Graphic Novel Review: Champion by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Reviewed by Brian Flota, Humanities Librarian (Professor), James Madison University

Champion, written by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld and illustrated by Ed LaRoche. Ten Speed Graphic, 2025. ISBN 9780593835746. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/747045/champion-by-kareem-abdul-jabbar-and-raymond-obstfeld-illustrated-by-ed-laroche/ 

    Five days prior to writing the first draft of this review, I turned 50 years old. For most of that half-century, I’ve been a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers. This means I’ve long been familiar with the life and career of Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was a key part of five championship teams during his tenure with the Lakers from 1975 to 1989. As a fellow record collector, I’ve always been touched by this anecdote. When his house burned down in 1983, one of the things he lost was a massive collection of treasured jazz music. In the aftermath of the fire, fans presented him with many of the records the jazz aficionado lost. This is but one testament to how beloved a public figure he is.

    This is but one relatively minor anecdote in a lifetime filled with serious political, cultural, and religious commitment off the basketball court. When he rose to fame as a basketball player at Power Memorial Academy in Manhattan as a high schooler, he was known as Lew Alcindor. During his three years as a starter at UCLA (1966-1969), during the reign of the legendary coach John Wooden, he led the team to three national championships and a record of 88-2. If one watches the first part of Ezra Edelman’s fantastic documentary O.J.: Made in America (2016), a stark contrast is marked between the UCLA center and his peer O.J. Simpson, then the star running back at crosstown rival USC. Simpson, also a young Black man, was a people-pleaser who sought fame and adulation while avoiding controversy (until 1994, that is). There is no way on Earth he would have attended the Cleveland Summit (as Edelman’s documentary makes clear). The event was organized by former NFL football player Jim Brown in June 1967. Eleven prominent Black athletes, including the 20-year-old Abdul-Jabbar, then still a college athlete, gathered to discuss the decision by heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali to declare himself a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, costing him his championship belt and income. The next year, Abdul-Jabbar took a big political stand himself, boycotting the 1968 Summer Olympics in protest of the long-standing racism against Blacks in the United States. These decisions could have affected his professional prospects. It was a risk he was willing to take, but he ultimately withstood any controversy these decisions generated. Three years later, after converting to Islam, he publicly changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. As a young man, he demonstrated he was unafraid to take controversial stances that he was committed to, and sincerely believed in.

    Champion, written by Abdul-Jabbar with his long-time collaborator Raymond Obstfeld, might come as a surprise to those that only know him as a basketball player. In fact, Abdul-Jabbar has authored or co-authored over a dozen books, ranging from autobiography and memoir to history. Over the last decade, he has branched out into fiction, writing a series of books focusing on Sherlock Holmes’ brother, Mycroft. This resulted in the publication of his first graphic novel, Mycroft Holmes and the Apocalypse Handbook (2017). Champion focuses on an elite high school basketball player named Monk who gets caught vandalizing a rival school’s mural with original art of his own. This act could have a deleterious effect on his NBA prospects. As a result of his actions, he is tasked with giving a presentation on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s life off the basketball court, a presentation he must ace to escape punishment.

    Abdul-Jabbar, Obstfeld, and Laroche have put together a page-turner with a simple, but effective message: be a complete person with a variety of interests. While his imaginary case study of Monk focuses specifically on student-athletes, few of whom make it to the pros, and, when they do, aren’t pros for very long, the book’s core message of having multiple interests and skills is something any reader can benefit from. This isn’t just about “career prospects.” Throughout the narrative, Monk repeatedly states that he has only one goal: to become a professional basketball player. However, his instinctual knack for art, a talent he takes for granted, could provide a realistic alternative to his dream career. His teammates, coaches, and family work to convince him to take his art seriously, which he refuses to do for much of the narrative.

