Hardly black and white

Embracing complexity, new graphic novels offer fresh takes on history, fantasy, and fiction

July 26, 2009|Carlo Wolff

David Mazzucchelli’s stunning opus is of the magnum, embracing kind, and in that sense serves as an appropriate lead-in to a sweeping roundup of Grafix Americana, including the diverse anthology “Syncopated,’’ the despairing, nurturing “A.D.,’’ and “Cla$$war,’’ a striking variation on the superhero genre.

Mazzucchelli’s wildly imaginative work spotlights Asterios Polyp, a “paper architect’’ who teaches in upstate New York but keeps an apartment in Manhattan. When that burns down, he’s adrift, winding up in a small Midwestern town to put his life back together. There are pages of standalone art, ones of art with text, and ones replete with characters such as the narcissistic Asterios, his retiring, talented wife Hana, and the “goddess’’ Ursula Major. Heady with philosophical and mythological references, “Asterios Polyp’’ vaults Mazzucchelli into the top rank of graphic artists. It’s a sweeping, provocative book that blends the richness of the traditional novel with the best modern art. Mazzucchelli’s style - effortless and so versatile that you can’t imagine “Asterios’’ in any other medium - is sweeping in every sense.

Like “The Beats,’’ a graphic history by Harvey Pekar, Paul Buhle, and others, “Syncopated’’ features numerous artists, on topics including the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 (Nate Powell’s somber “Like Hell I Will’’), the development of a landmark psychological work (Paul Karasik’s kindly but cutting “Erik Erikson’’), the displacement of Native Americans (Dave Kiersh’s guileless, guilt-inducing “Welcome Home, Brave’’), and a history of the Dvorak keyboard (Alec Longstreth’s “Dvorak,’’ told in friendly pictures and stern text). The hammer is Greg Cook’s “What We So Quietly Saw,’’ a stark account of torture at Guantanamo in which the word “redacted’’ has the power of a scream.

“Cla$$war’’ collects and amplifies six issues of a comic-book series fitfully published between 2002 and 2004. It’s a kinetic, satirical twist on the notion of the superhero team, told from a skeptical, British point of view. The “hero’’ of team Enola Gay is American, a truth tribune who burns the word “liar’’ into the forehead of the mealy-mouthed president whom he reports to but ultimately refuses to serve. It’s trenchant commentary on American foreign policy in the Age of W., told dynamically and in hot color.