I think what I appreciate the most about The Salt Sea is what it says in the spaces between the action scenes. There's far more meaning to be found in the movements of the seagulls than the posturing of war machines. It's a book that hates society, admires the savages living far from it, and also feels sadness for those same savages slowly being incorporated into the expanding frontiers of the world war and its corrupting ideologies. Pratt's art is astounding, and the characters are brilliant, but its the meaning behind it all that moves me most. Corto is just looking for some peace and meaning outside of it all, and he's doomed never to find and grasp it, as are we all.

A Family Matter by Will Eisner, published by W.W. Norton (Kitchen Sink also did an edition)




A family comes together to celebrate the birthday of their father, now wheelchair-bound after a stroke.  Old jealousies and resentments rise up, secrets are revealed, and the real reason for the gathering comes out, leading to a tragic (inevitable?) ending.

Well, it's Eisner, so you know it's good.  The people feel real, their conflicts genuine, and the ending is powerful.  But . . . it feels incomplete.  The siblings are all introduced and each given their own conflict/arc/secret, but they don't reach individual resolutions.  Of the two big secrets revealed, only one (the circumstances surrounding their mother's death) feels relevant, foreshadowing what's to come.  The other is never mentioned again, and feels like it was thrown in for the shock value.  (It's become something of a cliche, which is sad.)  So I wanted to love this book, and I ended up just liking it a lot.  Cause hell, second-tier Eisner is still light-years ahead of most everybody else.

And one more for the road as RaGN Week winds down....

(reprinted in Dreadstar Annual #1 in color; and in various Dreadstar tpbs over the years...)

Book Two of the Metamorphosis Odyssey Saga-this has been sitting in my to reread pile since I reread MO along with Shax when he was reviewing it. I figured RaGN Week would be a good time to get to it.

Of all the Dreadstar saga, this is my favorite individual story, even though Vanth only plays a very minor role at the very end of the story. This is Syzygy Darklock, an origin story, but a damn good one. The art is vintage Starlin, and the story reads like a sci fi version of a cosmic Dr. Strange story in many ways. Darklock's brother is murdered and he must go on a cosmic quest for knowledge and power to avenge his brother-knowledge and power that can only come through the dark arts and demonic entities helping his harness celestial energy. It's a familiar story for Starlin in some ways, but this is Starlin at the pinnacle of his creative force, and is perhaps his best iteration of that story.

Sample art (colored version)



This wraps RaGN Week for me, thanks for all who participated and/or read along. It's been fun, feel free top post your own stragglers from the week, and see you next year. Until then, good reading.

-M

Palestine
by Joe Sacco
Fantagraphics, 1993-1995

Joe Sacco spent a couple months in the occupied territories of Palestine, and recounted his experiences in comic form. The narration is sometimes crisp and straightforward, sometimes frantic and jumbled. His own experiences and impressions tend to be the latter, his accounts of the stories of suffering he heard tend to be the former. It is organized into short chapters, just a few pages each, as Sacco goes town to town, house to house, and is served tea with sugar, while people recount the abuses they have experienced under Israeli occupation. Occasionally, we see brief snippets of self-reflection from Sacco, glimpses into his own cynicism and feelings that he is exploiting tragedy for his comic. All realized with beautifully detailed art, with sometimes exaggerated or abtracted faces. The comic creates a window into lives of a people in a time, an oppressed people in an unjust time, that reminds us of many times and many places, where one group has held power over another and abused that power.

This is one of the best comics I have ever read.

It definitely isn't being marketed as porn. Heck, our library has all six volumes sitting right out there in the graphic novel section for anyone to pick up. And, even if it was, there's still a canyon of divide between your run of the mill pornography and rape and incest fantasies.

I purchased the first volume because it was Amazon's #1 choice for "If you like Corto Maltese...". None of the info on the Manera Amazon page in any way suggested that it was sexual in nature and not for a general audience. Everything addressed his art style and friendship with Pratt. Even the introduction to the first volume pretty much avoids mentioning sexual content at all, instead discussing drawing style, influences and historical context.