    Throughout the graphic novel, his peers and mentors have interests beyond sports, as shown by  “trading card” profiles of the characters. These cards provide information about their lives, their athletic accomplishments (when relevant), and life outside of sports. The first of these trading card profiles focuses on Anthony B. Bagwell, whose “position” is listed as “Security Guard” in a curved triangle on the card’s upper left-hand corner. This is the security guard who catches Monk in the act of vandalizing the team mascot’s mural at a rival high school. His card lists the following facts about him:

●             Ranks 3rd in security guards at Mountain Range Security.

●             Is on his 4th attempt at being a vegan (his record is 6 days).

●             Defeated in combat 3 times by wife, Ida, in Elden Ring.

●             Calls his 3-year-old son “Donut.” (2)

Another card gives us information about Monk’s “High School Basketball Coach” Jefferson V. Blaine:

●             Played center on Culver High School state championship team.

●             Played point guard on UCLA national championship team.

●             Has 4 “Best Dad in the World” mugs and 2 Teacher of the Year Awards. (9)

 

    As we can see in both examples, Laroche’s trading card profiles sidestep the traditional statistics and career highlight fare that make up the bulk of the text on the back of sports trading cards, giving equal importance to the personal aspects of their lives. Coach Blaine’s card reveals him to be flexible and adaptable. He went from center to point guard when he transitioned from high school to college basketball. After college, he became a father and a teacher, identities he is proud of. As the narrative progresses, we get other testimonials from Monk’s mother, Wanda, who was a point guard on UCLA’s women’s basketball team, and who is currently an ICU physician’s assistant, and his aunt Sissy, who once sang backup for Stevie Wonder and the Four Tops, recorded her own solo album in 1980, and is currently a record store owner where Monk works part-time (19). Throughout the story, Monk denies or tries to suppress his interest in things outside of basketball, including art, history, music, and social justice. Abdul-Jabbar and Obstfeld do a good job of keeping Monk’s internal tensuion unresolved for much of the book’s duration, which serves to make his story more engaging. 

     Abdul-Jabbar's graphic novel is a pedagogical tool to express some of the reasons he wants a character like Monk to know his story as well as the story of Black America. Kareem appears as a figment of Monk’s imagination as he’s working on his assigned project about the man. He points out the 135th Street YMCA in Harlem, where Kareem grew up. At first, during his youth, he saw it as a “crappy old building.” Then he learned “that Malcolm X, Claude McKay, George Washington Carver, Jackie Robinson, and Paul Robeson had all stayed or performed here” (32). On the next page, we get trading card profiles of each of these historical figures. He also highlights that inside the building is the famous Aaron Douglas mural “Evolution of Negro Dance.” Kareem says:

Looking at that mural back then, I instantly felt connected to the evolution it portrayed. Like them, I had started in the dark about who I was, being the person everyone expected me to be without really knowing who I wanted to be. Then, through the physical discipline of basketball and the mental discipline of reading, I had stepped out of the shadows into the bright sunlight of finding myself. (34)

       Through his research, Monk learns about the Harlem Riot of 1964, which began when an off-duty police officer shot a fifteen-year-old Black child, James Powell (59). Lastly, Monk learns about Kareem’s participation in the Cleveland Summit. These are three important parts of an aspect  of American history that have either been erased or relegated to margins in most mainstream, conventional, whitewashed histories of the twentieth century. Abdul-Jabbar, with his graphic novel specifically directed at a young adult audience, successfully fills in some of these gaps by effectively blending them with a relatable story.

    The weird thing about Champion is that the sections delving into the life of Abdul-Jabbar reads as self-hagiography (even if it may be a well-deserved self-hagiography). When Monk complains to his girlfriend Lark about having to write a report about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, she replies, “You mean the Kareem who …,” and then rattles off two entire pages of Abdul-Jabbar’s accomplishments on and off the basketball court (including his small but memorable role in the 1980 comedy Airplane!) (15). Throughout the narrative, even more Kareem facts are presented.

