Control by Andy Diggle

Published by Dynamite Entertainment on March 28, 2017

Control is a graphic novel with a modern noir feel. The artists are Angela Cruickshank and Andrea Mutti.

Control feels like the storyboards from an episode of a television cop show. It combines action with a mystery, develops typical police characters who squabble with each other, and touches on the kind of themes that are familiar to cop show fans, including a vast conspiracy to control wealth and power.

Kate Burnham of Metro PD stars in Control. Her partner dies in the early pages as he and Kate are investigating a murder, so of course she wants to find his killer. She soon encounters a senator and a sex scandal. Naturally enough, her bosses order her to leave the senator out of her investigation. Naturally enough, her bosses also order her not to talk to anyone in the media. And naturally enough, Kate ignores those orders and does what needs to be done, because that’s how cop shows work.

The senator has been pushing a privacy bill, and the reader will quickly understand that his political efforts have something to do with the murder mystery. So Control gives us political intrigue, media intrigue, bickering-police-detectives intrigue, and other conventions that will be easily recognizable to cop show audiences.

The story takes Kate into some bad neighborhoods where she meets good and bad people. As one would expect from a cop show, the bad ones try to kill her and the good ones reluctantly do the right thing. Eventually she stumbles onto a plot that’s just a little over-the-top, but that’s also something viewers expect from cop shows. Cop shows like to have cops investigating crimes and conspiracies of powerful people that rarely happen because it would be too politically risky to focus on the crimes and conspiracies of powerful people that happen all the time.

Of course, Control is a graphic novel, not a cop show. The art is pleasant but uninspired. The story is almost all told in words rather than art, which is a waste of the graphic novel format. Given the limited amount of text and dialog that can be squeezed into a graphic novel, art needs to pick up the slack, conveying nuance that a reader would get from the extra words in a novel or story or from the expressions/gestures/backgrounds in a teleplay or film script. The art doesn’t do enough in Control to supplement a story that never transcends the ordinary.

Control isn’t badly done, but it doesnt do enough that's fresh or new. Familiarity, in this case, breeds indifference.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Will Eisner's The Spirit: Who Killed The Spirit? by Matt Wagner and Dan Schkade

Published by Dynamite Entertainment on October 25, 2016

Will Eisner was the most accomplished graphic storyteller of his generation. He is best known for The Spirit, a series that ran from 1940 to 1952. His multi-page stories, published in Sunday newspapers, came to be known as “the Spirit section.”

Eisner’s innovative approach to the series set him apart from other cartoonists of the time. He wrote adult fiction with mature themes (subject to the constraints of his time and audience), putting a mask on his detective only to accommodate publishers who wanted a costumed hero. He gave his detective a rumpled look and used shadows to convey a gritty, noir sense of the city he served. His detailed backgrounds often showed derelicts, clotheslines, and the detritus of urban decay. His perspective was cinematic, constantly changing, showing the scene from a variety of angles and distances. He gave new shapes to the standard square panels that defined comic art. He even transformed The Spirit logo with each story, making it a part of the background (the letters spelled out in blowing bits of paper, appearing on a billboard, or squeezed together to form a towering building).

Eisner’s stories were deeply humanistic. He often used humor to expose greed and corruption. Clearly influenced by his experience of anti-Semitism, Eisner depicted the struggles of ordinary people, sometimes making them the story’s focus while relegating the Spirit to a background role.

Written by Matt Wagner and drawn by Dan Schkade (with covers contributed by several other artists), Who Killed the Spirit? is intended as a 75th anniversary celebration of Eisner’s series. If it isn’t quite Eisner in the depth of its storytelling, that’s to be expected. Nobody is Eisner. The volume is nevertheless a worthy tribute to Will Eisner’s iconic hero.

The Spirit is dead … or is he? Dolan thinks Denny Colt has been dead and buried for two years (really dead, this time) until he gets a return visit from the Spirit. Meanwhile, detectives Sammy Strunk and Ebony White (redrawn to avoid Eisner’s racial stereotyping) decide to find out why the Spirit has disappeared.

