Now a professional librarian, my engagement with comics is changing again as I begin serving on a graphic novel book prize committee for my state professional association. It’s time to shake off the rust and get to writing again! So welcome to The Return of Illustrated Man. For our first installment I’ll be taking up a subject neglected in the original run, superheroes, with a review of The Vision: Little Worse than a Man/ Little Better than a Beast (2016).

Marvel fans know Vision as one of the oldest characters of the Avengers, his Silver Age origins dating back to 1968. Despite his longevity Vision is not a heavy hitter among the superstar Marvel heroes and is typically only seen in the context of the Avengers group. I mean, he’s no Wolverine or Spider-Man. Casual fans may recognize him as a supporting character from the recent blockbusters Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and Captain America: Civil War (2016). Perhaps because of his status as a relatively minor character in the Marvel canon, Vision was ripe for a reimagining and his latest iteration, a twelve issue run from 2016 now collected in two trade paperbacks, is stellar.

You do not need comprehensive knowledge of his background story to appreciate Little Worse than a Man/ Little Better than a Beast, but I will provide a very brief primer (for a more thorough survey read this). The Vision is an android and so has a curiously alienated relationship with humanity not unlike Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. In fact, according to Wikipedia, at his debut he has was sometimes compared to Spock, a character also introduced in the late 1960s. And like the treacherous android Bishop from the movie Alien, the Vision is also vaguely threatening to his allies. He was, after all, created by the robot villain Ultron, with whom he shares an odd quasi father-son kin relation, to be a weapon to destroy the Avengers. In becoming a hero rather than a villain as he was programmed to do by his father, Vision serves to comment on fate and free will. Finally, in a theme that resonates strongly with multiple science fiction traditions, Vision has a human romantic partner in the Scarlet Witch. Their relationship holds additional meaning for the Vision as his experience of romantic love and later, marriage and parenthood, serves to legitimate his claim to humanity.

Little Worse than a Man/ Little Better than a Beast is, in essence, a family drama. It is a tragedy, albeit one with a faint glimmer of sunlight at the end. Our story begins with the Vision having separated from the Scarlet Witch, his memory of their love erased in true soap opera fashion by a software reinstallation. Scarlet Witch gifts him her own brainwave patterns that Vision uses to create a female version of himself, Virginia, and the two of them create children, twin teenagers, Viv and Vin. Now a family, the Visions move to the suburbs and endeavor to become normal. And then their lives fall apart.

Our story opens on the family of robots experiencing constant low-level conflict with their neighbors who find them both fascinating and terrifying. Vision goes to work and worries about his paycheck, Virginia becomes a homemaker and appears to struggle with depression. The children go to high school and have trouble fitting in. Vin gets into a fight, Viv meets a boy, both teens lock horns with their parents. This kind of typical family drama stuff shows us how the Vision family is at their most human when they fail to be perfect. Seen in this light Little Worse than a Man/ Little Better than a Beast is reminiscent of another landmark deconstruction of the superhero genre, Astro City. Extraordinary people are shown to have ordinary problems.

The strange is made familiar. The familiar is made strange.

But despite the well meaning condescension and outright prejudice of their neighbors the Vision family cannot give up their quest to be human because to reject their humanity, to reject the very humans that shun them, is to leave the door open for Ultron. In the beginning Ultron creates Vision to be an agent of evil and in this series Vision creates his family out of himself. It’s like the New Testament by way of Being John Malkovich. That the Visions are all different versions of the same person serves to more deeply underline the inescapability of their fate. And yet they struggle, these born sinners, to seek out salvation.

In my reading one of the most interesting things about the Vision family is their experience of love, both romantic and domestic. Indeed it is their sympathetic portrayal as emotional beings that makes the tragic ending really stick. Whereas there are a number of science fiction entries that give humans and robots sharing emotions together, what are we to make of robots loving each other? And while we might imagine human on robot sex as promising an array of titillating pleasures, what about robot on robot sex? Robots that have desires? Robots that feel pleasure? Robots that have sex for the same reasons we have sex, to create and express social bonds.

