By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
June 24, 2021 — I’ve got four graphic novels to discuss, a meat-and-three for the intellectually hungry. Here’s our steak:
MONSTERS
By Barry Windsor-Smith, Fantagraphics, $39.99
There are a lot of monsters in this book, but that guy on the cover isn’t one of them. (Cover art by Barry Windsor-Smith, courtesy Fantagraphics)
Barry Windsor-Smith is a much beloved comics artist, an A-lister who wields a detailed, classics-influenced style rivaled only by P. Craig Russell in its lyrical beauty. But he can also apply that style in service to the brutal and gritty, as evidenced by his work on Conan the Barbarian and other books.
Windsor-Smith also turns his hand to writing occasionally, which hasn’t been as well received. Until now. With Monsters, BWS may have raised his writing to the level of his art — or maybe higher.
This whopper (380 pages) was literally 35 years in the making, starting life as an Incredible Hulk plot at Marvel Comics in the mid-1980s. And while some aspects of that era’s Emerald Behemoth lurk in the subtext, this is not remotely a superhero story.
It is, in fact, a unique and heart-rending tale that digs deep into family relationships, the trauma of war and the banality of evil. Monsters stretches across two generations, from Nazi Germany to Ohio, from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. Windsor-Smith moves his characters in and out organically with the sure-handedness of a Russian novelist, and the precision of a Swiss clock. The dramatis personae, like overheated molecules, dance around each other and bang into each other and occasionally form bonds. The dovetailing narratives offer both despair and hope for the human condition, ranging from the common, gut-wrenching cruelty of human monsters to the delicate moments of a tentative romance or the tender warmth of a mother’s love.
That poetic grace is mirrored in the artwork, of course. It comes as no surprise that Windsor-Smith achieves an artistic tour de force. He is an artist in full command of his medium, and it shows.
Which is only one aspect of this gripping, unforgettable epic. Come for the artwork, stay for the story.
Now for the vegetables. They’re good, and good for you!
THE MINAMATA STORY: AN ECO TRAGEDY
By Sean Michael Wilson (writer), Akiko Shimojima (Illustrator), Stone Bridge Press, $14.95
Methylmercury poisoning isn’t a pretty sight. (Cover art by Akiko Shimojima, courtesy Stone Bridge Press)
Here’s a sobering thought: Monsters was a fictional account of human cruelty. Minamata tops it, and it’s entirely true.
In the 1950s, in the coastal community of Minamata in Southern Japan, the Chisso corporation poured its effluent into an enclosed area of the Shiranui Sea. The industrial waste contained methylmercury, which is incredibly toxic — and whose effects are permanent. The locals began suffering neurological damage, even in utero. Eventually, Chisso was suspected. So they moved their waste disposal …
… to a nearby river mouth, in hopes it would disperse more quickly. Instead, the effects re-doubled in the ‘70s, with dead fish; convulsive dying birds; three meters of toxic sludge in the bay and sick and dying fishermen.
Wilson structures the story as the investigation by a college kid from Kumamoto City writing a paper on Minamata — a kid who, conveniently, has a grandmother who grew up in Minamata during the “Strange Disease” years. The grandmother takes him to Minamata, where he visits a day care center for victims, talks to locals and interviews a doctor who worked in Minamata in the 1970s. Through this kid’s eyes we get a pretty clear picture of the event, the government response and the after-effects.
The artwork is in a light manga style, and the principals are likable. And most characters are upbeat, looking for the bright side of life. That’s good, because the story left me enraged for them.
LITTLE VICTORIES
By Yvon Roy, Titan Comics, $19.99
Cartoonist Yvon Roy often turns to visual metaphors to describe the journey with his autistic son. (Art by Yvon Roy, courtesy Titan Comics)
You wouldn’t think an autobiographical account of raising an autistic kid would be funny. Heartwarming, maybe, or thoughtful, or dramatic, or even educational — and Little Victories is all those things, too.
But funny, absolutely.
