Review - The River by Alessandro Sanna

The River Review

                The River, though not set in any one particular place, is very locational, not least because Alessandro Sanna would never have done it had he not been inspired by his time spent living beside the River Po. A river is a wonderful metaphor for a great many things, of life and of change, hazards and help, of seasons, animals, traditions- all the good stuff. And to his credit, Sanna manages to capture all of this with a passion that visibly bleeds through his canvas.

                It is a master-class in watercolours- of the use of colour in general- and the themes he picks to follow through each season blend seamlessly with the tone; Autumn, dour and fearful, Spring dynamic and racing. It would be difficult to over-emphasize how well Sanna chose his tools for the job here, you will not find fog rendered in the lines of a pencil so cloying, or a dawn as strikingly portrayed in digital brushes- The River is water, and it's the perfect element to portray it. The seasons run together very naturally, with Winter ending with the promise of life amidst the cold and Summer beginning with a storm after the spring showers.

Oooo.

                Make no mistake, this is a story told by its images. Other than a brief paragraph at the beginning of each season to set up the seasons events it's all told through long strips, four panels a page, wall to wall (except when broken with well-timed exceptions).  Decompression is rife but deliberate, as without words to slow the action the images must do that for you in the their length and progression, giving it a sedate, ponderous gait during the colder months and a gathering roar in the latter. It gives you an opportunity to indulge in the details hidden within, rabbits lending movement to panels that threaten stillness, stabs of trees that shift into cages and break apart from breathless wind. These details- unlike the lustrous sky and river which constantly dominate the landscape- are often stark binary black and white, which adds surprising vitality to the piece not just in movement but in the fundamental themes you can feel clashing within it, of life running its course, whether in birth, joy or sadness. You can be moved, if you're in the mood.

Aaaaa.

                In a way it's annoying. It straddles the strange territory between a graphic novel and an exhibition; the panels are rough and unbordered, wanting to push out of their confines, and you feel there's more that you want to see- something full-sized, something you want to touch behind the glossy paper it's printed on. It'd take a big gallery to display though, so a graphic novel remains the only sensible medium for it...and yet I still find myself putting my face desperately close to every page to try and grasp it all. Obviously, the lack of words doesn't help this impression that you're missing out on a real spectacle.

                The afterword also adds to this pleasurable frustration. It follows on excellently from the parting scenes tonally and it's well placed from a critical perspective; normally if an author's going to talk about his work it's as a foreword, but by putting it at the end Sanna allows you to shape your own ideas about the piece before giving you a new lens to look through. It invites a re-read, a closer examination and a greater appreciation of the piece...you don't really need an excuse for that, but the fresh perspective makes it much more satisfying.

                Having said this though, the way the afterword written is telling in respect to what kind of person is typically drawn to appreciate a work like this: it's slightly too flighty for the layman. This is very much a work to be enjoyed most by artists, those appreciative of the craft of art, or of Sanna's particular art, or who otherwise aspire to be 'arty'. There isn't much here for those who aren't willing syringing their own meaning out of a work beyond some pretty pictures; the paragraph of 'this happens' at the start of each season is equals parts not enough and too much of a spoiler for what will happen next for those used to being told what to feel. As such, there's a distinct risk of boredom if one wants to do more than glance at it but less than think about it.

                It has lasted with me though, which is more than I can say for a lot of more traditional comics, possibly because I wonder if Alessandro Sanna had drawn this in Britain and not Northern Italy if he'd have ever finished it at all. Not that he'd give up because there's only so many ways he could make clouds and rain interesting (though that'd certainly be a struggle) but because of the place of rivers in modern British culture. Rivers are natural, but 'natural' is not useful past a certain point- a river doesn't go where we want it to go or do all the things we want it to do; if it did, we wouldn't have built canals and railways. Our heritage is industrial, towns and businesses are what we take pride in- not universally, obviously, but there was a reason the green and pleasant hills were replaced with steel towers in the olympic opening ceremony. Rivers by contrast are an agricultural heritage,  nature as a solution as much as a problem, with traditions that follow. It's an engine that drove a simpler time and something that Alessandro Sanna, through his passion and his paint, has managed to capture.

