"Death's a Mug's Game": Reading Life and Death in Gaiman's Sandman

[This is a short excerpt from my longer article on Gaiman that will appear in Gale/Cengage's British Writers Series XXIII next year: what follows is a brief reading of two comics from the series, which I hope will inspire people who haven't read them to pick them up!] 

Critics often ask—with all seriousness—why comics writers would write a comic instead of a traditional story or novel. Typically they see comics as a juvenile form of literature, or at best a way station for writers trying to break into more serious work. Gaiman, however, has always embraced the possibilities of what Will Eisner termed “sequential art,” and never distanced himself from the comics community that spawned his greatest success. Partly this is because for him, comics were “virgin territory.” As he goes on to explain, “When I’m writing novels I’m painfully aware that I’m working in a medium that people have been writing absolutely jaw-droppingly brilliant things for, you know, three-four thousand years now...But with comics I felt like—I can do stuff nobody has ever done. I can do stuff nobody has ever thought of.” (Ogline, Wild River Review). One of the things he can do that “nobody has ever thought of” is the sheer range of associations possible in a literary comic book. While a story or novel can allude to this or that work, a comic book can literally have several stories/characters existing simultaneously in a single frame, even in distinct worlds/times/ universes. As Harlan Ellison, the famous science fiction writer, remarked about Sandman, “I remember finishing issues of Sandman and just sitting there trying to catch my breath, saying “What a ride this guy has taken me on. And I’d add, “how brilliantly clever.” I’m a fairly clever guy, and I knew that I was catching maybe a third of the cultural references in each issue that Neil would just casually drop in” (Bender xiii).  

Precusors to Comics: The Art of Franz Masereel

FRANZ MASEREEL

Considered the greatest twentieth-century master of the woodcut, and by many as the grandfather of the graphic novel, Franz Masereel (1889-1972) was born in Belgium and lived throughout Europe in the years before WWI.  Honing his craft as a graphic artist in various journals, Masereel perfected an expressionist style influenced by contemporaries such as Delaunay, Braque, and Marc.  Additionally, his literary influences can be seen in the numerous illustrations he did for authors such as Thomas Mann, Stephen Sweig, and Emile Zola.  Masereel emerged as a pacifist in WWI with strong Communist sympathies—ideals embodied in his most ambitious works, his so-called “novels” in woodcuts.  These works tell visual narratives about capitalism, man’s isolation in his modern metropolis, the decadence of the bourgeois, and the rising might of the proletariat.  His most famous works are A Passionate Journey (1919), an allegorical narrative of modern man’s existence, and The City, a “vision in woodcuts,” which documents the decline and eventual fall of a Berlin-like metropolis.  Though he sided with no one political movement, his works were warmly championed by Socialists and banned by the rising Nazi movement (forcing him to flee Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation).  However, his humanity and sheer artistic appeal make it impossible to read his works as propaganda.  The pioneering graphic novelist Will Eisner (The Spirit, A Contract With God) cited him as a seminal influence on his work, and one of the first true visionaries of the comic book form—though he never viewed his work in this medium.  His influence has been further cited by notable comic book critic, Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics), and undoubtedly influenced Marjane Satrapi’s woodcut-style drawings in Persepolis I & II.  

Rutu Modan's The Property (2013), translated by Jessica Cohen

“I know why you came to Warsaw, Regina.  You came to tell me that our son is dead.” 

This statement, made by an old man to a locked hotel door, is one of the most poignant moments from Rutu Modan’s stunning graphic novel, The Property.  I’ll tell you the significance of this statement later, but first I need to give you a sense of the tremendous scope and intimacy of this novel.  It concerns a grandmother and her granddaughter traveling to Warsaw, ostensibly to go on a “survivor’s tour”—not only to see the infamous concentration camps, but also to revisit old towns and neighborhoods which were once thriving Jewish centers.  Secretly, however, the grandmother (Regina) plans to visit a man from her past, a Polish lover with whom she had a son before fleeing to Palestine in the dawn of WWII.  This man, interestingly, now lives in the apartment once occupied by her parents, possibly under dubious circumstances.  Her granddaugher, Mica, knows nothing of all this, though assumes the purpose of the trip is partially to recover her property (a lawyer wrote the family a letter about it in the 90’s, but the grandmother refused to investigate—until now). 

If Superheroes Ruled the World: Millar's Superman: Red Son

I’ve always been a fan of Superman, the myth: that is, the mythical idea behind Superman—the alien who is the last of his kind, who grows up in the similarly ‘mythical’ setting of small-town America, and becomes a champion of the common man.  Unfortunately, once past this point there isn’t a lot you can really do with Superman: he’s potentially quite dull, since he lacks the psychological depth of a Batman (no dark secrets whispering beneath his cape).  Yet Mark Millar’s Superman: Red Son reminded me that a myth can do anything, especially a myth born from the frames of a comic book.  Comic books are unique in that you can have 400 issues of a comic and then go right back to the beginning.  Continuity is not really possible when a reader comes in at issue #45, only to leave around #98, and perhaps return at #225.  That’s why the superheroes that last are the ones with the best origins; you can continually go back to the well and imagine how the myth might blossom in new and exciting ways.  

