privatized.) For more information about this, I highly recommend picking up Jeremy Scahill’s book Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
Now I don’t know if Mat Johnson had this in mind, but I find it incredibly difficult to believe otherwise. Blackwater was deployed to New Orleans immediately following Hurricane Katrina, to protect “valuable assets” in the city. There is a great video of Scahill talking about witnessing this first-hand while he was covering Katrina as a reporter for Democracy Now!. After hearing that testimony from an award-winning investigative journalist, I also find the storyline of a heist to be ironic—if not, also, subtly alluding to Blackwater’s activities. Scahill points out in the talk that the company was hired by the Department of Homeland Security to deploy to New Orleans, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $950 per man, per day. If that’s not a heist, I don’t know what is.
Blackwater (Academi) military contractors deployed in New Orleans, 2005
I’d like to think that was all part of Mat Johnson and Simon Gane’s plan… but I’m still having a hard time tacking that hypothesis down as proven–seriously, no one has written about this?! Still, it gives me pause to think about some of the critical reviews I’ve read of this work. The common criticism of Dark Rain is that the personal story doesn’t mesh with the social/political commentary. Maybe those reviewers, in reality, are complaining of all that space those written words. As the cold hearted Colonel would say….
Title: The Silence of Our Friends Authors: Mark Long and Jim Demonakos Illustrator: Nate Powell Published: 2012 by First Second Books
L.P. Hartley said, as noted in the book, “The past is a foreign country. They do things different there.”
Taking place in Houston, Texas, in 1968, The Silence of Our Friends is a brief memoir of Mark Long’s childhood against the backdrop of his town’s peaked racial tension. The title comes from that famous quote by Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Long was raised in a white, Liberal, Christian middle-class family—as American as apple pie, it seems. They find themselves in Houston when Mark’s father, Jack, moves the family to take a job as a TV camera man and the TV station’s “race reporter”. Through his job, Jack befriends a local Civil Rights leader, Larry, a teacher who has rallied students at a segregated university in the 3rd Ward—Houston’s impoverished African American community. The school’s administration banned the right of SNCC to organize (The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee—a nationwide student group elemental in the rise of the Civil Rights Movement on post-secondary campuses). For more information about this history, I recommend reading a [White-written] news article from the time period, complete with all its presuppositions and bias. This 1967 piece from Harvard Crimson paints a pretty good picture, in addition to providing background on this chapter in Houston’s history.
Despite significant tensions, Jack and Larry’s families attempt to forge a bond in a time and place when it was considered against the rules for African Americans to be in a “white” neighbourhood even at the invitation of community members, and the Ku Klux Klan openly passed out flyers for their monthly meetings.
The story is told masterfully against many different backdrops that reflect the memory’s time and place: images of the Vietnam War constantly on TV, rodeos and ‘crabbing’ as weekend past-times. The writing displays an intimate recollection of the events of this time and place—subtleties that pop for modern readers, because so much seems to have changed. A little boy pretending that he’s a soldier in Vietnam; a mother politely arguing with a next-door neighbor about how the war is wrong; a Black man quietly observing that he hasn’t spoken to a white person for any length of time since he was in the Army. One of my favorite scenes is when the children of Jack and Larry’s families are getting to know each other. They spend a good minute just looking at each other. Then they take the time to feel each other’s skin and hair—to investigate difference innocently, without the obstruction of judgement or power dynamics. This is captured most beautifully by Mark’s younger sister, who is blind.
Nate Powell’s artwork equals the story in quality and care. I’ve been a fan on Nate’s work for so long that it’s sometimes impossible for me to appreciate the specific things he does to make a particular work stand out for what it is. The flow of panels here is so well mastered—using song lyrics of contemporary hits (like Sam Cooke’s “A Change Gonna Come”) to guide us from one scene to another. His artwork is never static—each page is presented with an amazing overall aesthetic. Backgrounds jump from open and white to closed in and dark; the realism of a car driving down a street will be spotted with emotive/expressionistic shapes from the headlights. When I look at his work, I feel like I could be in a dream, where reality unhinging is a slight and beautiful thing. (I also can’t but notice that the subtitle of the work is “The Civil Rights Struggle was Never Black and White”–and Nate, who often works only in B&W, has used a lot of grey tones here.)