                The River deserves to be read, because it makes you nostalgic for something you've never had.

 Summary: A great artistic endeavour with love, care and attention paid to every panel. If you've ever not been bored at an art gallery, don't miss out on this.

Review - Stone Monkey by Jim Round

It's like Naruto, but worse.

...I'm not really sure I need to write any more than that for most of you, but for the benefit of those who would like to know 'why' (or for those of you who don't know what Naruto is) I suppose I'm going to have to.

Stone Monkey is an action-adventure saga drawn, written published by Jim Round. It takes heavy influence from japanese media and chinese folklore, not just from a story perspective but also in the way that the pages are structured and the characters express themselves. The problem is that it borrows too heavily from some aspects at the cost of the things an action-adventure story requires, and the overall quality of how the plot and character interactions are laid out is uncreative and painfully wooden.

The latter quality is most apparent in the writing. The job of a first volume is to start the hero off  on his journey, set up his initial challenges, introduce his companions, all of that stuff. It manages to do these things by using the narrative equivalent of shoving him out of the front door. He does something mysteriously powerful which makes mysterious people nod their heads and decide his actions for him, which he's upset about for a half-second before being given a carrot and sent on his adventuring way. He's not so much a protagonist as a plot mechanic. The world-building such as it is suffers from a very rookie story-telling problem, a good example of which would be where the main character tries to tap into his inner skill and unleashes his mysterious power, prompting his cousin to remark on how powerful his 'Dantian wave' is, a phrase asterisked with the following remark:

'Dantian wave: A wave of energy created from the dantian cinibar field.'

Oh! I see now! The Dantian Cinibar field! How foolish of me not to realize!

More seriously, the problem here is fourfold: Those who know what dantian are don't need this comment as they can guess the meaning from the context. For those who don't know what dantian are, this little comment does nothing to actually explain what just happened (Dantian are Chi focus points, if you're wondering). Thirdly, he was already talking about 'inner skill', so a fancier name for it at that point was entirely unnecessary...and along the same lines, the explanation itself was entirely unnecessary, other than to show off the author's knowledge of chinese spiritual philosophies.

It's not the only point where he does this either, with most attacks having multiple translations of the name in Mandarin, then phonetic mandarin, then english...and then others just happening without any fanfare at all. I feel as if I can see Jim Round now, rifling through his chinese-english dictionary, piecing together clever names for his attacks and giving up on the rest. It's not clever. It's obfuscating, pointless (Saying 'Kaimen' instead of 'Open') and feels entirely artificial in the way it's presented; a badly translated love-letter to the eastern media it's taken from. Particularly as the main character is called 'Buster', of all things!

Other manga actually bother to explain how these inner-energies and abilities relate to the rules of the world, building up a background for us to understand how it works and why certain things matter in relation to it. As it stands, the world and the plot of Stone Monkey seems woefully incomplete due to an over-reliance on foreshadowing without establishing why we should care about the events that are happening.

And it keeps happening. Very early on when the main character is talking with his friend about the politics of their realm in regards to him, this gets said:

Buster: But my uncle said your grandpa is on his side. What does that mean anyway?

Juno: Nevermind, look! We've arrived!

Or this gem, from one mysterious character to another after something valuable gets stolen:

Sage: Sorry, Ryo. I couldn't help you this time...You know what this means though...good luck...

The only reason it holds together at all is due to a story info-dump in the first couple of pages...which has that most hated of narrative devices in it: a prophecy. So we pretty much know how all this is going to end anyway. Great.

It's not just the plot that suffers from this paucity of innovation, the characters do too. Horribly so. Typically in a comic, if the plot is slow moving (like Gunnerkrigg Court for example) it's made up for by you caring about the characters and enjoying how they bounce off one another, their compelling dialogue and the interesting little touches of world-building that leak into such conversations. Stone Monkey doesn't have any of this. Buster, the main character, is a bad ninja who wants to get good, but that's absolutely all he is. Completely. That's all he's ever enthusiastic about...and as for a reason why? I couldn't tell you as he's too busy being an idiot, not knowing what to do in any situation and being easily placated just through the chance to get stronger. There's nothing likable or charming about him, which is a bit of a problem when this is the main character you're supposed to be rooting for.