    Not surprisingly, Abdul-Jabbar and Obstfeld give us a graphic novel with a happy ending. Monk’s various interpersonal conflicts with Lark as well as his teachers, teammates, and family are resolved, and he gains a greater understanding of what it means to be a well-rounded young man. The narrative culminates with Monk and his community getting together to create a dazzling mural on the side of Aunt Sissy’s record shop titled “Evolution of a Champion,” which highlights eleven of Abdul-Jabbar’s accomplishments off the court. In this reviewer’s opinion, even if it does come off a bit strange and heavy-handed, as though Abdul-Jabbar is just patting himself on the back, there just aren’t too many people in this world who deserve that pat as much or as hard as he does!

     You do not have to know much about Abdul-Jabbar to like Champion. He, along with his collaborators, have put together a very accessible story. It has history, dramatic tension, life lessons, good advice, a bit of mystery, and even a little romance. To be commended is the artistry of Ed Laroche, whose illustrations are precise and stylistically varied. He brings Monk’s graffiti art to life in a style different from the one that dominates the rest of the narrative. This is not always an easy thing to pull off, but Laroche navigates between these styles seamlessly. Even if we do get plenty of “Kareem facts” in Champion, his story is clearly one worth telling, and he also wants you to know about his culture, his people, and all those who helped him become the man he is. Its breezy mixture of history, biography, and fiction makes recommending Champion a slam dunk.

Graphic Novel Review: The Brownout Murders

 Reviewed by Cord A. Scott, UMGC-Okinawa

Luke C. Jackson (w), Kelly Jackson (w), and Maya Graham (a). The Brownout Murders. Victoria, Australia:  Scribe Publications, 2025. 152 pp. US $24.00. ISBN:  978-1-9649-9213-6. https://scribepublications.com.au/books/the-brownout-murders

  World War II is a well-documented event within human history, and has served as the basis for a myriad of books, movies, and other media since it started. While many consumers of these media are often far removed from the events of that time, war takes on a simplistic form of a struggle between forces or the civilians who support that effort. One can easily forget the human elements that often become lost in the bigger picture. Crime is one such aspect. It is within this milieu that Luke Jackson and Kelly Jackson set The Brownout Murders.

Set in Melbourne in early 1942, the book centers on Beatrice, a young woman from a home beset with change:  a widowed mother, a flawed father, whose vices and death left a hole in the family structure, a flirtatious sister, another sister, who is an avowed Communist, and the uncertainty of the war in early 1942. The setting of Melbourne is also important as it was where American forces first entered Australia to fight in the Pacific theater The fear among the locals is that the Americans will bring an unsavory atmosphere to the town.

Beatrice’s older sister, Lizzie, becomes infatuated with the American servicemen, who look nice in their fitted uniforms, dance, and conduct themselves with a confidence that is very much the opposite of Australian men. However, this attitude often leads to aggressiveness, which exerts itself in drinking, sexual drives, and unwanted advances. Into this “Yank” invasion, a brutal murder occurs near where Beatrice, Lizzie, and their friends met some Americans.

Beatrice also deals with her own struggles as a young woman. She is trying to do the right things within her family and community. She volunteers as a warden to assist with the government-imposed “brownout”--a lessened use of lighting to prevent sightings by Japanese forces during the war, while also working with the Volunteer Defense Corps, which serves, as with the British Home Guard, as an auxiliary military arm. The purpose of the VDC was gathering intelligence, training others for possible guerilla actions, and preparing static defenses in case of invasion.

As another murder occurs, the city becomes more tense, and eventually, speculation is on the newly-arrived Americans. These interlopers, combined with natural rebelliousness of the girls, especially Lizzie and her friend, Maude, lead to dangerous actions, by sneaking out to a U.S. military-sponsored dance on Camp Pell, near the Melbourne Zoo. After a near sexual assault on Maude, combined with a third murder, the U.S. forces are placed in a police line-up. It is after considerable tension that a soldier is identified, arrested, convicted, and hanged for the murders.

