Neonomicon

Neonomicon is a graphic novel written by Alan Moore and Antony Johnston and drawn by Jacen Burrows. The novel is very dark and explicit. It expands on the Cthulhu mythos by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.

The opening section is about an FBI agent named Aldo Sax, a person who can see the connections in different cases. He tracks the murders to a nightclub where he finds a band singing in a strange language. Sax finds a drug dealer who agrees to sell him a new drug. However what he finds is not a new substance but a new language. When Sax is introduced to the language a whole new world of experience and thought is opened to him. While he believes what he now sees is the real truth, he slides into insanity and eventually murders a victim.

The rest of the novel follows FBI agents Gordon Lamper and Merril Brears as they follow through on the case years later. Brears is a woman who has had issues with sex addiction and a nervous breakdown before rejoining the bureau. Their interview of Sax in a mental asylum consists of them asking him questions and him responding in his strange new language. When they track down the same nightclub and drug dealer they end up finding only a crime scene with the body of his mother. The drug dealer himself vanishes.

In the third section Lamper and Brears follow a lead to a small coastal town. Here is where the story gets dark and weird. They go undercover and investigate a store that is a combination sex shop and occult emporium. The owners are fan of Lovecraft and are obsessed with his world. The characters in the story know the Cthulhu mythos, just like the reader, only in the story the elder ones are real. This technique blurs the distinction between fiction and reality and makes the horrific events feel more real. Referring to fictional characters and events as fiction (fiction that is widely known in the real world) and then seeing them come alive in the story is a literary feat. If the characters had not known of Lovecraft but only encountered these strange creatures, it wouldn't have had the same effect. This technique melds the fictional world of Cthulhu with the real world of Lovecraft.

The events that follow are horrific and disturbing. Brears must face her inner demons of her past as well as real threats. The artwork is gritty and graphic. The artist is adept at showing the human characters and the fantastic visions given life by the language of the elder ones. Two pages where Sax descends into madness consist of four nearly identical panes of him staring out at the reader as he calmly explains to his victim why he is carving him up. This graphic novel leaves a deep impression. The story is compelling, mixing sex and violence and the occult. The art brings out the dangerous emotions in the story. Together they make a memorable book. A-

Maus I

Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman detailing his mother's and father's experiences as Jews in Poland during World War II. The story is told to him by his father during Art's visits to his father's and stepmother's house. The conversation between Art and his father Vladek is more than a framing narrative. Art wants to learn his father's history, his experiences trying to survive during the Holocaust. During the narration Art asks questions, and Vladek relates stories to the present. Vladek's life before and during the war is contrasted with his life with his current wife. The six chapters were published separately in the early 1980's.

Vladek's story begins in southwest Poland in the 1930's. He becomes a successful businessman and meets his future wife Anja. Anja's father helps him start up a textile factory. But war is approaching with Germany. When war start Vladek is drafted and is soon on the front line, and soon after that is captured. He and other Jews are forced to work under harsh conditions. Eventually he manages to get free and get transported to his family.

One of the notable elements of the graphic novel is that the Jews are portrayed as mice and the Nazis are cats. This both co-opts Nazi propaganda and makes the Nazis feel very sinister and threatening.




Also the Poles are protrayed as pigs. This illustrates the difference between Gentile Poles and the Jewish Poles. The Jewish Poles cannot always trust that the other Poles will not turn against them. When the Jews are trying to pass as Poles, they wear pig masks.

Vladek and Anja must continually find places to hide and scrounge for food. Sometimes they hide with other Jews and sometimes with friendly Gentiles. Often they are betrayed. They depend on family connections and bribery of Poles and Germans. They send their son to another city where they think they will be safer, but learn later that the woman he was with poisoned herself and the children she was keeping when the Nazis came for them. As things get worse the tension grows and the Jews become more and more desparate. As the story closes (this is only part one) Vladek gets sent to Auschwitz.

This is a very touching story that is very well dramatized. Vladek's feelings are expressed in words and pictures, about his family, his friends, his losses. The story is strengthened by Art's interest in his father's past and his troubled history with his mother. All of them suffered last effects from the struggle to survive the war. The illustrations are very expressive and show the suffering of the characters. Even though the story is dark, it is informative and poignant. I would recommend this to anyone. A

Trickster

Trickster: Native American Tales: A Graphic Collection is a graphic novel compilation of Native American trickster stories edited by Matt Dembicki. It delivers several stories based on American Indian trickster stories, each written and drawn by a different writer and artist. The art styles are varied, visually appealing, and quite colorful.

The first story is "Coyote and the Pebbles", a great example of a creation myth. The people gather pebbles to place in the sky as stars. But coyote trips and spills his pebbles all over the place, creating a messy sky. "Rabbit and the Tug-of-war" is a fun story about Rabbit tricking two buffaloes into a tug-of-war against each other, and tricking them again when they discover the ruse.

I got the book thinking my kids would enjoy it, and they sure did. Bedtime brought calls of "Trickster!" They both enjoyed "Rabbit's Choctaw Tail Tale", about how the talkative and pushy Rabbit gets tricked by Fox. Rabbit wants the fish that Fox has so bad that he follows Fox's advice to stick his tail in the frozen water, and it comes off when he tries to yank it out of the ice. We also got a kick out of "Giddy up Wolfie", about how Rabbit tricks Wolf into letting him ride him in front of his girlfriend.

There are some darker stories too, many filled with mythic elements. There is "Dangerous Beaver", about five brothers who are tricked and killed by the beaver, except for the fifth brother who receives advice from another creature. In "When Coyote Decided to Get Married", Coyote turns his potential brides and their families to stone after one of the women turns out to not be pure. In "Espun and Grandfather", the raccoon Espun is flattened by a large rock until he convinces a group of ants to rebuild him.

The art in the stories matches the tone of the stories themselves. They range from gloomy to silly to mischievous to hopeful. It is a fun set of stories for the whole family. A-