There is no other comic book that really compares to this work—it is unique and educational as much as it is personal and moving. However it seems to be opening the doors for more work of a common history—Powell has done artwork for another comic documenting Civil Rights history,March (Book One) written by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin. I look forward to adding this work, alongside The Silence of Our Friends, to my bookshelf.
We’re nearing the end of Week Two over at Ball State University’s Gender Through Comics, (Twitter hashtag: #SuperMOOC), and we’ve been reading Superman Birthright by veteran comics writer, Mark Waid. I enjoyed listening to Instructor Christy Blanch’s interview with Mark last Thursday, which actually led me to pick up Birthright again–I’d put it down after 1 1/2 issues on Wednesday night, cause I just couldn’t get into it. But it definitely started to come together for me, and I’m glad that I’m now much more acquainted with one of the world’s oldest superheroes.
I’ve developed my own thesis by which to tackle Superman: he reflects our evolving notion of masculine idealism. A lot has changed in terms of how we perceive the “perfect” man or woman in the last 100 years. Superman keeps getting re-invented to reflect this. But what connects them? How is the Superman of the 1930s’ Action Comics still Superman just as much as Clark Kent in Superman Birthright? Maybe, to do this, we should look at what is noticeably different?
“Living things have a kind of glow around them. They’re surrounded by a halo of colours. …I’m not sure if that halo is a soul or an aura or what. I do know that at the end of the life cycle, it fades pretty quickly and what’s left is… hard to look at. Empty in a way that leaves me empty, too….But when it’s there, my God, how it shines.”
Kent’s Vegetarianism
This is an interesting update–one that Mark Waid touched on in the interview, explaining that this wasn’t intended to just be New Age mumbo-jumbo, and I agree. I think he is effectively exploring a higher understanding by way of Kent’s alien super-abilities. I believe this to be one of the many positive effects of sci-fi culture on modern pop culture, equivalent to Christianity’s influences of divine idealism on the Renaissance, if that makes any sense. That is, we as humans develop notions that don’t actually exist, but come into existence by us imagining them as notions of God or another higher being, like an alien. Thus we develop interpretations of inalienable rights, Utopias, …. and, well, places where we don’t have to kill other living things just to survive. That is an idealism entrenched in lots of Sci-Fi, and Waid has selected it as a “Superman” trait. I think this was an excellent decision, and emphasizes that an ideal masculine trait, now, is to be able to empathize and connect with life around you.
Kent begins his identity as Superman by travelling the world and searching out knowledge and adventure. This is compared to Pa Kent’s time in the Army in Issue #3 of Birthright, but it reminds me a lot of Che Guevera in the chapter of his life when he wrote his Motorcycle Diaries. It reflects a deliberate and positive step in the maturation process.
This ‘search for himself’ is coupled with the reality that Kent struggles with his identity and the gap that exists between himself and his [not-so-fellow] man. He describes that it never takes long for his relationships with other people being to break down, once his abilities become known. “Invariably, they freak,” he says. “They become retroactively paranoid, wondering what else Clark Kent is hiding from them.”
In my mind, this narrative runs parallel to the concept of privilege. In addition to being an alien with superhuman abilities, Clark Kent also happens to be an able-bodied white male, who was raised in the most powerful and militarily aggressive country on Earth: the United States. It shows him attempting to make friends with non-Americans in his travels, to no avail once they discover just how much more powerful [privileged?] he is than they are.
He struggles with balancing his desire to help people without isolating himself from them. He longs to be accepted as a human.
When Kent tries to advise a local African leader not to march because he foresees violence against him, the villagers are right to point out that he is a white outsider trying to dictate to them. It doesn’t mean Kent has bad intentions, and some readers may think that this objection makes the characters simple and petty, but there is real history and politics there that he is not, or has chosen not to be, aware of. If anything Waid downplays this in the story; in real life, I think a man like Kent would be facing serious trust issues well before he started lifting buildings.
