I Reads You Review: 300 #1

300 #1
DARK HORSE COMICS – @DarkHorseComics

STORY/ART: Frank Miller
COLORS: Lynn Varley
EDITOR: Diana Shutz
32pp, Color, $2.95 U.S., $4.15 CAN (May 1998)

Chapter One: Honor

With the recent release of the new film, 300: Rise of an Empire, the sequel to the worldwide smash hit film, 300.  I decided to re-read the comic book upon which 300 is based.  That would be 300, a 1998 five-issue, full-color comic book written and illustrated by Frank Miller with painted colors by Lynn Varley.  300 was initially published as a monthly comic book, cover dated from May 1998 to September 1998.

Historically inspired, 300 is Frank Miller’s fictional retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae and the events leading up to it.  Miller tells the story from the perspective of Leonidas of Sparta, but a fictional version of this king.

300 #1 (Chapter One: “Honor”) opens in 480 B.C. in the middle of a march by a group of Spartans.  We learn that King Leonidas of Sparta gathered 300 of his best men and marched them towards what is likely a suicide mission.  King Xerxes leads a Persian invasion towards tiny Greece, and Leonidas may have provoked Xerxes.  Now, Leonidas and his 300 march towards the “Hot Gates.”

300 was controversial upon its release and seems to remain so.  It was criticized for being historically inaccurate (by Alan Moore, among others), racist, and homophobic, to name a few.  I found it chauvinistic and a bit xenophobic, and perhaps a little racist.  However, I think the 2007 film adaptation is shamefully and gleefully racist, and it makes a sham of history simply to be racist.  I have decided to reread the comic book series, but to put some space between reading each issue – perhaps a month or two.  The reason is that I want to see how I feel about and what I think of each issue individually.

If anything, I think 300 is more about personal expression of ideas and of art than it is a political, ideological, and social statement, although I think that the series does all three to one extent or another.  Miller has apparently said that the 1962 film The 300 Spartans inspired 300, which he saw as a young boy.  I cannot help but wonder to what extent did it affect and shape his ideas and also his relationship to the world as a cartoonist, artist, and a creator in a medium that the wider American public views as children’s entertainment.  That was true even more so when Miller became a professional comic book artist in the late 1970s.

I think back to the early to mid-1980s.  Frank and few daring (or at least they think they’re daring) creators take a low brow, outsider art form viewed as pabulum for children.  They bring in ideas from other low brow or outsider genres (crime fiction) and creators (Mickey Spillane).  They introduce concepts from movies, television, and comics produced outside of America (samurai films, manga).  They take on the style and storytelling structure and arrangements of classic comic book creators (Will Eisner, Steve Ditko).  Suddenly, Frank Miller is producing the kind of comic books that have not been seen in the states, and his new comics are more explicitly violent, with stylish and striking graphics and visuals.

Suddenly, the big bad system, the media, and those concerned people, parents, citizens, etc. are against complaining about Miller’s work.  So I wonder if 300 is also about Frank Miller the artist and free speech advocate (absolutist?) versus all the people that want popular culture and, in Miller’s case, comics to stay the same.  Hmmm?

Anyway, 300 had some of the most beautiful art seen in comic books at the time of its initial release, and that art remains impressive 16 years later.  Until I read it at Wikipedia, I did not realize that every page of 300 is composed as a two-page spread.  Frank Miller’s graphic style in 300 is similar to what he used in his 1990s series of comic book miniseries, Sin City.  However, this two-page spread format really shows off Lynn Varley’s lush and sumptuous colors.  I don’t know how she did muted and opulent at the same time, but she does.  Honestly, Varley’s colors are what really bring this story to life with a sense of passion, turning Miller’s personal/ideological/historical screed into a story that resonates.

A-

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

I Reads You Review: KINGS IN DISGUISE #2

KINGS IN DISGUISE #2 (OF 6)
KITCHEN SINK PRESS, INC.

WRITER: James Vance – @authorjvance
ARTIST: Dan Burr
INKS ASST.: Debbie Freiberg
COVER: Harvey Kurtzman and Peter Poplaski
32pp, B&W, $2.00 U.S., $2.60 CAN (May 1988)

Kings in Disguise was a six-issue comic book miniseries, published in 1988 by Kitchen Sink Press. Created by writer Jim Vance and artist Dan Burr, Kings in Disguise was a highly acclaimed comic book, drawing praise from such comic book luminaries as Alan Moore, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman and Art Spiegelman.

Kings in Disguise is set during the Great Depression. The story follows 13-year-old Manfred “Freddie” Bloch, a Jewish boy from the fictional town of Marian, California. His father becomes a victim of the Depression when he loses his job, and he subsequently abandons his sons. Freddie’s brother, Al, runs afoul of the law, leaving the boy alone.

Freddie takes to the rails – traveling the country by train as a hobo – where he meets Sammy. Calling himself “the King of Spain,” Sammy is a sickly, older hobo who takes Freddie under his wing. Together, they travel through a scarred America, searching for Freddie's father.

Kings in Disguise #2 opens after a stranger saves Freddie from the crazed hobo, Joker. Who is Freddie’s savior? Why, it is none other than Sammy, the King of Spain. Freddie discovers, however, that King Sammy is unstable. Though he is affable, Sammy could be friend, foe, or even annoyance.