The Spirit himself explains why he disappeared, although it’s all kind of a mystery to him ... and mysteries, of course, need to be solved. He begins with an overheard name, Mikado Vaas. From his underworld interrogations, he learns that Vaas is something like Keyser Söze -- more myth than man. And then there’s the mysterious woman who occasionally appeared to gaze at him in his captivity.

Along the way, The Spirit encounters familiar enemies like the Octopus and woos Dolan’s shapely daughter as Dolan decides whether he really wants to retire, turning the police commissioner’s job over to a politically connected boob. The story is long, unlike traditional Spirit stories, but it has all the elements of a Will Eisner story. It is consistently entertaining.

In fact, from the standpoint of writing and particularly the art, this homage to The Spirit channels Eisner faithfully. It almost feels like a story Eisner could have done, and that’s high praise.

RECOMMENDED

Poorly Drawn Lines by Reza Farazmand

Published by Plume on October 6, 2015

Poorly Drawn Lines started as an internet comic strip. The book mixes new material with strips that were previously published on the web. Four panels per page is a typical strip, although they range from one panel jokes to strips that spread across two or three pages. Occasionally, a few lines of text appear on a page without art. The whole thing can be read pretty quickly, or you can keep it in the bathroom and read it a bit at a time.

The book is divided into chapters covering such topics as the natural world, the future, and big ideas. There are quite a few talking animals (birds and bears in particular) and an occasional monster. Many of the strips deal with the meaning of life, or death, or cheese. People (and animals) tend to be filled with existential angst, which might explain why most of them aren’t very nice, particularly the animals, who are usually giving humans (and other animals) the finger.

My favorite jokes include a chameleon that hides its emotions and a drawing of a rabbit with a bandaged foot wearing a rabbit’s foot around its neck, captioned “Fluffy has made his own luck.” Another favorite: a guy who says “use your hands in conversation to help project confidence” slaps the next person who talks to him. Maybe you need a dark sense to humor to appreciate the collection.

I didn’t have many LOL moments while reading through this collection, but I did smile regularly. Smiling is good. Any book that makes me smile is, in my judgment, a good book.

RECOMMENDED

The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks by Igort

First published in separate volumes in Italy in 2010 and 2011; published in translation in a combined volume by Simon & Schuster on April 26, 2016

The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks is a collection of brief stories about Russia and Ukraine. Some are the stories of individuals. Some are the stories of eras. One is the story of land. Another is the story of radioactive land. The volume combines two separate notebooks, one devoted to Ukraine, one to Russia, but the stories necessarily overlap.

Some of the stories told in The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks are almost like recordings of oral histories related by elderly survivors. An old woman talks about the Famine. An old man describes the hardships of his life during World War II and after Stalin. The stories combine to form a graphic modern history of two countries and their peoples told from deeply personal perspectives.

The notebook entries jump around in time and place. Some are repetitive. I suppose that’s the nature of a “notebook” format, so I don’t see the lack of organization or conciseness as a significant failing.

Both of the notebooks address the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 (one of the worst acts of genocide in modern history) and the earlier relocation/deportation of kulaks (property owners). Stalin regarded Ukrainian kulaks as class enemies, even if they only owned a couple of cows. Viewing self-sufficient farms as a threat to collectivist ideals, Stalin used the military to block the borders of Ukraine and to confiscate food, animals, and property. Millions people died of starvation or related disease during the forced famine. The exact number is both disputed and unknowable, and depends upon whether indirect deaths are counted (Igort adopts one of the highest estimates), but there is no dispute that the Ukrainian population suffered immensely as a result of Stalin’s policies.

Some stories of the famine are told by its survivors but other entries, less personal but all the more chilling because of their detachment, reproduce excerpts from official reports. The reports contain stark accounts of illness caused by eating rotting food and animal carcasses. Instances of cannibalism, the living eating the dead, are itemized by district.