On this note, I can’t help but point out that a summary of this plot line smells a bit of “white man’s burden”. Kent wants to help people who need help the most, so he goes to help a minority tribe in Africa. Some of the images depicting this are particularly noteworthy, like this one to the right, which could also be critiqued from a perspective of gender as well as race. What can I say? It’s hard to write realistic stories without touching real-life issues like politics, gender dynamics, race relations, histories of colonialism and imperialism, etc. Comics have traditionally been comfortable in their own universe[s], but that is slowly, slowly changing, and I think panels like this are an indication of both an attempt to be more real, while also clinging to old stereotypes. (I mean, really, how long has Abena known Kent? Two weeks? If I were her and this guy came out of no-where with mega perception and rock-hard abs, I’d think he was CIA–hands down.)
Waid uses a great term in the #SuperMOOC interview: comics are a “visual short-hand” form of storytelling. I acknowledge that it’s hard not to simplify human conditions and relationships. Duly noted, but I wouldn’t be doin’ my job if I didn’t point this stuff out.
A side-note: The epitomy of “cheeziness” is the absence of believability. Superhero stories are in a constant struggle to maintain believability. To do that, Superman is all about depicting things on the edge of what we can sense and understand: that means everything from the constant introduction of new concepts (logically), to the depiction of senses that we find difficult or impossible to detect, such as superhuman sight, hearing, and movement. The illustrations in Birthright are vital to this, and really carry the story.
Linked to the first image explaining why Kent is vegetarian, here he sees his friend’s “aura” fade away, and he knows that he is gone forever. This effect emphasizes the pain and loss Kent feels, and is in turn emotional for the reader.
Superman crying: this is part of the evolution of masculine idealism, as well as the creative struggle for believability. The idea that men are supposed to hide their emotions is thankfully falling out of date as a prejudice that is both detrimental to men and world around them. Furthermore, emotion is an essential element within the anatomy of epic narrative: battles where life and death hang in a balance must make emotional connections. Crying , at least for any writer worth their salt, is not a sign of weakness in a character, but an indicator that they understand and are intimately connected with that world. As well, we ideally expect to see story characters crying around the points in the story when we, the readers, feel like crying. This connects the protagonist not only to the world around them, but to their audience as well, and creates a better story experience.
Part of Superman’s modern-day struggle, invariably, becomes one of masculine idealism vs. realism: can a near-perfect man exist in an imperfect world? Since man can influence the world through his abilities and actions, and this man does, despite the world remaining imperfect—is he still a perfect man / an ideal? Is he still “Superman”?
Superman has traditionally had a strong father-son bond. This is a part of masculine idealism: ideal men come from ideal father-son relationships. This explains the place of prominence for Kah-el (Clark Kent’s birth father) in previous Superman narratives—as well as Pa Kent.
Pa Kent and Clark struggle to understand their connection, now that Clark wants to explore his extraterrestrial roots.
Superman is always an optimist. This distinguishes him from new superheroes, who are often expected to take on a “more realistic” perspective on the world, as well as old superheroes who have been reinvented within the modern “anti-hero” framework.
What to make of Lois Lane?
Superman is as much a reflection of the evolution of gender perceptions as just about any pop culture icon that outlasts a generation. But what do we make of Lois Lane? In the very first Superman comics, Lane was a very attractive, feisty and smart news reporter who is dedicated to her career and her independence, despite the occasional dramatic lapse of utter dependence on Superman and his supernatural abilities. In the most recent remakes of Superman, we see Lane as…. A very attractive, feisty and smart news reporter who is dedicated to her career and her independence, despite ALSO having the occasional dramatic lapse of utter dependence on Superman and his supernatural abilities. Despite some subtle changes, (and one really confusing case of Lois Lane turning Black for a day), the woman has remained much more glued to her original form.