True, it's a well-worn character building device to make an eager youngster willing to take on the world, but it'd be nice if he had a decent motivation for it...and maybe he does, but then that falls back onto the same problem as with the plot, namely that 'mystery' (which doesn't even exist thanks to that prophecy) is used as a draw in lieu of actual motivation. If they aren't two-dimensional like Buster, then they're just mysterious, like his Uncle. His friend Juno at least is neither, but then he's not really anything else; he's just 'Buster's skilled friend'. It's ticking the boxes alright, but only about half of them. There's nothing to root for and no-one appealing to attach to.

At this point I'd love to be able to salvage Stone Monkey by praising its art and its structure. I do actually like the Superflat style that Round uses in Stone Monkey, and it's all technically proficient...but on closer inspection it has glaring issues. The clothing is all traditional Japanese and Chinese garb, which wouldn't normally be a bad thing, but turns out to be a demerit when a story requires strong visual themes like this one does, marring truly expressive character visuals and making some people look very similar at first glance.

 More shocking is the loose, wasteful panelling Round employs in an attempt to generate some kind of atmosphere. I've talked a bit in previous reviews about how good use of wordless panels can help the flow of the story and this is an example where it hurts it. There's no appreciable context, emotion or reason for them, and some of the other panels are similarly wasted, feeling like either the dialogue for them is missing, or that the dialogue used in a previous panel  would be better used for the current one. Some pages are entirely unnecessary, or could be cut down to two panels of action rather than seven. A good editor would have helped out Stone Monkey a lot in this department, but I suppose that's the safety-net you go without when making Indie comics and self-publishing.

I needed that tak tak tak as much as I needed that squint.

Worst of all is how derivative this work is, of Naruto in particular. The same art-style, the same 'secret strength' main character also hated by the village, the same use of inner energies (chakra this time), the same group of two boy ninjas and one girl at the end, the existence of different ninja villages in general, the same kind of building designs, the same use of scrolls...and yet Stone Monkey manages to do worse with the same ideas. In the same span of pages in Naruto, you know the titular character's main goal in life, why he acts like he does (being a prankster as well as an energetic idiot), get a glimpse at all the other relevant protagonist characters in the story and some of their motivations, start to see some development and an explanation of how some of the world works, and had him off on a very clearly defined mission, reasons and all, whilst still managing to generate an appreciable amount of mystery to be revealed later. Plus- no prophecy.

It's an introductory arc much more accomplished in every aspect than you'll find here in Stone Monkey, which feels like it expects you to have read Naruto and other eastern things first already in order to enjoy it. A false expectation; as I have, and it doesn't make this any better. Originality, character and an editor would've though, and I sincerely hope Jim Round has found these before he rolls out Volume 2.

 Summary: It's like Naruto, but worse.

Review - Feynman by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick

Feynman is a biography. I'm not usually much a fan of biographies, but in this case it's a biography of the titular Mr. Richard Feynman- a very famous scientist who is sadly no longer with us, so I thought I'd give it a crack. There's only really two reasons why anyone reads a biography; the first is that you're already interested in the person it's about so want to know how they came to be the way they are, the second is you want to see if you too can extract some life-lessons from their experiences. So, the question is- are you and can you?

                Truth be told, Jim Ottaviani, the author of this bio, pens himself into an awkward position before even the first panel, saying in his dedication that

'If the laws of physics allowed, I'd go back to thank whoever it was that first showed me "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman!" Then I would read it again.'

Which brings up a very damning point- This is not the first Biography written about Feynman, and if he enjoyed it so much, why should we bother to read this one? What's more, the other biographies were autobiographies penned by Richard Feynman himself. So in what sense is Feynman needed?

