I
In a note by George Steiner on a book by Alberto Manguel, I find a somewhat pejorative reference to comic book readers as a kind of non-reader. Steiner does not refer to a specific reader, but rather to those thousands of men and women “who simply decipher the headlines in the press or glance at comic books.”
The idea of comic books as a cheapening of the act of reading is, I would say, very old, but where does it come from? Perhaps from childhood, from our first steps as readers attracted by artifacts that combine text and images or drawings. Guy Davenport recalled that the first book he read was the comic strips of the adventures of Tarzan. This would take us into a realm where certain distinctions made by the book market would be necessary, and forgive my didacticism: comics for children and comics for adults.
One is tempted to think that many adult activities fall into the category of a return to childhood. I don’t deny that reading graphic novels and comic strips can have something of that. I wouldn’t venture to say how much children’s comics have grown and improved, but I would be happy to explore the richness of comics for adults, which, despite their careful craftsmanship, I often find very cheap in second-hand bookstores and online.
I don’t know if the current precariousness of the relationship between human beings and texts, that is, the supposed decline in reading, as well as the uncertainty that continues to surround the world of books, has benefited the consumption of graphic novels. Perhaps it has, and we should be a little happy about that. When I visit public libraries, I find long shelves, sometimes right at the entrance, dedicated to displaying their collections, but I usually buy them for a dollar among the rejects or for $5.99 in second-hand bookstores. The Spanish-language publishing world is even more neglected than the English-language one.
II
The first graphic novel that made me rethink my entire reading framework was Clyde Fans (2000), the monumental series by Canadian Seth (Gregory Gallant). Its complex story of the intertwined relationships of two brothers running a fan business that has fallen on hard times with the advent of air conditioning could not have found a better home than a book whose concept of image and color undoubtedly marked a turning point for Drawn & Quarterly, the exquisite Montreal-based publishing house. Seth is not one to lavish words; his visual imagery is much deeper than the rest, with grays, light shades of blue, open spaces, and a melancholic gaze.
The latest was Berlin (2018), by American Jason Lutes, a comprehensive overview of the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. The story centers on Marthe Müller, a young art student who travels from Cologne to attend art classes in Berlin. On the train, she meets writer and journalist Kurt Severing, with whom she begins a relationship, although she later becomes involved with a girl who is also an art student. The numerous contradictions of German society at the time are sketched out: the secret rearmament after the debacle of the First World War, the tension in the streets, the sectarianism of the left, the communist discourse, the rise of nationalist extremism, and anti-Semitism.
While I have criticized other graphic novels for providing too much information, here Lutes could have been less elliptical and let us know a little more about what is going on, as the narrative sometimes becomes confusing, especially the subplot involving the jazz musicians. The drawings are in black and white and the letters are microscopic. Almost every word ends in an apocope.
In between, there is the Canadian Guy Delisle, who is another breed of graphic novelist, more indebted to the Franco-Belgian tradition, as he confesses in Factory Summers (2021). His travel series (Jerusalem, Shenzhen, Burma, Pyongyang…), along with Hostage (2017), are his finest moments. His books are autobiographical or autofictional, with those boundaries that we will never be entirely clear about. Delisle’s gaze is always naive, as if he never had the resources to deal with a reality that will always surpass us, but it is more than that, because he is the outsider, sometimes distant and neutral, as seen in his relationship with his father and with the rather harsh environment of the factory.
I have seen some bad reviews of Delisle’s work in the sense that, in his books, and in this one specifically, “nothing happens,” that reproach so common today. It is a rather poor way of reading. There are readers who can only read downhill, riding a slalom of stories and unaware that certain authors are not interested in or unable to narrate what is foreign to them. The graphic novel shelves in major bookstores are full of material for these impatient readers, eager for superheroes and adventures, the opposite of any hint of the Proustian universe.
Factory Summers takes place in a paper mill in Quebec City, on the banks of the Saint Charles River, during Delisle’s early youth, when he was beginning to take an interest in graphics and drawing. It is a closed, masculine world where, amid advice on how to behave sexually when a woman is pregnant (anal sex is the first recommendation), they laugh when they find out that the boy who embodies the author is interested in art. If Seth seems like a god in a suit and bow tie because he is out of touch, what shines through in Delisle is his inability to deal with the present.