As Joseph Campbell expressed in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, the hero’s journey is quite similar throughout time and culture—only the face/mask changes.  As readers, we love the story about how the mask is put on, or why the hero decides to embark on such a dangerous and epic quest.  Much of what happens later is tangential, or at least not part of the character’s true immortality.  This is certainly the case with Superman, whose early comics introduced many iconic characters—most notably, Lex Luthor—but didn’t contribute to the stories we tell and re-tell today.  After all, who remembers Superman’s early tussle with a nefarious villain named “The Light”?  Though I’m sure you can imagine who came out on top...

Superman: Red Son starts at the beginning—or in a way, ends with the beginning (but you’ll have to read the entire book to understand that statement).  However, a simple idea becomes a profound variation on the Superman legend: what if he had landed in the Soviet Union (which is a much larger country, after all) and grown up in a collective farm in the Ukraine?  Again, nothing substantial changes here: in both stories (old and new), he becomes emblematic of the heartland, where the ‘true’ nation exists.  And in both stories, he rises up to defend the common citizen and become a flag-waving emblem of democracy—or in this case, Communism.  Here the similarities end, though Millar is clever enough to sprinkle in all the familiar icons in surprising ways, making the comic a rich, complex narrative—and indeed, a novel.  Not all comics collected into a book format seem deserving of the title ‘graphic novel,’ but this one does; it’s a gripping story which is part science fiction and part pulp superhero.  Yet the overwhelming sense at the end is having read a very good story—and one you’ve never heard before. 

Without giving away too much of the plot, Superman becomes Stalin’s right hand man, and once the ‘great’ man dies, Superman is urged to take over.  At the same time, Luthor is plotting to beat Superman at his own game, making one villainous monstrosity after another—all sponsored by the US government—in order to defeat him and prove the superior intellect.  Once Superman accepts leadership of the Soviet Union, his reign becomes a true utopia—which in the science-fiction world always means dystopia (since “utopia” is Latin for “nowhere”).   Crime and poverty are eradicated, and all dissidents are carefully ‘reprogrammed’ to fall in line with Superman’s enlightened views for peace and prosperity.  True, it all works, but some people would rather die than be saved by a superhuman tyrant: enter Batman, a notorious terrorist who plots Superman’s downfall and soon cultivates a network of dissidents.   Superman’s only true ally is Wonder Woman, the superhuman ambassador of Themyscira, who secretly pines for Supe’s affections. 

The final showdowns with ‘evil’ (meaning Luthor and the USA) pits Superman against Batman, Green Lantern (or a whole squadron of Green Lanterns, whose power comes from a crashed alien spaceship in ‘Area 51’) and Braniac, who has his own plans for humanity’s future.  Within the usual comic book heroics, Millar takes a page from Moore’s Watchmen, blurring historical fact with fiction to ask the question, who should be allowed to save—or rule—the world?  Who acts in humanity’s best interests?  Could even Superman show us the way forward?  In a powerful scene, Lois Luthor is discussing her husband (now president’s) plans for ruling the world and destroying Superman.  As she notes, “Superman might be a nut with a messiah complex, but don’t you think we’re in danger of just replacing one demagogue with another?”  The response, from one of Luther’s functionaries, is simply, “Very possibly, darling, but at least Lex Luthor is a demagogue who speaks English” (113).  It’s  a chilling point in a narrative where both good and bad intentions seem to lead to the same result—only the language changes. 

The rest I’ll lead for you to read and explore for yourself.  While this is a Superman cut from the cloth of Miller’s Dark Knight or Moore’s Watchmen, it’s still a distinct and moving work—dark in its prediction of human morals, but optimistic in the possibility of the power of simple men and women (those without great powers) to make the right decisions.  I consider this one of the most satisfying graphic novels dealing with a mythical hero I’ve ever read, and I’ll go back to this time and time again.  Superman will always be reinvented, and many new Superman comics have followed in his wake; but after Superman: Red Son, none of them will be able to resist a glance over their shoulder to ask, “what can I possibly do after that?”  

My Intercession Course: Graphic Novels, or Comics as Literature

[the above image is from David Small's Stitches]

I'm spending the next few weeks (when everyone else is off for Winter break), teaching my annual Winter Intercession course over Graphic Novels with a group of very bright, enthusiastic students.  In the weeks to come, they'll be posting over novels they're presenting as part of a larger project to the class.  The blog has been going for 2 years now, and I hope will eventually be a kind of mini-encyclopedia of hundreds of graphic novels/comics.  This week, we've read Superman: Red Son, Maus I, and Stitches, with Fun Home to follow tomorrow and next week.  The students have already offered a series of insightful comments and ideas on each work, so check out the blog and find a new favorite comic:grassocomics.blogspot.com