Kings in Disguise has an attention to detail that results when a writer and artist are two separate individuals who can come together to become essentially one creative voice, sharing a singular vision. As a writer, James Vance is both human and humane. As an artist, Dan Burr has an old-fashioned sensibility that uses the bells and whistles of black and white magazine illustration to create texture and veracity. Ink turns the interplay of black and white space into graphics and images that are solid, so this world Burr draws has verisimilitude. Solidity births that which seems like something genuine to the reader, encouragement to buy into the world of Kings in Disguise.

Kings in Disguise is a great American story of true grit. It is easy to see why Kings in Disguise is considered one of the greatest graphic novels of all time.

A+

NOTES:
Harvey Awards
Best New Series
1989 Kings in Disguise, by James Vance and Dan Burr (Kitchen Sink Press)

Eisner Awards:
Best Single Issue/Single Story
1989 Kings in Disguise #1, by James Vance and Dan Burr (Kitchen Sink)

Best New Series
1989 Kings In Disguise, by James Vance and Dan Burr (Kitchen Sink)

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

Review: SWALLOW ME WHOLE (OGN)

SWALLOW ME WHOLE
TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS

CARTOONIST: Nate Powell
ISBN: 978-1-60309-033-9; hardcover
216pp, B&W, $19.95 U.S.

Rating: Mature readers (16+)

Swallow Me Whole is a 2008 graphic novel from cartoonist Nate Powell. Previous work by the musician and graphic novelist include Please Release (Top Shelf Productions, 2007) and Sounds of Your Name (Microcosm Publishing, 2006). Swallow Me Whole is the story of step-siblings and their struggles with mental illness. The book received the 2009 Eisner Award in the category of “Best Original Graphic Novel.”

I received a black and white, photocopied galley of Swallow Me Whole from Top Shelf. I struggled to finish the book. My struggles had nothing to do with Swallow Me Whole being a bore. Powell offers dense visual narratives that can be not only complex, but also difficult to decipher.

Along with a handful of young and gradually rising cartoonists like Jordan Crane and Carla Speed-McNeil (who has actually toiled in near obscurity for years), Nate Powell takes an approach to the graphic novel that recalls Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez, Chester Brown, and Daniel Clowes, in which the reader must not only read the text in the word balloons, but must also absorb and interpret the actual comic book art. The art isn’t just drawings; it’s both a narrative and a carrier of ideas, philosophies, commentaries, etc. Through the art the reader is also expected to feel what the characters are feeling, which can be troubling when one is trying to feel a troubled characters.

Powell’s work reminds me of Charles Burns (Black Hole) comix in that everything drawn onto the page, including the lettering, is part of this communication of story and ideas. Because of this, I would say that Swallow Me Whole reminds me of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, in which everything placed on the pages (and covers): drawings, colors, and lettering transmitted stories, ideas, and messages, as well as it evoked sensations and feelings in the reader. Watchmen was meant to fire up the old noodle and get the reader thinking and engaged.

Swallow Me Whole is a sensory reading experience, although I wouldn’t necessarily call it the Watchmen of alternative comics, but could it be… Swallow Me Whole focuses on step-siblings Ruth and Perry – primarily Ruth. They are children of a blended family living in Wormwood, Arkansas, and their high school years are a journey into the dark corners of adolescence. Powell, however, isn’t dealing with such formulaic teenage melodrama as rebellion, sexual awakening, conformity, gangs, or the prom.

Swallow Me Whole is less about the external matters of being an adolescent and more about the madness of boredom and the discombobulating of the interior life. Ruth suffers from apophenia, a mental condition in which she sees patterns and connections in random, meaningless, and unrelated data, data which, to her, obviously doesn’t seem unconnected. Perry also hallucinates, seeing and hearing a small wizard connected to his drawing pencil, a wizard that demands Perry prepare for an important quest. While Perry struggles to extricate himself from the wizard, Ruth isn’t so sure that she should medicate her condition just to fit in with everyone.

Powell composes his art with a quirky line (that recalls Bill Loeb in Journey) and inks in fluid, smooth brushstrokes that seem to pour like batter from a large clay jar. Beyond surface appearances, Powell saturates the art in blacks and shadows that trickle, flow, drench, flood, and finally submerge the drawings. He dots the art with a steady spell of word balloons that combines to tell this story. As I said before, everything on the pages communicates.

There is a two-page sequence featuring Ruth sitting in the passenger seat of a car in which Powell alters the way he composes and inks this page and the manner in which he creates a varying degree of difficulty in reading the word balloons. Powell arranges this sequence in such a way to characterize and shape Ruth for the reader – to suggest her shifting mental state within the space of this one sequence. Powell not only wants the reader to know that Ruth and Perry have mental issues; he’s also determined to take the reader share them. He wants us to feel like them, to think like them, and ultimately to experience a sense of Ruth’s unraveling and Perry’s struggles.

Swallow Me Whole is not escapism because Powell is offering more than a story. He wants the reader to live through Ruth and Perry, and though Swallow Me Whole may come across as too complex and the story so elusive, he is not content with merely acting for you. Swallow Me Whole is about feeling the textures and sensations of the mental struggle. It’s amazing that someone can do this with drawings on a page.

Websites of note:
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/
http://www.harlanrecords.org/
http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/