                Well, for one, it condenses things. The narrative touches on a lot of events throughout his life but you get the distinct impression that Ottaviani has cherry-picked and rearranged details in order to provide a smoother, more interesting narrative- if a point in the future is relevant to something being discussed at the moment, he has no problems throwing linearity out of the window. At first this is a little jarring, but as soon as you start expecting it and disengage from convention, it does a much better job tying themes and moments together than would otherwise be feasible in a straight A-to-B story...and somehow works to reflect the meandering thoughts of the titular character as he strolls through life. The tone is consistently light-hearted and semi-detached, more interested in the little things in life and only occasionally stopping to clarify his opinions on larger philosophical points, offering maybe a glib comment to paste over the cracks until they can be more appropriately addressed later on.

They're talking about the Atomic Bomb, just so you know.

                Sometimes it makes the moments of grief seem spurious or like they didn't affect him much, how it just glides from them into other things. No tragedy defined him. But then how often does tragedy actually change someone? How often does tragedy strike? So I'm inclined to put this down as a strength of the piece rather than a weakness...there is a feeling, though, that not every scene that's included is strictly necessary, a little editing and shaving down of some of the asides would have gone a long way to making this a more coherent piece.

                Despite this, though the writing can get dense in places it's never overwhelming, (though it might be fair to say that some parts might be daunting if you've forgotten your high-school physics classes), and most importantly Ottaviani knows when to drop the text entirely for some panels in order to change the momentum to suit the mood. He knows what he wants on the page, and it's good to see from a writer.

                ...Which is just as well, as it's really the art that you're here for- the one thing that Feynman's own autobiographies didn't have and by far the most important thematic aspect of this book. Feynman himself was quite the fan of art and artistic expression- indeed, his most famous creation was a diagram- and Leland Myrick does an excellent job in using his own illustrations to explain and expand upon the text Ottaviani puts down to make even the more complex ideas accessible

Give it a minute.

-All while infusing the book with eccentric character; the spindly-yet-accurate linework bringing to mind sketching with a technical pen (an apt choice for a physicist) with the bold unshaded colouring providing clear contrast between the forms those lines are trying to depict. It's the kind of clear obviousness you'd see in a calculation, but with more vibrancy- a flattering portrayal of the kind of character Feynman was

                Which isn't to say it's entirely without its faults. The women tend to look very similar to each other, and the colour-coding as you slide through the timelines doesn't seem to have any meaning or cause behind it other than to note that you've passed into some other era, which can add to the jarring effect that the sudden timeline jumps create.

                So. To go back to our first points...are you interested in Richard Feynman and can you learn from his life? I'd say he's certainly niche...but comics are niche anyway, so I'm sure that if you've even bothered to read this far you will likely get something out of this biography- Feynman has some good lessons to give beyond just physics.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself. You are the easiest person to fool.

With everything done in a style that can get you to rethink things in your own life; a strange perspective that Feynman himself was famous for and which Ottaviani has managed to capture brilliantly.

I suppose the experience of reading this was very familiar to how I felt about the man when I first heard of him, back in college. Back when I was studying physics I saw a lot of Feynman diagrams. Useful as they were, I never thought it vital to know the life of the man who made them. Reading Feynman, that opinion hasn't changed...but to quote the man himself, though the book isn't vital, it *is* very 'in-ter-est-ing'.

Review - It Was the War of the Trenches by Jacques Tardi

Art Spiegelman has sabotaged this review. I’m looking over the outside of my lovely new purchase and, to my delight, there’s a little blurb on the back by him recommending this graphic novel; rare praise indeed from the man who wrote Maus.

However, it’s also irritatingly accurate praise. He doesn’t just stick to calling ‘astounding’ or anything so simple, he makes the kind of comments that you know anyone who gives a damn about comics can pick up on and understand…which as I say, sabotages the actual need for a review, as his is as good a one as any. However, for the benefit of you who haven’t seen the back-cover or wonder if what he said there was truthful, I decided to be redundant and do one anyway. So, cold and tired and feverish, I sat down in the perfect mood to read Jacques Tardi’s It Was the War of the Trenches.

To begin with, the first thing that struck me about this little slice of World War I was the narration of the piece. I was not expecting such a candid ‘Tell don’t show’ style of narration in a comic so highly lauded and I found it somewhat removed me from the passion of the story...at least, this is what I first thought. My mistake really, because it was that sense of detachment that the narrative was trying to foster; there is no use in getting attached to men who are going to die on the next page, or just the next panel- oftentimes without warning. The grim reality of the images usually has no time for fancy allegory or flair, the inked blacks, whites and greys feeling quite at home in a comic where everything would just be variations of brown anyway… The mood is captured within the first few panels, straight to the point, and can be summed up as so: ‘Shells fall, people die.’