While the characters are fictional, the recollections on which they are based were real. It is noted at the end of the book that Patricia Perry, who was an actual brownout warden in 1942, gave an interview describing the tenor of the era. The U.S. serviceman was real:  Eddie Leonski was convicted of the murders and was executed in November 1942, for his crimes. Just before his execution, he noted that he killed the women “for their voices,” which enthralled him. The end of the story also gives updates on the realistic scenarios:  one sister moves away, one dies of cancer, and Bea and Arthur marry, have four daughters, and go through the same worries and struggles that were there at the beginning.

The illustrations are in black and white and take on a tone of a classic suspense film from that era, similar to Fritz Lang’s “M” or Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lodger.” The illustrations are not graphic in form, but often give clear indication of violence without showing it. This creates a wider appeal for readers of all ages.

The story also touches on a variety of issues that can be easily overlooked within history. There is a dialogue between Authur (who works for the VDC with Beatrice) and her family, in which he is asked why he is not in uniform. He notes that he is considered unfit for service because of his eyesight. This sort of guilt for not serving was a pressure on both the man, and society, throughout the war. It also caused some to commit suicide out of shame. Beatrice’s sisters are also involved in changing mores within society. While Lizzie is more common (the idea of teen rebellion and love), Beatrice’s other sister, June, is a dedicated Communist. In the 1930s and 1940s, Communist involvement was far more active. In 2025, the idea of Communism is not as well understood. It is more often used as an insult without the full context of meaning.

Most importantly, the story arc deals with the issues of sexual assault and crime. An oversimplified view of history allows people to think that crime is much more prevalent now due to the breakdown of societal norms (music, lack of church attendance, sexuality). The story also goes into all too often used “explanations” of assault:  the woman is to blame as she gave off indicators. That aspect of the writing was one that was quite effective.

It does take a little while to determine who the characters are, and how they interact, but this is another common aspect of life, as well as media, so it is not a significant issue. In all, it is an interesting, and, for this reviewer, thought-provoking read.

 A version of this review will appear in IJOCA 27-1. 

Book Review: Conversations with Rick Veitch

 Reviewed by Joe Hilliard

Conversations with Rick Veitch, edited by Brannon Costello, University Press of Mississippi, 2025. 226 pages. $25 paperback, $110 hardcover. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/C/Conversations-with-Rick-Veitch

Conversations with Rick Veitch is the 34th volume in University Press of Mississippi's “Conversations with Comic Artists” Series. It follows the structure of previous volumes with an introductory overview essay, a chronology of the creator's life and career, and then a collection of interviews in chronological order, starting with the oldest from 1987 to a 2023 interview with the editor, Brannon Costello. Costello frames it all neatly in that introduction: "Veitch is both a shrewd observer of the pitfalls of the marketplace and an eloquent spokesman for the boundless potential of creativity." (x) And that's what makes this book so compelling. Not just Veitch's observations, but the consistency of his opinions over those 35 years. There are several strands that run throughout and intertwine with each other. As Veitch puts it: "[l]ike say you wanted to get a handle on the quantum, you might be able to through dreaming, because on the deepest level, we are made up of quantum bits, so why wouldn't we be able to dream about how we interact in the quantum realm?" (75-76)

And it's best to start with Veitch himself, as both an outsider looking in and insider looking out. His life really encapsulates the comic book world from the early-70s to the present: from underground comix creator to student of the first class at the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning, to mainstream books like Swamp Thing and Aquaman at DC, to his around-the-world of independents with Alan Moore, to self-publishing, to educational comic work, to his newest ebooks. It's interesting to see even as he works on the production side, as detailed in the 1963 interviews and his discussions on self-publishing, he talks of the art, not the business. In 1992, a prescient Veitch is looking forward, seeing what the corporate beast is up to. "People in twentieth-century America live, eat, breather, and defecate superheroes. All the time. Without even thinking about it. But the only problem with that is nearly all the superheroes are owned – lock, stock, and work-for-hire – by a few major companies who have no reason to evolve their characters beyond a certain adolescent level. And if this archetype is as vital and important as I think it is to our culture, then it has to grow. To keep it stifled is in a way to keep our whole culture stifled." (43) His constant concern with the art form, not the business, permeates the interviews, and indeed, his life. "My goal has always been to promote the art form, to explore the art form, to feed the art form, and maybe the collapse or the semicollapse that we're watching now is actually a good thing, because maybe new ways to get comics from creators to readers will develop." (155) This is Veitch in 2021 talking about the covid-caused collapse of Diamond Comics well before its final 2025 implosion. Veitch has consistently had his finger on the pulse of the comic world. "The people who run the business in comics are not thinking about the art form." (155) And the art is preeminent to Veitch.

