THOUGHT BALLOONISTS

Highlights of 2008: Burma Chronicles

Whew. After a long and, to me, painful drought,I'd like to help kick Thought Balloonists back to life with the first of a series of posts reviewing some of the highlights of our comics-reading over the course of 2008.

First off, though, deepest thanks to my partner in crime, Craig, for carrying the torch with a series of splendid posts between mid-August and late October, during which I was pretty much in a cocoon. Craig's concept of "A Week of Wonderful Comics" is something I hope to revisit and try my hand at, and, again, I thank him for keeping up the energy and the output when we sorely needed it.

The rules for our "Highlights of 2008" series are simple:

• We'll be talking about comics actually published (or translated and republished) in English during calendar year 2008.


• We'll make no pretensions to a comprehensive "best of" list. Speaking for myself, there remains a lot of promising comics from 2008 that I have not had a chance to read, including titles I've been looking forward to for a long time. Scheduling issues this season have been murder, so I've got a wealth of comics reading to catch up on. With that in mind, we won't presume to identify the "best of" the year.


• We'll confine ourselves to comics that we have not already written about here at Thought Balloonists. So, no Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front, no Little Vampire, no Look Out!! Monsters, even though these were among the highlights of the past year for me. Just new stuff -- new to us, that is.

With that in mind, I'd like to present my first contribution to our series, regarding a recent favorite of mine:

Burma Chronicles

by Guy Delisle. Drawn and Quarterly, publisher. $19.95.

 

 

Guy Delisle is a comedian. He's also a sharp observer and, implicitly, a political journalist. With his unglamorous, decidedly unheroic autobiographical persona as a conduit, Delisle has a way of sidling up, in offhand, nonchalant, but insinuating fashion, to issues of heartbreaking gravity.

The recently published Burma Chronicles continues this strategy, once again using Delisle's persona, that of a self-absorbed and obtuse tourist, to wring bitter humor from the telling routines of everyday life in a despotic state, in this case Burma (rechristened Myanmar by its ruling junta). The strategy has its risks -- we are likely to get impatient at times with Delisle's self-involved manner and seeming insensitivity to Burmese circumstances -- but through it he is able to lure us into a deeper portrait of the country, by short-circuiting the wariness with which we might read a more sober, obviously journalistic account. At the same time, Burma Chronicles does something Delisle's previous books in this vein (Shenzen, Pyongyang) have not done, which is ground his account in domestic comedy by way of bringing in his family, including his wife Nadège and his infant son Louis, to enrich the story. The result is an accessible, disarming book that starts with the most basic of domestic riffs -- watching TV, taking care of the kid, napping with the kid, suffering the usual indignities of traveling with a kid and his abundant baggage -- and then opens out into a surreal account of what is clearly a complex and cruelly oppressed culture.

Loose, ambling, and generous, Burma Chronicles surprises with its sly, circling treatment of its subject. It's funny and revealing, playing up the disconnect between Delisle's at times narrow personal focus and the larger cultural milieu of Burma/Myanmar. After what seems like a blinkered, unthinking opening -- supermarket shopping, house-hunting, strolling with the baby -- the book brings that milieu gradually, poignantly, to light. Delisle's method is telegraphed by the quiet surrealism of the situation on the book's cover:

As in Delisle's Pyongyang, an incremental piling-up of events serves to conjure the absurd and paranoid vibe of living in a police state. It's a slow-motion avalanche of disclosures: the operation of censors and the monitoring of communications; the suppression of dissidents; the pressure placed on Burmese artists to avoid any taint of political critique, a demand that makes Delisle himself a danger to his fellows; the sudden, arbitrary and bizarre moves of the military regime, for example abruptly relocating the country's capital from Rangoon to Naypyidaw; the terrifying conditions in Kachin State, where miners are paid in shots of heroin and addiction is pandemic. Against these wretched particulars, Delisle pits the unflagging character of the Burmese themselves, whose gift for survival and improvisation is figured at book's end by the sight of a ferris wheel literally powered by hand (click the thumbnail to get a bigger, better view):

