Double vision
From radical politics to sublime fantasy, new graphic novels encompass the real and the imaginary
J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography
By Rick Geary
Hill & Wang, 102 pp., $16.95
A People’s History of American Empire
By Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, and Paul Buhle
Metropolitan, 273 pp., $17 paperback, $30 hardcover
My Brain Hurts, Vol. 1
By Liz Baillie
Microcosm, 128 pp., $6
Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story
By Frederik Peeters; translated,from the French, by Anjali Singh
Houghton Mifflin, 190 pp., $18.95
Dead in Desemboque
Written by Roberto Arellano Illustrated by Will Schaff, Richard Schuler, and Alec Thibodeau
Soft Skull, 120 pp., $15.95
Three Shadows
By Cyril Pedrosa; translated, from the French, by Edward Gauvin
First Second, 267 pp., $15.95
Funeral of the Heart
By Leah Hayes
Fantagraphics, 120 pp., $14.95
Mouse Guard: Fall 1152
By David Petersen
Villard, 192 pp., $13.95
It seems fitting during election season to start a wrap-up of current graphic literature with books about politics: a biography of J. Edgar Hoover by Rick Geary and a history of American empire by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, and Paul Buhle. The political devolves into the personal in Liz Baillie's book "My Brain Hurts," turning even more complex in Frederik Peeters's "Blue Pills," a disquisition on love and AIDS. Then there's work grounded in fantasy: Roberto Arellano's weird border ballad "Dead in Desemboque"; Leah Hayes's Gothic, fabulous "Funeral of the Heart"; and David Petersen's "Mouse Guard," a delight evoking J.R.R. Tolkien - and Prince Valiant.
Geary's book is part of a piquant series on politics that also includes work on Malcolm X and Students for a Democratic Society. His hard-edged art is a study in pinstripe, alternating horizontal and vertical lines in a critical portrayal of Hoover, who politicized the FBI into a bastion of so-called right thinking. Geary's vigorous, black-and-white line drawings pack tabloid-style punch, and his narrative, presented in rectangular and circular dialogue boxes, gives his images dynamism and balance. This is a great way to grasp the history of a man whose likes (hopefully) will not be seen again.
The Zinn book swirls photography into a more ambitious, politically oriented mix. A rangy, user-friendly adaptation of "A People's History of the United States," which Zinn published in 1980, it focuses on America's misadventures, spanning the 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee and the responses to 9/11. An unapologetically radical work, this challenges the hero status of Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and ennobles such whistle-blowers as Daniel Ellsberg and the Berrigan brothers. Zinn is nearly 85, a professor emeritus at Boston University, and still teaching. God love him, "cartoonist" Mike Konopacki (that self-title is far too modest), and Brown University history lecturer Paul Buhle for making such difficult lessons so accessible.
Where the pages in the Zinn feel roomy, Liz Baillie's book about nomadic teenagers in New York is packed with hormonal surges. Baillie's pages, five to seven panels deep, are dense with dialogue and drama. "I guess high school is horrible and painful no matter where you are," heroine Kate tells Verona, her object of desire. "Yeah, there'll always be a jock to call you 'faggot,' " Verona responds. The world Baillie depicts so authoritatively in realistic dialogue and spiky imagery is alien to me, but I got caught up in it. The social-realist tradition of such 20th-century American authors as John Dos Passos and James T. Farrell finds new, "queer" vitality in Baillie's terse, punk-informed artistry.
"Blue Pills," translated from the French and originally published in 2001, is Frederik Peeters's memoir of his love for Cati and her son, Li'l Wolf, who are both HIV-positive. It's a liberating book in which Peeters learns what it means to love in the shadow of the AIDS rhinoceros - or is it woolly mammoth? Both animals loom in Peeters's dreams; in his raw, fluid drawings and warm dialogue, he suggests that love always finds a way and, with the counsel of a kindly doctor, chemistry will stave off time. If "Blue Pills" feels unfinished, it's at least partially because these relationships, and the issues they raise, are, too.
"Dead in Desemboque" is a brief "historieta," or Mexican comic book, about how death dogs Eddy as he follows an alluring woman across Sonora. Three illustrators collaborate with writer Roberto Arellano in this surreal tale. Will Schaff's ornate images evoke the Mexican days of the dead; Richard Schuler's more regular art evokes a rougher Robert Crumb; and Alec Thibodeau's calculatedly primitive, open style compliments the psychedelic landscape Arellano conjures in three tongues: English, Spanish, and forked.
"Three Shadows," translated from the French, is a kindly work about the lengths to which parents Louis and Lise go to protect their son, Joachim. What seems like night terrors to the parents is real and dangerous to the boy, thrusting the family into frightening situations. Pedrosa's effortless art betrays his background in animation and suggests "Three Shadows" would make a fine film. Words can be superfluous here; the pen-and-ink pictures, which often communicate with charcoal depth, tell the story.
Leah Hayes's "Funeral of the Heart," if not the weirdest book in this bunch, may be the gravest. It's five short stories pitting gravestone-styled text against stark, Gothic text; the closest antecedent is Edward Gorey, but Hayes's art isn't as precious. Her focus is outsiders: the hair-bound sisters of "The Hair," the protean werewolf of "Whoreson," big-armed Jeremy of "The Change." Hayes's unsettling art features strong perspective and seems to spring straight from the subconscious. It's so untrammeled one fears for her dreams, though not for her future.
"Mouse Guard," the one full-color book here, collects a six-issue comics series Petersen first published in 2006. Embellished with pin-ups of the mice and maps of their territory and key city, it presents a world as fully imagined as any from Tolkien. Paced by key guards Lieam, Kenzie, and Saxon, it's a captivating tale of danger and derring-do featuring tiny heroes overcoming giant hurdles. Petersen's palette seems totally natural, and his style, clearly influenced by Hal Foster's work on Prince Valiant, is appropriately elegant. The narrative he devises here is likely to attract kids - and sure to beguile adults. 