In the domestic sphere science fiction typically presents robots as servants. Whether they are butlers, body guards, or doctors, in the robot’s world humans come first. Again, Little Worse than a Man/ Little Better than a Beast breaks new ground as the family argues at the dinner table, the mother worries about her children’s well being, the father plays with the kids, the brother and sister share a sibling rivalry. The Vision family shows us robots with autonomy, they just want to live their lives. But even this modest goal will lay beyond their grasp. Its heartbreaking.

As volume one closes and the book’s central tragedy is foreshadowed, a high school literature teacher introduces Vin to The Merchant of Venice and he becomes obsessed with Shylock. Fortunately, this rhetorical moves turn out to be more clever than cliche. After all revenge and Avenger do share a root (one the act of a villain, the other a hero’s victory). With melancholy wonder Vin asks if you prick him, does he not bleed? Given the body count at the end of the series Othello might have worked just as well, but in this case I think the literary allusion is welcome.

For anthropologists who are also comic fans The Vision: Little Worse than a Man/ Little Better than a Beast is a must read, this book will redefine how you see a classic character. It invites deep, critical reflection about what is so unique about being a human and the practice of how we might better understand ourselves. The ending just floored me, I nearly cried.

Casual fans and colleagues interested in anthropology and science fiction, especially robots and the cultural imaginary, will find this to be a thoughtful genre piece that invites us to see human beings from an android’s point of view. You do not need deep, nerdy levels of knowledge about Marvel superheroes to enjoy this story and the book itself does a good job of filling the reader in on background elements as the narrative warrants.

While this would make good reading for teens it is not appropriate for children who may find that the grim, mature themes fly over their heads. One of my own teens read it and said it was “good,” which is fairly high praise coming from her. I was able to find volume one in my public library and picked up volume two at an independent bookstore for $13. It definitely stands up to multiple readings.

Fire!! The Zora Neale Hurston Story.
By Peter Bagge
72 pp + notes. Drawn and Quarterly. 2017.

Review by Vidula G. Khanduri.

Author, anthropologist, and feminist Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) stood out among her peers during  the Harlem Renaissance. She bent norms: denouncing communism, wearing unique clothing, and embracing social imperfections. Her books narrate black American life, “warts and all,” unlike the works of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois and other black literary figures, who accounted for white perceptions of the black community. Hurston’s impact on literature was long forgotten until Alice Walker revived her works in the 1970s. Her grave was left unmarked and untended for years. Since then, Hurston’s novels, especially Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), have found spots in college syllabi all over the country. Named after an unsuccessful black literary magazine Hurston and her colleagues created in criticism of Harlem politics, Peter Bagge’s Fire!! The Zora Neale Hurston Story narrates her life from start to finish in a graphic form as colorful as Hurston herself.

Bagge’s cover art turns the iconic Hurston – sitting, holding a cigarette between her fingers – on its head. The front cover is a composite picturing Hurston at a turpentine camp where she conducted fieldwork, donning the new Stetson hat, car, and shotgun she was notorious for spending her whole anthropological research grant on. Bagge consistently illustrates Hurston wearing bright yellow – homage to her commanding and bold personality. Episodes of dispute, frustration, excitement, and frenzy stand out as silhouettes in black and white panels.

Hurston’s life begins in Eatonville, an all-black town in Florida. Here she’s sheltered from racial conflicts – a stark contrast to her Harlem born and raised contemporaries. Sparks flew from her spunky personality wherever she went. However, it was not Hurston versus the world. Home was a tense place. Bagge highlights Hurston’s continuously strained relationship with her family, exacerbated after her mother’s death. Her father ignored her reminders of her mother’s dying wishes not to follow after-death rituals such as removing pillows and covering mirrors. Still, she leaned on her family when she requested her brother’s help in saving up for school (13).

Bagge’s depiction of Hurston’s experience as a granddaughter and stepdaughter push us to think beyond intersectionality. Hurston’s grandmother criticized her for not being more like her older sister Sarah, who was quiet and enjoyed domestic work (4). The reader witnesses Hurston’s stepmother treat her like a servant, prompting a violent altercation leading to Hurston’s banishment from home (11). These uneasy conflicts among women in a family leave much to think about the domestic world and its micro forms of aggression and resistance.