I don’t connect with a character if I don’t find some fragility in them. That’s Delisle. Verbally, I haven’t read anything better than Fun Home (Mariner Books, 2007) by Alison Bechdel, a coming-of-age story in every sense of the word.
More claustrophobic in its drawing, precise in its use of language, aggressive in its representation of both suicide and sexuality, and with literary references and quotations. Hers are tough, complex stories, uncompromising with both her time and the life she has been dealt. The world as a sequence that goes on forever amid lies, appearances, and secrets.
In terms of imagination and an ironic and corrosive view of our times, Tom Gauld reigns supreme with his series You’re all just jealous of my jetpack (2014), Baking with Kafka (2017), The Snooty Bookshop (2018), and Department of Mind-Blowing Theories (2020). Gauld has a daily presence on social media, contributes to magazines, and illustrates books. His work has an ironic, but above all very skeptical view of the world of books and its non-place in a future world. No one is better than Gauld at this specific type of comic. They are not graphic novels per se, but rather independent vignettes, each one more sharp, witty, and hilarious than the last. His level of playfulness and irony is so high that few can hold a candle to him.
III
The Cuban case
Two Cuban-themed graphic novels that caught my attention: Goodbye, my Havana (Redwood Press, 2019), by Anna Velfort, and Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey (Metropolitan Books, 2023), by Edel Rodríguez.
I don’t quite understand why graphic novels on Cuban themes feel the need to overwhelm the reader with so much text, so much unnecessary explanation. A graphic novel doesn’t have to be a history book; the facts don’t require meticulous clarification. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to let the reader use Google, Wikipedia, or their own intelligence if they feel like it.
The books I mention are set in two particular moments in post-1959 Cuba: Velfort takes place in the 1960s until his return to the United States in 1972, while Rodríguez recounts his childhood in the 1970s until his departure with his family via the Mariel boatlift in 1980.
In the case of Veltfort, it is likely that there is no other work in the limited selection of graphic novels on the subject of Cuba that is more detailed and comprehensive about the 1960s, sexual initiation, homosexuality, and the multiple tensions that existed at the intellectual level in Cuban society at the time. There is also mention, incidentally, of the division and tension between the different factions (Trotskyism, Maoism, Stalinism…) of the left at that time.
Veltfort wrote and conceived a book that spares us nothing, perhaps only the eroticism of bodily contact. This, which we see as normal today in Alison Bechdel’s novels, is strange. At the center of her testimony is a suffocating world, detached from any sense of freedom and the human impulse to inquire, question, and desire to be free to love.
The book is long and at times cumbersome, but enjoyable. The character of Veltfort watches in astonishment at this sad spectacle of an overly oppressive world under construction. She was brought there by her parents, communists from the United States, when she was very young, and it is there that she experiences her sexual and political awakening. I think I liked the novel precisely because of the character, because she is trapped in a turbulent context where she did not ask to be, because at the same time as she participates, in her own way, while growing up, she tries to break certain boundaries (the very expression of her sexuality, the Christmas tree in the faculty hall, the music she listens to, etc.) and because she does not stop to judge or lecture or feel equidistant. That character is one of the great strengths of this story.
Edel Rodríguez’s novel begins with the author’s childhood in Cuba and his departure via the Mariel boatlift in 1980, followed by his time in the United States, where his family settled in South Florida and Rodríguez developed an interest in art and architecture and traveled to New York to study at university. The passages about the Mariel exodus are not to be missed. The author does not get lost in superfluous details and narrates well the agony of those uncertain days, how the communist state appropriated the house, the car, and every piece of clothing and electrical equipment in the place, and then the arrival at Camp El Mosquito, where they spent the night under the trees waiting to leave for Miami.
The graphic concept, color design, and illustrations are flawless, perfectly reflecting the oppressive nature of the Castro regime and the emotional manipulation exercised by a despotic state, of which the final passage of the father’s confession (which I found unnecessary, I must say) is a good example. The novel ends on page 246. From there begins a miniseries about the activist Rodríguez, an anti-fascist warrior and hero of the grotesque in political “humor.” At that point, I, as a reader, was satisfied.
Image: Martha Ma. Montejo.
