Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Shannon
Watters, Brooke Allen, 2015
Jonathan Hickman, Nick Dragotta, Frank Martin,
2015
(June 2015)
Slightly random paring this, created
largely through the coincidence of release and delivery schedules. Can I force
them together into some kind of awkward thematic union? You betcha. Let’s talk Americana.
I’ve been to America once, on a slightly
ill-fated trip with an ex-girlfriend and her family. She wasn’t ex at the time,
obviously, only now. And that’s ex as in former, not dead. She’s still alive. As
far as I know; we’ve lost touch. Since Facebook stalking lost its novelty, at
least (THAT’S A JOKE). Look, just quit banging on about my ex, will you? This
is getting tiresome.
My point (there is one, I promise) is that
pretty much everything I know about the country has come second-hand, mediated
by various, er… media. And it’s a measure of the country’s seemingly
unassailable cultural hegemony—at least within the Anglosphere—that I feel sufficiently
emboldened to hold forth on this kind of stuff (though not without some fairly convoluted
disclaimers first, of course), because both Lumberjanes
and East of West offer, in their own
very different ways, interpretations of a uniquely American understanding of wilderness
and the frontier: man in nature; man against nature; and ultimately nature as a
metaphor for aspects of humanity and so man against himself. You know the
drill.
I say ‘man’. This is clearly ridiculous way
of describing the totality of humanity, and is particularly inappropriate here
given that not only does Lumberjanes
contain an almost entirely female cast, but also some sharply hilarious
critiques of the kind of hypermasculine frontiersman so coolly evoked in East of West’s Death. If you can read
the following panels without genuinely laughing out loud then you’re probably
reading the wrong blog:
And let us then compare:
Obviously this is grotesquely unfair; Lumberjanes is undoubtedly a response to
a very clear gap in the market but is also very assured in doing its own thing,
so positioning it in a direct dialogue with any single work specifically is to
do it a disservice. Additionally, Death’s taciturn Man With No Name shtick isn’t
presented uncritically; those criticisms often coming from his
wife Xiaolin, who is now by far my favourite character.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Lumberjanes has been generating a fair
bit of buzz in the SFFy circles I frequent on line, and everything you’ve read
about it is true. It follows a group of five friends through various (mis)adventures
on summer camp (Americana, see?): and pointedly features friendship, fully realized
female characters, and non-cis, non-het, non-white representation; none of
which would matter if it wasn't any good. Fortunately it is. What I hadn't realized
is quite how YA, Harry Potter-ish it was, with an episodic, monster of the week
plot wherein each problem the group encounters is conveniently solvable by one
of the member's unique skills. Not a problem, necessarily, but after all the
'breath of fresh air' hype I wasn't expecting quite such a traditional/stale structure.
Does this matter? Not really, no. Complaining
about the episodic nature of a TP comic is rather like complaining about the
unexpected dampness of the ocean, and Lumberjanes
aces pretty much everything else. I'm slightly OCD about lending out my books
(people always wreck them) so I won't
be giving this to my English Club students. I'll be buying a second copy and
lending that out instead. Can't think of higher praise than that.
East
of West is less suitable as “educational” material.
The plot moves forward, characters develop, and the world becomes more and more
immersive. If I’m not quite as much a fan of Babylon (the putative Beast of the
Apocalypse) as the writer seems to be then this is amply compensated for by the
creators’ outstanding sense of timing. I say timing instead of pacing because,
allied with the visuals, certain sections are incredibly cinematic and it’s the
beats, the changes of pace—the quiet pause in the midst of world altering
negotiations or the frustrated gag slotted into a hail of precision violence—that
work in real time to propel you through the story. Quiet contemplation of a
sunrise should come across as corny as all hell, but in the context built for
it here is simply stunning. Still no answer as to the Pestilence/Conquest
question, though.
So where does that leave us regarding the
whole American Frontier thing? Both comics, at least, have moved beyond the uncritical
‘noble savage’ representations. While East
of West definitely flirts with this trope as regards The Endless Nation,
they’re also the most technologically advanced faction and have motivations as
complex and venal as any of the others. I’m not yet sure whether this
represents a reinforcement or a subversion, but it’s definitely a dialogue of
some sort. Lumberjanes is less
engaged: the wilderness exists here primarily as the stage on which the play is
set, rather than a player in its own right, and the comic's quite clearly
chosen to engage primarily with the ‘boys’ aspect of the ‘Boy’s Own’ tales it’s
riffing on, so leaves the background stuff entirely in the background.
(I'm fucking nailing the stylistic variation today, aren't I?)
There is, I suppose, more that I could say
on how while both books present us with a vision of nature that is both
sustenance and threat, the stress is very much on the latter: East of West goes as far as to blatantly
manufacture the hellish dystopian landscape Babylon sees through his visor, and
Lumberjanes, for all that it
beautifully mocks the stereotypically male view of nature as a thing to be
dominated, still presents it as a series of obstacles to be overcome. Wolves,
eagles, river monsters, and poison ivy all threaten out heroines, who overcome
them through teamwork and friendship, those most civilizing of forces. So for
all nature's threat, this is the triumph of civilization over nature—even the
sasquatches have ipods—as East of
West parallels and indeed expands upon this to give us the triumph of love over death. Gotta love the yanks and
their optimism.
And having thus emphatically booked a seat
for myself in pseud's corner, I'll wrap things up. East of West and Lumberjanes
offer two enjoyable visions of the American fontier that are very different yet
ultimately spring from similar sources. You could do worse this summer than spending
time with either of them.
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