If Superman has changed so much over 75 years, why not Lane? Was Lois Lane classic, at in her inception, already a progressive enough reflection of the female gender? Are comic creators’ notions of women and their ‘social evolution’ simply stagnant—it just doesn’t get any better? I’m unsure about this one, and want to give it some future thought. I actually think that it presents an interesting argument: gender perceptions of men have changed more than women in the history of comics. This is despite massive social, political, and economic changes in the status of women in that time.
I’m looking forward to reading others’ thoughts on this, as we continue with the #SuperMOOC class. Thanks for reading. More to come with Week 3.
Well, I’ve barely begun my search and look at this comic rendition of Margaret Thatcher. The artist is sophisticated, from my point of view: he/she artfully portrays Thatcher in a position of victory with her arms raised, as this narrator, whose ideas are at odds with conservatism, has his own arms lowered in his captive defeat.
Of all the topics that could be discussed endlessly with regard to socio-political relevance in comics, Gender is probably the first that comes to mind. Discussions are literally endless.
It is also the topic I’ve personally grappled with most as well, as, to me, there really aren’t a lot of clear, pointed answers. Writing a concise blog post about the subject is downright impossible. So when the opportunity came along to take the online “Gender Trough Comics” MOOC, presented by educator and comics afficionado Christy Blanch, I thought it was worth a try.
What’s a MOOC, you ask? It’s new to me too. It stands for Massive Open Online Course – generally offered for free, and completed without the reward of academic credit. It’s a great realm that’s just beginning to blossom for people who are interested in education for the sake of education.
Our first week is generally about getting acquainted: with the material, the social networking platforms, and with 7000 other “classmates” with whom we share discussion boards and hashtags. (By the way, if you’re interested in enrolling, there’s still time: just check out the Canvas.net page. Comixology offers a lot of discounted material for the course as well, so it’s not too hard on the bank account either.)
Our first set of reading material for the week is a collection of work by comics creator Terry Moore: Strangers in Paradise, Vols I and II; and Rachel Rising.
Needless to say, this is the beginning of the series, so characters are going to develop in complexity and change, but it is interesting to see where everyone’s starting point it. My thoughts on Strangers in Paradise, having just finished Volume 1, are as follows:
Moore is making a story that is composed of several gender stereotypes. You have Katchoo, the Man-Hating Lesbian: fearless, trouble-maker, liberated, smoker, cat-owner (all stereotypically associated with lesbians). You’ve got Francine, the Hetero Female: timid,lacking confidence/certainty, reactive (instead of pro-active), and seemingly unsure of what she wants in life. These are all stereotypes of a heterosexual/”man’s” woman, and it all boils down to the theory that women lack agency- this is something I’d love to explore more of later on.)
And we have Freddie. Familiar Freddie! The Hetero Male stereotype. My first thought was that he must be some hormone-raging college kid, maybe 19 or 20. Then he is revealed as a wealthy business man, probably late 20s, early 30s (owns a fancy car, etc.) He appears to be wealthy and successful, and yet he also seems bent on guilt-tripping Francine–implying some forthcoming insecurity/control issues.
I see two over-arching themes here that are the most impressive to me.
#1: Moore is transforming stereotypes into archetypes. That is, she is taking qualities that we normally perceive to be highly superficial about a person based on their gender or sexual orientation, and using them to compel the story forward. I’m finding this theory interesting, and am anxious to see if I still feel that this is true after reading the longer Volume 2….
#2: It’s clear that this comic is trying to convey that no one has a “normal” sex life. The next door neighbour in the story is a creepy Peeping Tom, Freddie accidentally brings home a prostitute to get over Francine, who is then removed from the scene by a 6ft, 250lb bull dyke*, who crashes through the apartment wall to reveal Freddie’s apartment neighbour celebrating his anniversary to his blow-up doll with a lil’ Champagne.
In future posts over the next month and a half, I’ll be adding my notes on various pieces of material from the syllabus. Feel free to send me your feedback, or ask me about the course.
-N
* – my apologies for using a potentially offensive term: however, “bull dyke” is the stereotype presented, and is differentiated from the stereotypes of “lesbian” or even “man-hating lesbian”.