A variety of perspectives capture life during the Second World War, during the reign of Khrushchev, and after the fall of communism. Interestingly, some of the people who tell their stories view life under Khrushchev as the high point of their national history, and view the fall of communism as a disaster. In the absence of a planned transition, prices skyrocketed, jobs were lost, and once productive fields were abandoned. Production was replaced by destitution. The fantasy that western nations have constructed around the fall of communism is far removed from the reality that Russians and Ukrainians have endured.

Igort describes the present Russia as a brutal “sham democracy.” He illustrates that belief with several entries that revolve around Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006 for (in Igort’s view) speaking the truth about Chechnya. Igort writes of journalists and activists who have been gunned down, of Chechens who have been tortured and who have turned to terrorism in support of their cause, of Russian military violence that might well be defined as state-sponsored terrorism.

The art accompanying the texts is bleak. It gives the impression of an artist’s sketchbook. The art is well-suited to illustrate the stories that Igort tells. The best images are leafless trees, footprints in vast stretches of snow, symbolic expressions of lost hope.

The Notebooks are ambitious, perhaps too ambitious. When Igort writes about the scope of Russian history and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky he strays from the personal stories that he does best. I appreciate the desire to provide context, but the book seems scattered when Igort tries to look at the bigger picture. Still, as a graphic reminder of the suffering of Russians, Ukrainians, and Chechens in an oppressive system, Igort succeeds admirably.

RECOMMENDED

Renée by Ludovic Debeurme

First published in France in 2011; published in translation Top Shelf Productions on February 23, 2016

Renée is a graphic novel with the feel of a sketchbook. The art is minimalist, as is the text. Backgrounds are nearly nonexistent. Some pages are blank. When words appear, they often make an arc across the page. Sometimes the words are intended as dialog, sometimes they are narrative monologue spoken by an unseen character, and sometimes the origin of the words is unclear. Frequently, wordless sequences of five or ten sketches end up with characters curling up into balls.

Renée is a sequel to the author’s Lucille. The characters who appear in Renée are trapped in depressive states, often with good reason. Arthur, who killed Lucille’s attempted rapist in the first novel, is in prison, sharing a cell with Eddie, who accidentally caused the death of a fisherman with whom he was fighting. The others are figuratively imprisoned by the lives they have made for themselves. Renée is seeing Pierre, a married man twice her age who can’t choose between the two women. Lucille is living in a claustrophobic relationship with her mother, a woman she loves and hates in equally stifling degrees.

After Eddie gains his freedom (and, thanks to Arthur’s decency, finds a place to live), Arthur gets a new cellmate who is suspected of being a child molester. The experience changes Arthur and (for reasons I won’t reveal here) eventually causes Lucille and Renée to meet and bond.

The story has surprising depth, given the minimalist nature of the storytelling. Some of the scenes are surrealistic, including a scene in which people crawl out of the cuts that Renée has made in her arms. In a dream sequence, Arthur grows wings and, as an insect, flies out of prison to nest comfortably in Lucille’s hair. Characters enlarge or shrink or parts of their bodies change or they morph into embodiments of ugliness. I’m sure there’s a fair amount of symbolism here that I’m not quite grasping, although I suspect the illustrations stray into the territory of fantasy to express how the characters are feeling at the moment.

Some of Ludovic Debeurme’s illustrations are grotesque but none should be particularly upsetting to readers who are not easily upset. The text, on the other hand, describes events that include rape and incest, topics that might be disturbing to sensitive readers. Those events are not gratuitous; they are necessary to understand the states of mind and stages of life that the characters experience.

The beginning of Renée is confusing. The story is not always told in linear time and recognizing characters can be a challenge, given how their appearances change. The story requires the reader’s effort but by the end, everything falls into place. The ending is left open, with two characters sailing away in search of more answers, or to start another chapter in their lives. Perhaps the intent is for another volume to continue the story, but the ending may simply be meant to remind readers that our own stories never end until we die -- there is always something new, something unexpected, perhaps even something pleasant, awaiting our discovery.

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