Graphic Novel Review: Madame Choi and the Monsters: A True Story

 reviewed by Cord A. Scott, UMGC-Okinawa

Patrick Spät and Sherce Domingo; translated by Michael Waaler. Madame Choi and the Monsters: A True Story. London: Self-Made Hero Publications, 2024. ISBN 978-1-914224-22-5. $22.99. https://www.selfmadehero.com/books/madame-choi-and-the-monsters-a-true-story

Sometimes true historical stories seem so outrageous that they can feel like a fictional script. When visuals such as comic art are added, the stories become even more engaging. Madame Choi and the Monsters is one of those stories -- so engaging that it seems that it must be fake. Here is the book’s advertising blurb:

The incredible-yet-true story of celebrated South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee, abducted in 1978 by North Korean secret agents on the orders of their film-crazed future leader Kim Jong-il. Six months later, filmmaker Shin Sang-ok, Choi Eun-hee’s ex-husband, is abducted in turn. Choi and Shin remain unaware of each other’s fates until they meet again at a dinner hosted by Kim Jong-il in 1983. Kim forces Choi and Shin to make films, including the infamous kaiju cult classic Pulgasari (1985), all while convincing the world that they serve North Korea willingly. Choi and Shin’s love rekindles slowly in this reunited captivity. Only at the 1986 Vienna Film Festival do they escape, fleeing in a daring car chase to the American embassy.

The script of Madame Choi was written by Patrick Spät. He took the approach of weaving in the script of Pulgasari, as well as biographies of Choi and Shin, as an effective way to give readers exposure to each creator as well as their most famous movie. Some additional liberties were taken with the storyline, particularly the spirit within the Pulgasari arc that allows for a conscience and narrator device. Both Spät and Domingo are based in Berlin, and this book is translated from German.

Spät’s script also allows readers to understand the other quirks within the North Korea (DPRK) regime of the 1970s. Kim Jong-il was so obsessed with movies that he had amassed a reported 20,000 film library, and the first part of the graphic novel shows that obsession as Kim sent infiltrators into the South to steal movies and bring them back. Eventually, Kim decides to take the next logical step of making his own films, but with South Korean (ROK) creators.

While Choi Eun-hee was well known as an actress, she was also from a conservative country. Soouth Korea had traditional expectations for people, and when Choi divorced her abusive first husband, she felt repercussions. She met Shin, a director, and they fell in love and married. While unable to have their own children (another stigma in South Korea) they adopted two children and continued to produced films that were both popular as well as critically acclaimed. They produced 60 films throughout the 1960s and 1970s. (48) However, the South Korea of the 1970s was a military dictatorship, and not the free democracy of today. They fell afoul of government censors, and this led to strain on the two, both professionally and personally. (63) This constant tension of creativity and morals is one that now seems oxymoronic compared to North Korea and its repression, and while the censored events in the films may seem quaint by today’s standards, within South Korea at that time they were serious.

Purportedly, the strain in the marriage from censorship caused Shin to engage in an affair with another actress. This is critical to the story as it set in motion their divorce, their problems with each other’s careers, and the lure by which Kim brought the two at different times to Hong Kong, when they were then kidnapped and brought to the DPRK to make films for him. They re-met in North Korea in October 1983. (127-129) As Shin noted, he had the ability to do things like blow up an actual train on film (140-141), but at the same time, he suffered far more degradation than Choi did, although both were held in North Korea for years.

The story of Pulgasari is a folk legend in Korea, and the film is a monster movie made with both Japan and China. The film itself also had themes of the corruption of power, the need of a supreme (and ultimately ineffective) weapon to defeat monsters, and the idea that enemy forces would be defeated on the strength of traditional values. In the end, it was this movie, made with some of the crew who worked on the Toho Studio-era Godzilla films, that served as the basis for their escape. The film was sent to the Vienna film festival, and Choi and Shin carefully planned their escape from the hotel where they were staying. After a high-speed chase through the streets, the two ended up at the US Embassy.

While the graphic novel ends with the destruction of Pulgasari, and the real-world result of the guards being shot for allowing Shin and Choi to escape, there is a timeline which gives the further movements of the film-making family, from their reuniting with their adopted children in Virginia, their time in Hollywood, and their eventual return to South Korea, which was also a time of clarifying the stories about their time in the North. Both have since passed away, without gaining any residual rights or money from Pulgasari, which is now considered a cult classic.

In all, the book is a quick overview of geopolitics and monster movie making, that also gives insight into a closed society, one that is led by dictators obsessed with the very culture they deride. It gives one pause to think about what other stories might be out there to tell.