At the same time, Burma Chronicles contains masterful cartooning, looser and more minimal than Delisle's prior efforts in this vein but targeted for maximum effect. Wordless sequences, as above, enliven the story at intervals. Scenic particulars are vivid, and the occasional very detailed drawing of a building, vehicle, or tool lends a dose of verisimilitude to Delisle's cartoon world. Body language is minutely observed, despite the spareness of the drawings. The art is at times self-reflexive, playfully pointing to its own making: variations in line convey the effects of an injured hand, or of Burma's monsoon season weather (you're really going to need to click the thumbnail this time):

Here is a favorite page of mine, from the chapter recounting the Burmese celebration of the Water Festival, a ritual observance of the Buddhist new year. Guy tries to avoid being festively doused by the locals, but you can see the results for yourself (click it!):

Burma Chronicles consistently combines this kind of charm with an astuteness of observation and an implicit seriousness of purpose that together add up to an admirable and captivating book. Handily  translated by Helge Dascher and beautifully designed and presented, this is a first-class project, for me one of the year's true highlights.

[A complimentary review copy of this book was provided by Drawn and Quarterly.]

Little Vampire, Vol. 1 (Craig replies)

I don’t have much to add to Charles’ comprehensive review of Little Vampire, Vol. 1, since I also found the book charming and unexpectedly moving in a few places, particularly the dialogue about WWII between Michael and his grandfather that Charles mentions. Specifically, the two words from Charles’ post that stick in my mind—that capture Little Vampire perfectly for me—occur in the first sentence: “improvisatory” and “yarn-spinning.” After reading Little Vampire, and books like Sardine, Klezmer and The Rabbi’s Cat, I’ve developed this mental picture of Sfar as a motor-mouthed improviser, a compulsive yard-spinner who stuffs his tales with freewheeling digressions and, most amusingly, a wonderful sense of detail.

Let me tell you about one of those details, a very small thing that still manages to coalesce into one of my favorite moments in all three Little Vampire books:

Little Vampire, Vol. 1

by Joann Sfar. First Second, publisher. $13.95

Such abundant pleasures: of drawing, of yarn-spinning, of improvisatory risk-taking, graphic exploration and sheer exuberant gutsiness. Such joy. In brief, that's how I see Little Vampire, Vol. 1, newly published by First Second, which collects translations of three Petit Vampire tales by that most prolific and wayward of French dessinateurs, Joann Sfar.

Some readers may be put off by assumptions about the simplicity or naivete of what are said to be "children's comics" (from my POV, an important genre newly re-emergent in the US but thus far characterized more by hopefulness than by achievement). Don't be misled. Little Vampire is terrific comics, period. It goes far beyond what the broad outline of its premise led me to expect.

Said premise has become rather too familiar, the sort of mashup of Gothic horror and children's fantasy seen in, for instance, Scary Godmother, Lenore, and even some works bearing the same title as "Little Vampire," most obviously Angela Sommer-Bodenburg's long-lived book series Der kleine Vampir (1979- ) and its adaptations, among them a feature film (2000). In the wake of Tim Burton such stuff has become even harder to miss, and, in general, I find this vein of Baby Gothic bloodless (sorry!) and tiresome. Too many projects of this nature strive for either a softly padded, too-comfortably settled, too-obviously reassuring pabulum or, on the other hand, a twee irony, a diluted, Edward Gorey-esque faux-macabre distancing from anything emotionally engaging. Either way it's denatured Gothic, predigested and fizz-less. Admittedly, Sfar's Little Vampire would seem to be in the same groove, concept-wise: it's about a little vampire, called Little Vampire, his cohort of undead and monstrous friends, the haunted house they inhabit, and a human boy, Michael, who visits the house and becomes Little Vampire's best friend. This is very well-trodden territory. But Sfar does unexpectedly personal, and wonderful, things with it.