                And there’s such a bitterness about that summation which just keeps on coming back, over and over again. Every story in this collection slaps you in the face with how everyone doesn’t want to be there but gets on with the job anyway, panels of people saying they don’t want to do something even as they’re doing it- a strange but totally understandable consequence of war because as Tardi writes; ‘…where war is concerned it always comes down to stupidity’.

So the machine grinds on and every misery you expect is put out there…but unlike in something like Maus, Tardi’s work almost laughs at the carnage. Cold, black humour suffuses the pages, executed simply through an acknowledgement over how impossible that horror is to quantify; throwing up propaganda slogans during hopeless charges, referencing French Revolution ideals of Libetere, Equalite and Fraternitie regarding mass conscription, and, in a late example, throwing hard numbers of misery at you (accompanied by a soldier clutching his head, screaming).

‘And the cost? Cannons, shells, etc.? 2,500 billion Francs! For that price, every inhabitant of Europe – not to mention the Russians – could’ve been given a small four-room house…But, y’know, numbers!...’

‘But, y’know, numbers!’ about sums it up; a mocking exclamation (as a lot of the exclamation marks are in here) that if it’s too big to grasp it’s silly to try. And it is. The only thing left to do is shrug, in that very French way.

That is, perhaps, an accurate summation of the reading experience as well. The first story you sense he’s just trying to get into the swing of things, the panel layout is a little more creative, some curiously shaped shell-like curves, establishing the mood of the piece and a curious mix of detached 3^rd and 1^st person, getting a little Heart of Darkness in people within the story telling it…then it takes a break into an actual short story…and then after that brief respite it’s as if you’re hammered from there to the end of the book. The pace is absolutely relentless- not like any other comic I’ve read- with three panels a page you just keep marching on, shells dropping all around, people dying every other page, with no distinction over when one story ends and another begins beyond your own common sense telling you if it has or not (and sometimes the date changing). Often in this text do soldiers not even know which way they are facing or whose trench they’re in, and so it feels when you’re reading it; the dates provided that tell you the ‘when’ quickly fade from memory, the imagery is obscured and muddy and what you can see is, usually, what you’ve seen before; dead bodies, barbed wire, and artillery shells going off. 

                At the end of it, I found myself taken through it at such a speed (all in one sitting) that I could barely remember specifics. The narratives, on reflection, were not as important as the mood they created. Same with the places. Same with the charges. Even the characters only stick because nearly always their names were capitalized, as if Jaques wanted you to see them out above the mire of corpses he was depicting…Bidet, Bouvreuil, Huet, Mazure….I may as well be listing ingredients for a sandwich for all they mean to me.

                However…a work is to be judged on if it succeeds in getting its point across, so don’t think I’m being down on It was the War of the Trenches simply because I was mildly depressed and still cold when finishing it. It didn’t have the surprise and the shock of other more sensational war comics, and in the end it was better served without them; the dour, humourless humour and bleak prospects that saturated the book did a much better job of conveying the scale of feeling than any amount of viewpoints or BBC Documentaries about the Somme ever did. As well it should considering the size of the film and bibliography noted at the end of the work, something which offers an explanation over how accurately and completely it managed to capture the mood, even if a lot of the events were fiction (it's never made clear what is fact or not).

                In the end, you’ve been bombarded so thoroughly by the three-panel shelling that like the soldiers within, you just can’t shrug it off apathetically anymore. It’s just miserable…but satisfyingly so, and because of this Jaques Tardi has done a wonderful job of extending a sliver of empathy and understanding toward a war that everyone overlooks and nearly everyone alive no longer remembers. I’m glad its taken so long to be translated if only for that kind of timing, because though you might not take much from It Was the War of the Trenches or be able to have long discussions about it, you won’t forget it either; and this matter isn’t one we should be forgetting about at all.