While the place of this blog is very openly casual in its review and analysis, I see that slowly changing. As time goes by, I’m finding that the people who take interest in my writing and research are not looking at it for its entertainment value, but for its [potential] scholarship. The fact that there is not yet an established, comprehensive guide to citing the graphic arts (in all their variance of work) is testament to the fact that comic studies is still something of a Wild West, academically speaking.
Since taking on a research project earlier this year, I’ve struggled with the notion of comics citation. How would it work? There are so many different types of comics out there. Likewise, comics is so rarely a single-person effort. How to you properly cite for Writer, Editor, Illustrator (not to mention penciller, inker, colourist, etc.)
I came across a piece on Academia.edu that I wanted to share. Maybe not a read for everyone, but if you’re within the realm of comics research, it might interest you. (Heads up: Academia.edu is a social media platform for academics – just sign up like you would on Facebook, and you get access to millions of articles on every subject imaginable… yes, even Citation of comic books.)
Quite some time ago, I made a preview post about a comic book that I hadn’t yet gotten my hands on: A Residential School Graphic Novel, by Jason Eaglespeaker out of Calgary, AB. A few weeks ago, the book arrived and I feel that the review is now long overdue.
Title: UNeducation Volume 1: A Residential School Graphic Novel Author/Illustrator: Jason Eaglespeaker (with dozens of community names listed under “contributors”) Published: 2011 by Jason EagleSpeaker via “The Connection” in Calgary, AB – with support from Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Canada Council of the Arts
You can tell that Eaglespeaker isn’t messing around: he has a vision and he means business. This project has the righteous and unwavering purpose of educating native and non-native alike on the raw and real history of the residential school system and its effect on the first peoples of this land.
In addition to loving comic books, I am also a lover of zines, political literature, scrapbooks—in general, I am fascinated by ideas and how people choose to convey them.
Eaglespeaker’s Residential School Graphic Novel is a mix of all four of the mediums that I mention. There are original comic narratives here, mostly told in the Black Foot language. There are scores of newspaper clippings, compiling news coverage from around Canada of residential school abuses, even murders, that have never been solved. Overarching this are quotes and core ideas about the residential school system that the author has selected to point out some fundamental truths: quotes like Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs in 1920, who said:
“I want to get rid of the Indian problem. Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed.”
…and so, generations of children were torn away from their families. Their heads were shaved, their clothes were burned, their bodies were bruised until they stopped speaking their language. Generations of children never learned what it meant to be a parent, because they had none. Family units and knowledge of the importance of those roles within a community began to disintegrate.
The format reminds me a lot of a zine: different sections use different methods of conveying these ideas. The beginning has quotes and newspaper clippings; the next section is oriented to look like a newspaper, called ‘Residential School News’ (it looks like the cover of Weekly World News). In it, the author uses his natural talent with slogans and sound bites to talk about some of the many issues that can be addressed with regard to residential schools: the psychology of being born with this severe emotional and cultural baggage, the storm of emotion at knowing that this baggage is not his people’s fault—that it was imposed, through the school system, by law; likening the treatment of native children to the treatment of POW’s in war-time; searching for what remains of native culture; and finally, settlement. Resolution. Eaglespeaker points out that the last residential school closed in 1996. (That’s right 1-9-9-6, as in less than 20 years ago).
Towards the end of the book are several short comics. The first depicts a native mother having her child torn away from her. The text is in Blackfoot, which, as a non-speaker of the language, emphasizes the realness of the story. It also makes me feel like I don’t have control—I’m an outsider, a bit, I guess—as I’m reading it, and I can only imagine flipping that around and being in her position as she approaches the residential school, asking for her child, and everyone is talking in English. Or the next scene, where the children are in school, and a nun slams a little boy’s head on his desk for speaking in Blackfoot.
Monochrome colours in the residential school depict a drab existence, devoid of culture or anything from the children’s previous life (their clothes are thrown away, and their hair is chopped off.)