Haunted (CH replies)

Craig's review argues that Haunted's ending comes too quickly and arbitrarily to be wholly satisfying, and I agree. I get the sense that Dupuy could have continued in this vein for some time, and indeed might have but for unseen practical reasons that forced him to close down the project peremptorily. A book like this needs lots of space to work its magic; it's something that sneaks up on you, so that 200 pages hardly seems like too much. Haunted is a deliberate patchwork; its logic is piecemeal, by which I mean accretive and gradual. On finishing it, I had a hard time characterizing what I had just read, and I could happily have read a lot more.

The key word here is happily.

Haunted

by Philippe Dupuy. Drawn and Quarterly, 2008. $24.95.

Think back five years, to 2003. That's when I first read Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian's Comme s'il en Pleuvait /As If It Were Raining (2001), the fifth graphic novel in their Monsieur Jean series. Raining was translated into English and bundled into the 2003 (and so far, most recent) issue of the oversized, softcover Drawn and Quarterly anthology, and though I'd read other M. Jean stories in previous D&Qs, I was floored by Raining. I loved the way the book opened with breathtaking vistas of New York City (colored in vibrant wedges of solid blue, orange and red), and I loved how Dupuy and Berberian deepened their characters, as Jean and Cathy adjusted to being parents and Felix, Jean's ne'er-do-well friend, made a moral choice at great personal sacrifice. That 2003 issue of D&Q also featured a Yoshihiro Tatsumi tale, a Michel Rabagliati "Paul" short story, an R. Sikoryak literary adaptation (this time a collision of EC-era Jack Davis with Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights), some cute sketches about death (!) by Harry Mayerovitch, a story by Rutu Modan, and a retrospective of the art of French Canadian cartoonist Albert Chartier. It took me several hours to read this D&Q, making it well worth the $29.95 price (American retail).

Now jump forward to 2006, when Drawn and Quarterly simultaneously published two Dupuy/Berberian books, Get a Life and Maybe Later.

Three Shadows (CH replies)

I might be one of those readers Craig envisions with a keener appetite for fantasy and fable. I admit, I love high fantasy and all the business of world-building, including inventive landscape, archetypal characters, thresholds between worlds, play with magic and language, all that. And I love fairy tales, with their taboos, conditions, bad bargains, and transformations. I like Fables and I love Castle Waiting. I liked Sandman too, fitful and flickering as it was. I dig Bone. Hayao Miyazaki and Guillermo del Toro are the two filmmakers I tend to track. I'm reading fantasies by Gene Wolfe, Susanna Clarke, and Roger Zelazny right now. I've taught courses in high fantasy and the Arabian Nights, and hope to do so again.

Yet I'd say Craig's reaction to Three Shadows and mine are similar. I can't stop looking at it, but I can't quite be persuaded by it either.

Three Shadows

by Cyril Pedrosa. First Second, 2008. $15.95.

During their first two years, First Second has published some jaw-droppingly beautiful graphic novels, including Kampung Boy and Town Boy by Lat, Notes for a War Story by Gipi, and about three dozen great books by Joann Sfar alone. (My favorite is Klezmer.) There are, of course, a few First Second books I don't like much, such as Leland Myrick's slight Missouri Boy (which suffers in comparison to Lat's autobiographies) and Grady Klein's baffling Lost Colony volumes. Despite these misfires, I remain profoundly grateful for First Second, especially when I remember those days ten years ago when I'd troll comic shops looking desperately for something, anything, to read that wouldn't bore or alienate me. If someone in 1998 had told me that a future mainstream publisher would be producing books like The Fate of the Artist and Alan's War, I would've figured I was hallucinating and tried to wake myself up by smashing my head repeatedly with a hammer. To a comics fan who survived both the desolation of 1970s mainstream comics and the 1990s Image boom, today feels like the best of all possible worlds. Thank you, First Second. Thank you, other quality publishers.

What about the specific book under Thought Balloonist scrutiny, Cyril Pedrosa's Three Shadows?