Intrinsically tied to his view of the art form is Veitch's work in dreams. His dream comics, his most personal work, rolls directly from his early reading of Jung to the present. "It's deeper than that, a unique art statement providing a fifty-year record of the dreams of a modern human being that culminates in a real transformation late in life. For anyone who is searching for the meaning in their interior lives, it provides a model and, more importantly, a reason to keep going. Decades of dreamworking churn through all of the bullshit we have accumulated and open a door to something really beautiful and indelible." (189) It's where the art comes from. His Roarin' Rick's Rare Bit Fiends goes deep into that well, exploring not just his dreams, but that of other creators. Indeed, he see dreams as a source, that quantum connection. "If Keith Richards got the base riff for "Satisfaction" in a dream, he's still the author. Now there are a couple of possibilities there. One is, it's something he heard a bazillion years ago and it just sort of surfaced, it came back. The other possibility is that music is a mystic realm, where this stuff all exists. I like to think of it that way." (82) That view is echoed in Jenny Boyd's Musicians in Tune: Seventy-Five Contemporary Musicians Discuss the Creative Process (Fireside, 1992) where she quotes Richards: "I don't sit down and try and write songs, I wake up in the middle of the night, and I've dreamt half of it. … I am not saying I write them all in my dreams – but that's the ideal way." (Boyd, 102) For some artists, dreams are the backbone of self, and creation.

This leads directly into the next major theme of Veitch's conversations. Fundamentally, he sees community as necessary for the continued development of comics, as not just an art form, but in any form. "We want everybody to succeed; we want the art form to grow. We want everybody to have a chance at doing it. Manhattan publishing is much more about straight capitalism, selfishness; everybody's in it for themselves. If you can screw your buddy, you've got to do it." (98) Going back to his time with Joe Kubert, at the beginning of his career, Veitch expands that communal aspect. "We [Kubert and Veitch] would sit, and I’d pitch an idea to him, and the two of us would start playing with it. That's when I first really learned the pleasures of collaboration, where two people kind of surrender their egos to the story itself. It's not about who comes up with the idea that gets used. It's that it's the right idea for that story." (207) It's a mentality he goes back to again and again. Not I. We. As he notes in discussing his 1980s work with Alan Moore, John Totleben, and Stephen Bissette. "It was like, We gotta fix this, this is a beautiful American – worldwide – art from, and it's being strangled by business practices. So that's the difference. We were ambitious for ourselves to a point, but I think we were more ambitious for the art form itself." (119) When Americans used to think bigger about what society could do, should do, as he reflects on his own art education, and getting into the Kubert school. "This is back when our government actually would step in and help people when there was unemployment." (86)

Editor Brannon Costello neatly ties Vietch’s career together with last interview, pulling these disparate thoughts into one beautiful knot. Quoting Vietch's Azoth: "[F]antasies are all about generating wish-fulfillment scenarios for our fears and desires. But imagination tackles reality head on. We use our imaginations to build things, solve problems, make art." (214). Leave it to Veitch for the final word, looking to the future, dreaming the future as he always has.