Hurston struggled to attend high school, largely due to affordability. Afterward, she attended the historically black school Howard University. Serendipity played a role in Hurston’s life. At an after-party for Opportunity Magazine’s Literary Awards Ceremony, in which she won many awards, Hurston met Annie Meyer, founder of the all-women’s Barnard College, and was invited to transfer, becoming their first black student (21).

Controversy did not end at Barnard. In one instance, Hurston served fried chicken and watermelon at a party. Professor Alain Locke burst out that Hurston needed to focus on her work. Locke’s wrath resulted from Hurston’s culinary choices, which knowingly played on the racist stereotype of black people eating fried chicken and watermelon (27). White peers dismissed her until hearing of her prestigious job as author Fannie Hurst’s secretary (22). In the midst of these challenges, Hurston met Franz Boas.

Boas’s cultural relativism and observation about anthropologists’ attractions to “isolated communities” prompted Hurston to reimagine fieldwork: “That sounds like my hometown. I need […] to put Eatonville under a microscope” (31).

Fire!! is as eye-opening as it is entertaining. Readers new to Hurston’s writings will gain much from Fire!!. Readers can learn of her book about Southern white people – Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) – or her venture into musical theatre with From Sun to Sun: Music from the Bahamas, and her many research trips to Caribbean countries. Most interesting was her anthropological research on voodoo, which led to the publication of Tell My Horse. The book painted Caribbean cultural and religious traditions in a positive light, which contrasted with Hurston’s own beliefs and those of her mother. Hurston lived for the adventure and adventured to live.

Peter Bagge is a comic artist and writer best known for comic magazine Neat Stuff, serial collections of short stories in magazine-sized installments through the 1980s, and the Hate comic book series, starring his well-known character Buddy Bradley. Here, he honed his large-headed, wobbly-armed style of drawing characters. Bagge’s characters look like floppy air dancers and Bendos, giving his panels movement and energy. Fire!! is his second biographical graphic novel, his first being Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story (2013). Sanger (1879-1966) was instrumental in establishing Planned Parenthood, and like her contemporary, Hurston, is a famous 20^th century feminist. Bagge seems drawn to rebels of their time, which leaves readers, especially women who persist, asking for more.

Hurston was known for her eccentric outfits, such as the “’traditional Norwegian skiing outfit,’” photographed by Carl Van Vechten and pictured on the back cover. While Bagge chose to avoid drawing Hurston’s wacky outfits within the pages so as to not distract from the narrative, her outfits were as much a part of her story, her politics, and her message as her writings and life events. Illustrating her outfits would have added flair to the narrative, not detracted from it.

Bagge adds deeply-researched notes and references that expand upon the history and significance behind each scene he illustrates. The end notes are the most information-dense part of the book, and are useful as context between scenes and panels. This blending of graphic and archival research makes Fire!! an appealing read. It shows how image is text and biography is history. This graphic novel belongs in syllabi and in every graphic novel enthusiast’s library. Accompanied by black-and-white photographs of Hurston, references to contemporary celebrities, people important to her life, advertisements, book covers, and more, each note brings Hurston’s story to life. Through Bagge’s skillful artwork, readers can see Hurston in a new light that exceeds previous renditions in film and text.

Fire!! is an accessible read. It is hard to pin the age group Bagge is appealing to. That is the book’s strength; Hurston’s story is about America, coming-of-age, the first black student at Barnard College, the making of an African American anthropologist, and more. Anthropologists’ lives are stories themselves, and Fire!! is the story of a storyteller. Those already familiar with Hurston’s work would be delighted by this graphic novel. Those new to her work will be intrigued and inspired by her career.

These past months have seen carnage of unimaginable magnitude. But none has attracted the outpouring triggered by the Charlie Hebdo killings. What have cartoons got to do with this?

For many, but not most of the world, the experience of freedom is now salient in speech and expression. In this struggle for freedom and rights, and its maintenance, cartoons have become the severest testing ground. We reprimand cartoons. We summon cartoons. We make demands on cartoons.

This generative force of cartoons is at the heart of my book Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and the History in the Modern World.  It is a story of how cartoonists became central to newspapers and politics in India. It is also a history of why cartoons provide a new context for offence and the refusal to laugh.

Cartoons protests reveal a spectrum of politics. This jostle over cartoons is what I have called in my book, a “tactical modernity.”  It can also tell us a thing or two about other worlds of cartoons.