The following comic is about two children who attempt to escape from the residential school. They finally make it home to their family, but the strip ends with their parent explaining that they have to go back to the school (it was written into law at the time).
The final comic is of a reality that I don’t believe I’ve ever seen in a comic, ever. I will note that I ordered the “uncut” version of the book, and that there is a PG version available for schools and younger audiences.
It is (essentially) titled “Will the circle ever end?” and depicts a young native boy who is the victim of repeated sexual assault at the hands of a white man of his residential school. It is unclear exactly who this paedophile is, but he is depicted as some kind of priest or pastor. The panels themselves are crumpled, torn, burned in some sections, taped back together. It’s so terrible and intense. Finally it depicts the boy growing into a man, and he himself has now become a predator-within his family and community. He then is charged and sent to jail, where he again becomes a victim of the other inmates. The story ends with the man, now old and out of life, holding up a black and while photograph of himself as a child. Below the panel are the words, “…my life is unredeemed.”
The volume, as a whole, is a tour-de-force on the realities of this history. Residential Schools are a behemoth of an issue: so many ideas, concepts and debates stem from it—one of the reasons it’s such a crime to dismiss it, or downsize is as “a native thing”, ignoring the fact that it would not have even been a “native” issue if whites had not imposed it upon them for a century.
Eaglespeaker rightly sees it as a past, a history, from which stem many, many, many stories. In this book, you’re looking at the system from the past, the present, and the future looking back; you’re feeling the abuse as the native and reading the first-person quotes of government officials, seeing how they justified the atrocities. It is well-rounded and no-holds barred. I’m extremely grateful for its existence, and hope it reaches every school, every student, every corner in this country, and beyond. It’s about time this book has come into being.
For more on Eaglespeaker’s work, his full catalogue of published work can be found on The Connection.
Title: The Death of Elijah Lovejoy Author: Noah Van Sciver Published: 2011, 2D Cloud Micropublisher Got My Copy: At TCAF 2012, but you can order a copy through their website: www.2dcloud.com or by contacting the author at http://nvanscriver.wordpress.com
(Noah Van Scriver puts out some regular strips through his blog. I picked up this piece from the Toronto Comic Arts Festival last year.)
As I wind down from my trip visiting my Mom and Grandma in Lawrence KS, I felt it poignant to review a comic that takes us back to that notable time of Midwestern history when neighbours, friends and family alike were literally at each other’s throats over the question of slavery.
The Death of Elijah Lovejoy is about the untimely demise of one of the country’s many little-known abolitionists. Elijah Lovejoy was a church leader, writer, editor, publisher, and staunch abolitionist. The man had a life that was defined by two fundamental struggles in American history: the struggle against slavery and racism, and the freedom of the press. A monument of Elijah is dedicated to these fights in Alton Illinois, where the man took his final breaths. Earlier in his years, Elijah had caused great controversy when he protested the killing of escaped slave Francis L. McIntosh, who was chained to a tree and burned alive in Elijah’s town at the time of St. Louis, MS. His stance on the McIntosh murder, and his persistence in printing anti-slavery literature, would follow him to his grave.
I’m not too worried about sounding the spoiler alert with this review: the title gives away the cold reality that Elijah dies. The comic is a play-out of that final evening, when a mob of angry villagers has Elijah and his colleagues surrounded at the location of his printing press. (This was his 4th printing press—the previous three had been seized and destroyed by mobs.)
Van Sciver uses his simple, black-and-white illustrations to depict Lovejoy and his colleagues as they defense Elijah’s fourth (and final) printing press in Alton. The text, particularly the conversations, are hypothetical, but probably not far from what was said that night. The panels plainly show the unwavering sense of righteousness that was felt on both sides of the slavery issue, in which men would level buildings, hunt each other down, and burn people alive to make a point.
For more information on the comic, check out the links above. For more info on Elijah Lovejoy, the internet reveals that his story is not altogether forgotten. Here are a few links.
Our first set of reading material for the week is a collection of work by comics creator Terry Moore: Strangers in Paradise, Vols I and II; and Rachel Rising.
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