Not that autism isn’t a serious matter. The pages that follow little Oliver’s diagnosis are painful to read. The word Roy uses for his emotional state is “anguish,” and it’s true, but still too small a word for Roy’s reaction. Fortunately, as a cartoonist (and a good one, from the cartoony side of the Franco-Belgian school, I’d say), Roy is adept at using images to show emotions. Like a world collapsing. Like huge castle walls separating him from his son. And, with three wordless panels, the dissolution of his marriage, due to Roy’s own behavior.
Yep, that’s hard. But then comes the turning point, where Roy comes to accept the situation. It comes with this unforgettable line: “I can finally say farewell to [the] son that never appeared, and welcome the one who decided to come live with me.”
After that, it’s pretty smooth sailing, as Roy throws himself into the new job he’s accepted, of being the best parent (and best friend) to Oliver he can be. As a cartoonist with no set schedule, he can spend tremendous amounts of time with Oliver. Using every trick from his prodigious imagination, he learns to communicate with the boy — and to help the boy communicate with the world. It’s a long journey, and sometimes exhausting.
But ultimately, it’s joyful.
A FIRE STORY
By Brian Fies, Abrams ComicArts, $19.99
Brian Fies’ A Fire Story begins with the heart-breaking line, “On Monday, my house disappeared.” (Cover art by Brian Fies, courtesy Abrams ComicArts)
I asked to review this one because, while I’m aware of the increasingly destructive California wildfires, I don’t really understand them. At the very least, I thought I wanted a sense of scale.
And, certainly, the book gave me that. The 2017 fire covered in this book killed 44 people, and destroyed 6,200 homes and 8,900 structures. “All in all, the firestorms claimed about 350 square miles. … It’s about 15 Manhattans. Seven-and-a-half San Franciscos. One-third of Rhode Island.”
But having read that, I realized that numbers weren’t what I really wanted. I wanted to know the human scale — not just how many people were de-homed, but how big the hole the fires left in their hearts, in their communities, in their state. And brother, Fies goes the extra mile on that score.
First, he gives a riveting account of he and his wife escaping, and then of starting a life from square one. You wouldn’t think negotiations with FEMA and learning how to sift burned slag and shopping for hammers would be page-turning stuff, but Fies makes it impossible to put the book down.
It probably helps that Fies is an engaging, insightful and downright funny writer. And the artwork, what I’d classify as of the Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”) school, certainly doesn’t hurt.
Further, he broadens the book beyond his own experience with vignettes of friends and neighbors. There’s that human scale I was looking for. He gives the floor to narrator after narrator, all of whom describe some variation of “We lost everything.” It’s heart-breaking. Overwhelming.
But in the end, many of these people — including Fies and his wife —decide to return and rebuild. Isn’t that what humans do?
Of course, the fires will return as well. The West Coast is in the worst drought in 1,200 years, we’re told. So, while the Fies story is ultimately uplifting, what’s more important is what we learn from it.
Because eventually we all may find ourselves shopping for hammers.
Find Captain Comics by email (capncomics@aol.com), on his website (captaincomics.ning.com), on Facebook (Andrew Alan Smith) or on Twitter (@CaptainComics).
Replies
Ah! I've been eagerly anticipating your review of Monsters. I am gratified that you liked it as much as I did.
Brian Fies’ A Fire Story begins with the heart-breaking line, “On Monday, my house disappeared.”
I think of my late wife's cousins as my cousins. One of her/my cousins, in Santa Rosa, California, (home to the late Charles M. Schulz) and her husband had flown away on vacation when the fire that destroyed a sizable portion of the city took their neighborhood. Their home, including their photographs, mementos and both of their cars, were totally destroyed. Because there were many, many insurance claims and a resulting scarcity of building materials. it took a very long time to begin rebuilding. They have finally been able to move into their home on the same lot as before. The fire has been acknowledged as caused by electrical wires in the nearby forest igniting the decades-worth of dry brush and dead trees. Not far from where I live in Glendora, California, a fire that started on the San Gabriel Valley side of the mountain range went all the way to the other side and threatened homes on the Antelope Valley side. My home is relatively safe, not being on the north end of my city.