In the 1870s several “comic newspapers” with the famous moniker “Punch” appended to their title circulated in colonial India. This titular choice established kinship with the popular British humor magazine, Punch (1841). Published in the vernacular with circulation figures in a few hundreds, the colonial Indian Punch incarnations provide the first glimpse of “cartoon talk.” This talk surfaced during my archival research of the colonial British government’s weekly surveillance reports of newspapers and magazines.

In 1910 a prominent newspaper the Agra Akhbar wondered aloud at the displeasure of British officials when they saw vernacular cartoons mocking colonial rule. The newspaper editor illustrated his point with the official scorn received by a caricature in a Bengali Punch. From one perspective the caricature looked like a bulldog, but from another it resembled a British official.

What happened to British liberal humor that appreciated such visual tricks back home in its revered humor magazine Punch but not in the colonial vernacular Punchs? Colonial officials accused such vernacular punches of impertinence.

Such anxiety over the cartoons meanings did not end with colonial rule in 1947. As cartoonists got absorbed into independent India’s print journalism, newspapers began to boast of staff cartoonists. Cartoons were front-page news. This brought considerable attention to popular leaders, such as India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. “Don’t spare me Shankar”—Nehru’s jovial quip to his favorite cartoonist Shankar (1902-1989), is the lore of cartooning in India.

Soon after India’s independence, the new democratic government was busy crafting India’s constitution. Columbia Law School graduate, Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar was the architect of this constitution. In 1949, reflecting on the slow pace of finalizing the constitution, Shankar published a cartoon depicting Nehru and Ambedkar. This was among several cartoons that tickled readers and lampooned politicians in the popular weekly, Shankar’s Weekly.

Few would have suspected that more than fifty years after its first publication in 1949, Shankar’s cartoon would bring the Indian Parliament to a standstill in 2012.

This happened because Shankar’s Nehru-Ambedkar cartoon was included in a new social science textbook issued as part of a series of curricular reforms in 2006. Dr. Ambedkar is a celebrated leader of India’s Dalits (contemporary term for historically oppressed communities marginalized in India’s caste system). Shankar’s depiction of Nehru whipping Ambedkar, who in turn nudged with a whip the snail¹ on which he was seated, raised an outcry for hurting Dalit sentiments.

The fracas over the publication of Shankar’s 1949 Nehru-Ambedkar cartoon in a social science textbook, and its subsequent excision from the textbook is a reminder of how cartoons do not just travel across space. Cartoons also travel across time. These shifting contexts of space and time make political cartoons provocative archives.

To the self-declared guardians of India’s young minds, the cartoon’s inclusion in the social science textbook, a sacred pedagogical space, smacked of conspiracy.

Undoubtedly other politics were at play too. If historical social prejudices and inequity so deeply concerned the elected members of the Indian Parliament, why do they not wage this battle in their policy and against the day-to-day violence experienced by Dalits?

This displacement of an ideological battle, from Dalit reality at the ground to the representation of an admired Dalit leader in a cartoon, is “the dance of democracy.”

However, charting a finer chronology of cartoon talk, protests and the refusal to laugh in India leads to the complex nature of such protests. Activists complement their tireless advocacy against social discrimination by also being vigilant about representations, and they don’t spare cartoons.

Their protests, by demanding a transformational role for cartoons, implicitly  acknowledge the power of cartoons.

These humor sensibilities emerge from particular ideological positions that bring to the surface the everyday manifestation of social inequities.

The Charlie Hebdo attack performed a logic of sacrifice, one that allowed cartoonists, police personnel and the terrorist to become martyrs. They all died on duty. All bound by violence and the ritual of sacrifice.

To assert that Charlie Hebdo “attacked religion [only] when it became political” is a clever display of ignorance. Ultra liberalism?

Cartoons have become the scapegoat. The violence Charlie Hebdo displaced on to the cartoons, the terrorists restored to the body.

So what can we do? Archiving a history of times we did not laugh can forge solidarity.

Drawing lines of empathy can provoke us to transcend obsession with the self and become the other. It might also compel us to acknowledge our vulnerability—our inability to transcend and to empathize. This failure can burden us with guilt. Even with guilt, one can protest violence, forging new forms of solidarity in the process.