Josephine Baker: Revelations of conflict

Revelations of conflict

Collections of graphic works depict a trail of battles - in history and life

08: A GRAPHIC DIARY OF THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
By Michael Crowley and Dan Goldman
Three Rivers, 160 pp., paperback, $17.95

THE BEATS: A Graphic History
By Harvey Pekar, Ed Piskor, Paul Buhle
Hill and Wang, 208 pp., $22

ALAN’S WAR: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope
By Emmanuel Guibert
First Second, 336 pp., $24

THE PHOTOGRAPHER: Into War-Torn
Afghanistan With Doctors Without Borders
By Emmanuel Guibert, Didier
Lefevre and Frederic Lemercier
First Second, 288 pp., paperback, $29.95

NOCTURNAL CONSPIRACIES: Nineteen Dreams From
December 1979 To September 1994
By David B.
NBM ComicsLit, 124 pp., paperback, $14.95

MISS DON’T TOUCH ME
By Hubert and Kerascoet
NBM ComicsLit, 96 pp., paperback, $14.95

IN THE FLESH
By Koren Shadmi
Villard, 160 pp., paperback, $14.95

War - in the world, this country, the culture, a person's head, the bedroom and on the street - is the focus of the graphic works arrayed here. After all, Barack Obama's original, distinctive position was his opposition to the Iraq War, so starting with a book about his campaign is appropriate, as is devolving to the culture wars (The Beats certainly defied the mainstream). World War II, the subject of "Alan's War," is a natural segue to "The Photographer," a startling look at Afghanistan, one of Obama's most vexing preoccupations. We land - if not so gently - in more personal territory with a fresh interpretation of dreams, an update of the classic murder mystery, and dark stories about the pleasures and perils of the flesh.

With the Obama administration in power, Michael Crowley and Dan Goldman take a graphic look at the '08 campaign, produced fast, furious and fascinating at the end of that dramatic year. Three Rivers teased "08" last fall in an open-ended sampler. (If McCain had won, it would have been different, right?) "08" vividly summarizes that long campaign in New Republic senior editor Crowley's judiciously chosen words and Goldman's tabloid-style drawings. They capture the campaign's drama, particularly the winnowing of the party fields. History as breaking news, it resounds with the bytes that made the year so riveting.

History with a deeper perspective is the province of "The Beats," a multifaceted effort led by writer Harvey Pekar, his frequent collaborator Paul Buhle and artist Ed Piskor. It delivers the texture of a movement easy to underestimate in brief biographies of touchstones like poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, novelists William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac and lesser-known lights like poet d.a. levy (an underground Cleveland icon) and mythopoeic poetess Diane di Prima. Like others in this revisionist, unabashedly liberal Hill and Wang series, this fearless, substantial history entertains as it uncovers.

A more subtle kind of revelation characterizes "Alan's War," one of two books spearheaded by notable French illustrator Emmanuel Guibert. Subtitled "The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope," this tracks that soldier's picaresque World War II journey by tank, train, and on foot. Guibert befriended Cope, who died in 1999, in the early '90s, persuading him to lay down these recollections. In art both quiet and kinetic, Guibert frames Cope's modest story, rendering a kind of Everyman life during wartime - and after - in spare, moving terms. The text is clear and unobtrusive and the imagery understated, in pages that effectively link the power of black-and-white pictures to the black-and-white world of those times; the strength of this book lies in Cope's honesty and Guibert's empathy. They make the quotidian business of war as moving as more common, determinedly heroic "war pictures."

That's even truer of "The Photographer," the account of a trip through Afghanistan that photographer Didier Lefevre made with Doctors Without Borders in 1986. I never thought I'd want to travel in that wild coun try, but "The Photographer," oversized and majestic, makes a persuasive case despite the dangers Lefevre confronted, not to mention the challenges facing the doctors.

The unconquerable terrain, captured in Lefevre's remarkable black-and-white photography, Guibert's limpid and respectful art, and the colors and designs of Frederic Lemercier, seems otherworldly and ravishing, the people alternately kindly and cruel. That Lefevre, who died of a heart attack in 2007 at age 49, had the guts to make the trip to tell the story of medicine on so challenging a frontier is remarkable in itself. Then you ponder the courage of Juliette, the mission head, and the doctors Robert and Regis, and their patients, and your heart catches. An inspiring, beautiful book about a perpetually knotty country at the height of the Soviet-Afghan conflict, "The Photographer" should be mandatory reading for our secretary of State and president.

The other three books are about sex and dreams. They, too, are enthralling, and like the Guibert books, are French.

"Nocturnal Conspiracies," David B.'s first book since his excellent graphic memoir, "Epileptic," explores his dreams from the late '70s on. They teeter between paranoia and paradise in stark pages, most in two, three or four panels. The art is superficially simplistic, and the coloring, largely blue-tinged, is fittingly minimal. But the look is singularly expressive, attesting to David B.'s direct line to his subconscious. Teeming with animals, corrupt politicians, alluring women, his own malleable consciousness and other shape shifts, this scans like a dream.

Koren Shadmi's far darker "In the Flesh" is dreamlike, too. Its nine short stories are a weird admixture of rot and rapture, proving kink can still astonish despite today's jaded atmosphere. "Grandpa Minolta" suggests photography can indeed steal one's soul (and innocence); "A Lavish Affair" brings new dimensions to the notion of appetite, and "Radioactive Girlfriend" puts a new spin on the idea of afterglow. Israeli artist Shadmi doesn't paint pretty pictures, muting their inherent drama with his black-and-white palette. But he certainly paints provocative ones.

A more orthodox piquancy infuses "Miss Don't Touch Me," a charming, Gallic twist on the murder mystery. Illustrated by Kerascoet (a husband and wife team that also has worked with the graphic novel magician Joann Sfar), Hubert's story tracks the steely virgin of the title as she solves the puzzle of her sister's death. Set in Paris at the dawn of the 20th century, it is charming and anything but prudish. The women are far more full-bodied than the men, the men have even fewer scruples, and, as for singer Josephine Baker . . . well, she always was a category unto herself.

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/03/29/revelations_of_conflict?mode=PF