"I see myself as an artist now who, instead of doing dystopian things, needs to do things to provide solutions to the problems of our world, or at least provide a spiritual direction for people to look toward to find a meaning in their lives." (200)

Graphic Novel Review: The Compleat Angler: A Graphic Adaptation by Gareth Brookes

Reviewed by Deborah Tomaras

 Gareth Brookes. The Compleat Angler: A Graphic Adaptation. SelfMadeHero, 2025. US $19.99. ISBN: 9781914224270. https://selfmadehero.com/books/the-compleat-angler-a-graphic-adaptation

        

    English comics creator Gareth Brookes is known for art comics using experimental techniques, such as the crayon-rendered A Thousand Coloured Castles, as well as The Dancing Plague, which examines the 1518 historical phenomenon through pyrography and embroidered panels. In The Compleat Angler, Brookes creatively revisits the past in comics form, this time via linocut prints and ink on bamboo paper.

     As a work of art, the comic is stunning. The weaving together of sharp linocut and dreamy ink-on-bamboo mimics the undulations of a river and the movement of the text. More meditative sections of Walton's work—poetry, philosophy, musings—are illustrated using ink on wrinkled and borderless bamboo pages. Delicate smudging, and wordless panels, highlight the slower-paced and contemplative nature of the passages.

    The comic flows between these contemplative sections and more straightforward descriptive passages discussing fish and angling, where animals move sinuously across and between crisp three-color linocut panels, the traversing of gutters emphasizing their dynamism. A curious compression of human figures within the panels creates a rough size equivalence between people and animals depicted, highlighting the interconnectedness between human beings and the environment that Brookes foregrounds in his Preface to the comic.

     In all, the art style and pacing of the comic ably convey the artist's vision of The Compleat Angler as pacifist contemplation, a calming salve in turbulent political times. Brookes also emphasizes Walton's environmental argument against those who damage nature in service of profit—another timely contemporary issue. The artist turns Walton's ecological statement into direct environmental activism, donating ten percent of the book's profits to the British charity River Action.

    As a "remix, a celebration of Walton's book, or an elaborate fanzine," per Brookes' Preface, the comic works. As a literary adaptation, however, the reader is left with questions. Brookes never specifies which edition of Walton's work is being adapted. Certain sections, like an observation that Romans consider the eel "the Helena of their feasts," seem to point to later versions, as that phrase doesn't appear in the first edition. But it's difficult to pin down, particularly because the adaptation is similarly opaque as to where and why historical language has been retained. The artist specifies in the Preface that "some of [the] original, unusual spelling" (but presumably not all) was kept: why daintie, but not eele? Brookes also "abridged the book comprehensively and altered its structure entirely;" as with the Ship of Theseus, it's uncertain whether the text is still The Compleat Angler after all the alterations, or a different book entirely.

    Conversely, the retention of Walton's original pronouns for animals is perhaps too historical—and problematic—for the contemporary reader. Brookes keeps Walton's masculine pronouns for most animals, purportedly to highlight both the antiquated feel of the text and "the sense of respectful harmony" between people and animals, per the Preface. However, that harmony is decidedly and only masculine. Animals receiving feminine pronouns uniformly conform to moralizing stereotypes of womanhood held during the seventeenth century. The otter is a gluttonous and unnatural despoiler of nature. The raven callously abandons her hatchlings in a later section that again couples women with the unnatural. The female carp "put[s] on a seeming coyness" before breeding with multiple male carp at once; her behavior is contrasted to the courtly male carp guarding and assisting her at the end of their encounter. The sole virtuous feminine animal, the lark, ascends to the heavens while singing, presumably due to her piety and purity. In an adaptation where the artist freely acknowledges taking "great liberties with the original text" in the Preface, one wonders why this potentially beneficial textual change was overlooked.

     Despite questions about the comic as an adaptation, however, it is, in its own right, an enjoyable, beautiful and meditative work. Don't expect it to be the complete Compleat Angler; as Brookes writes in the Preface, the comics adaptation "is in no way intended as a substitute for the original." Read it instead for the peacefulness, the prints, and the pike.

A version of this review will appear in either IJOCA 27-1 or 27-2.