COMICS : Mysterious Cairo pulses at heart of graphic novel
Posted on Thursday, January 24, 2008
In recent years, no shortage of attention has gone to relations between the West and Islam.
While elements of that narrative creep into the new graphic novel Cairo — such as terrorism and anti-Americanism — the book’s author, journalist G. Willow Wilson, focuses her fictional story on the chaotically fantastic background of the titular Egyptian city.
Cairo (Vertigo, $ 24. 99 ) is a strange book. It follows a group of travelers — a drug dealer, a female Israeli soldier, a newspaper editor, a would-be terrorist and an American girl — as they pursue peace amid the mystical, malevolent streets of Egypt’s capital.
Tying them together is a genie, who emerges from a hookah. They fall into a dire plot to rescue a magic box that holds their future. Wilson, an American who converted to Islam, has spent much time in recent years working in Cairo and drew the story from her experience there.
“The story came to me almost like an epiphany — not the nuts and bolts, but the overarching idea,” Wilson said. “I think I had been in Cairo for two days when it happened. There was something about the place that begged to be the setting for a graphic novel.” The odd nature of the book is perfectly in tune with the city that inspired it, Wilson said.
“The strangeness never ended,” she said. “Something slightly weird seemed to happen almost every day. The entire time I was there, I never quite got a sense of normalcy.” While Cairo has fantasy-adventure trappings, she stressed its real-life application, the peaceful coexistence among seemingly disparate people.
“Common ground exists right now,” Wilson said. “I think it can and will be found in the Middle East and the world at large. And peace ? Not in this climate, but there are people working very hard to bring a climate about in which it can exist.” BOOMING BUSINESS For Mark Waid, 2007 was a year of unleashing surprises. First, the longtime DC editor and writer of superhero books such as Flash, Kingdom Come and The Brave and the Bold announced he was joining upstart publisher Boom ! Studios as editor in chief. Then Waid released his first series for Boom, the gritty crime story Potter’s Field that ran counter to most everything he had written. “I’ve known [Boom publishers ] Ross Richie and Andy Cosby for 10 years or more, and I knew these guys were serious about publishing and wouldn’t vanish into the night the first time some new series didn’t sell 100, 000 copies,” Waid said. “The goals are simple: Good comics. Not good TV shows that are adapted into comics, but good comics.” About Potter’s Field, which recently concluded its first fourissue run, Waid said he has been developing it for 10 years.
“The idea came to me back when I was living in Brooklyn, and someone at a get-together made an offhand comment about the graveyard where New York buries its [unclaimed and ] unidentified dead,” Waid said. “It’s good to flex other muscles, and it’s fun to write protagonists who aren’t Boy Scouts.” Waid said he has more non-superhero stories in development that will start to appear in the fall. And he’s still working with DC, which means he’s keeping busy. “I’ve heard rumors of these things you humans call weekends. What are they ?” BEST OF 2007 Now that 2008 is upon us, I’ll clear my desk of a few last quality books from 2007 that deserve reading (for a list of my picks for best graphic novels of the year, visit graphicfiction. wordpress. com ).
One of the strangest books of 2007 was I Killed Adolf Hitler (Fantagraphics, $ 12. 95 ), which featured anthropomorphized animals, a world full of assassins and a scientist with a time machine and a plan to rub out the world’s most infamous despot. Despite the bizarre story line, the book, by Norwegian creator Jason, is a deeply heartfelt tale of romance.
While French cartoonist Joann Sfar is best known for children’s stories, his new book The Rabbi’s Cat (Pantheon Books, $ 16. 95 ) is more serious. It features a rabbi’s cat in 1930 s Algeria. The cat eats a parrot and gains the power of speech — and the power to question its master’s faith. The book only scratches at the timeless issues it raises, but the reader benefits if only for reading the questions. Sfar’s squiggly art is predictably engaging.
Finnish cartoonist Tove Jannson (who died in 2001 ) is featured in the Moomin collection from Drawn & Quarterly ($ 19. 95 ). Jannson’s stories are of the highest level of whimsy, following a Barney-esque collection of creatures. Despite the childish trappings, Jannson addressed very adult social issues, such as overcompetitiveness, suicide and the search for love. She perfectly captures those subjects, making the book as timeless as it is strange. The best book of the year was Matt Kindt’s Super Spy (Top Shelf, $ 19. 95 ). At north of 300 pages, Super Spy holds nearly 40 stories, each a quick tale of intrigue and espionage during World War II. With as much guile as the spies he creates, Kindt spins these stories into each other, slowly stringing together a united narrative that gains emotional resonance with every page. Kindt also uses an astounding variety of artistic and design styles in telling the stories, which lends his globe-spanning scope the proper visual range. This is one every comics fan should read. E-mail van. jensen@gmail. com
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