A Monster For Our Time

[Bernardo]

I don't know if any of you were aware of this, but DT friend Matthew Lickona has been working on a graphic novel for some time (he's taking care of the story, while a graphic artist called Chris Gugliotti is in charge of the drawings). Well, part one of the graphic novel is now available. It looks very intriguing. The drawings shown so far are amazing -- and perhaps amazingly creepy. Since we've been talking so much about abortion stories, I'll venture to say that, at least, this might end up being the most unusual abortion story to date. Why? Well, to begin with, I don't think anyone has seriously tried that medium yet. More imporantly, perhaps, is the fact that the unborn baby at the center of the story is not only not a passive victim, but, from the looks of it, is actually the anti-hero. Now, who has ever tried *that*? I have no clue what will come of it, but I have a lot of confidence in Matthew's ability as a writer, so I'm eager to see what he comes up with.

I just ordered a copy and I encourage you to do the same. We'll only get to read the whole story if this first issue succeeds. You can also donate to the project. All the relevant info is on the Alphonse website (Alphonse is the name of the graphic novel).

[firefolk]

"For this was Gothic, this was romantic, this was Christian art; this was the whole advance of Shakespeare upon Sophocles. . . The old Greeks summoned godlike things to worship their god. The medieval Christians summoned all things to worship theirs, dwarfs and pelicans, monkeys and madmen. . . Paganism was in art a pure beauty; that was the dawn. Christianity was a beauty created by controlling a million monsters of ugliness; and that in my belief was the zenith and the noon. . . The finest lengths of the Elgin marbles consist of splendid horses going to the temple of a virgin. Christianity, with its gargoyles and grotesques, really amounted to saying this: that a donkey could go before all the horses of the world when it was really going to the temple."
- G.K. Chesterton (I mean, really, who else?), "On Gargoyles"

[katycarl]

Eve Tushnet has a good review of it up. I'm more curious than ever thanks to her title:

UMBERT THE UNHEIMLICH: If you spend a lot of time in Cat'lick pro-life circles, you may well run across a cartoon strip called "Umbert the Unborn." In this thing, a charmin' little guy hangs out in his (never-pictured) mother's womb, offering uplifting folk wisdom about the funny little things in life.

You... can probably tell from that description that this strip is way too Bil Keane for me to understand its virtues. Apparently at least one other pro-life Catholic has found the premise of this strip intensely creepy.

Matthew Lickona's Alphonse features a similarly-sentient fetus. But Alphonse is vividly aware of his utter helplessness--not as a political contingency but as an existential threat. His mother wants to kill him. And she would succeed... except that Alphonse, in a horrific freak occurence, survives and crawls away.

This is a horror comic which simultaneously exploits and transcends the abortion-horror storylines I talked about here. The comic relies on the flesh-creeping, Uncanny Valley nature of the late-term fetus in order to get its effects--yet, unlike most other horror-baby works, it treats the creature as a person: a monster like Frankenstein's, a bloodied self whose individuality is real, not purely symbolic. And Alphonse's would-be savior herself must break ethical boundaries in order to do what she thinks she has to do to preserve his life. We get trapped in spirals of wrong actions, and when you get down low enough it's hard to see a clean way out.

(The fact that the comic never states explicitly that that's the very reason many women abort is one of its many signs of respect for its audience. There are several parallels between the would-be abortive mother and the would-be baby-saver, but they're done quietly, not stridently.)

The artwork is gritty but not awkward, by an artist who's worked in mainstream comics (WildStorm and maybe something else?) and who uses fairly standard contemporary Western comics techniques clearly and well. The art basically doesn't get in the way, though it also won't be the reason you buy the comic. The figures, gestures, "camera angles," and pacing are all unobtrusively well-chosen. (The women, by the way, look like individual women--indie comics usually do a lot better about this than superhero titles, but I still thought I should mention it.)

I don't know to what extent I can recommend this title yet, since I've only seen the first issue. It's the sort of thing where the premise might be much better than the denouement. But if you think this sounds worth trying, do check it out. I'll say that it does pummel you emotionally, but not ideologically. I'm excited to see where this story goes. Lickona's website might be the best place to order it.

eve-tushnet.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html#249123955138593906#249123955138593906