Book Review: Hurricane Nancy by Nancy Burton, edited by Alex Dueben

Reviewed by Cassia Hayward-Fitch

Nancy Burton. Hurricane Nancy. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2024. 112 pp. US$30 (Paperback). ISBN: 9781683969839. https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/hurricane-nancy

 This retrospective of Nancy Burton’s work, Hurricane Nancy – one of the artist’s pen names – is the first-ever collection of Burton’s work, and the latest in a line of Fantagraphics’ collections of underground comix by female artists, preceded by anthologies such as The Complete Wimmen's Comix (2016) and Tits & Clits 1972-1987 (2023). Like these two earlier publications, Hurricane Nancy attempts to make the work of a pioneering female comix creator available to a broader audience, helping to alter public perceptions of the “boys only” nature of the underground comix movement. The book is split into four sections and begins with an introduction that situates Burton as the first female artist to emerge from the broader underground comix movement. This is followed by a selection of Burton’s comix and artwork, divided into work created between 1965 and 1971, and her new artwork from 2010 to the present. Finally, the edition is rounded off with an all-new interview by editor Alex Dueben. Here, Burton discusses her involvement in protest movements, the impact of her global travels and music on her art, her artistic background, and the factors that led her to cease creating art in 1971 and then to resume in 2010.

The presentation of Burton’s early work has an archival tone; the comix are mounted on a black background, with many of the pages featuring scans of the original artwork; sepia-toned and complete with stains, rips, marginalia notes, correction fluid marks, and faint blue tracing lines. This creates an intimate reading experience, giving the reader the impression that they are being made privy to Burton’s private collection. The selection of work from 1965 to 1971 begins with “Gentle’s Tripout,” a serial comic strip about a group of friends who go on a journey to find the “Wicked Wandering Hag” in the hope of lifting the curse that has rendered one of their number, Vera, silent. After the comic abruptly ends with an incomplete, half-finished strip, it is followed by a selection of artwork that resembles the psychedelic poster art of the time. Similarly, Burton’s artwork from 2010 to the present, which features gigantic figures who peer through house windows, larger-than-life cat heads, lizards, and birds, bears similarities to the Alice in Wonderland-esque poster art of the 1960s. Her style also resembles artists such as Aubrey Beardsley in that, where most psychedelic posters utilized brilliant color, Burton’s artwork, like Beardsley’s before her, is drawn in black ink on white backgrounds. Across both sections, the artwork is unaccompanied by captions, dates (except when this is indicated in the artwork itself), or contextual information. This alleviates the feeling that a critic is breathing down the reader’s neck, dictating the “correct” way in which the art should be interpreted. It is only in the interview that concludes this collection that Burton herself situates her work within the broader context of her life and artistic influences, which, alongside the underground press movement and poster art, she lists as art nouveau, abstract expressionism, and formline art.

Overall, this collection presents a decade-spanning overview of an artist whose career has one foot in underground comix and the other in poster art but who has yet to gain significant recognition within either sphere. Burton's entire career is contextualized through the inclusion of the introduction and interview, and the collection demonstrates the fluid divide between underground comix and other contemporary artistic movements, making it a valuable addition for scholars wishing to broaden discussions of female underground artists and the nature of the underground comix movement itself.

Book Review: The Comics of Asaf Hanuka: Telling Particular and Universal Stories

 reviewed by Cord A. Scott, UMGC Okinawa

Matt Reingold. The Comics of Asaf Hanuka:  Telling Particular and Universal Stories. Boston:  Academic Studies Press, 2023. 260 pp. US $40.00 (Paperback). ISBN:  979-8-8871-9213-0. https://www.academicstudiespress.com/9798887192147/

In the course of popular culture analysis, politics can often cloud the reception of works as they come out. These distortions may come from perceptions of the writers, generalizations of their background or political stance, and their attitudes towards historical events. In the case of Matt Reingold’s analysis of Asaf Hanuka’s career and body of work, the first look (and possible assumption) of Hanuka’s stands may be different that the reality of what others may deduce.

Hanuka is, as Reingold notes in his engaging biography, a niche artist whose background becomes the basis for his themes in art. Hanuka is not only an Israeli by birth and citizenship, but also Mizrahi (Jew of Arab ethnicity) not the presumed Ashkenazi (European Jew) that make up much of the Jewish population of Israel. When combined with Hanuka’s left leaning political stance, many generalizations are quickly challenged. This is the point of Hanuka’s work.

Reingold spends much of the introduction and first chapter on Hanuka’s upbringing, early work with the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) publication Bamahaneh, which he notes often took a political direction opposite what was the official line, mostly because it was not read. His formal education was in France at the Emile-Cohl School, while his twin brother, Tomer, studied art in New York. Following a few significant offers (teaching, as well as work on Ari Folman’s film “Waltz with Bashir,” work on the Holocaust themes in Carton Jaune!), Hanuka also worked on a graphic novel called Pizzeria Kamikaze. The premise of this graphic novel was about a vast necropolis network of souls who have killed themselves but have not gone to anywhere good or bad, just to the nothingness. The main character Mordy seeks to find an end to his pain but only ends up finding out that things were better in life.

Hanuka settled in and began a one-page comic on the back page of the financial newspaper Calcalist, entitled “the Realist.” This series started in 2010, and often featured Hanuka’s own life and experiences as fodder for the comic. Again, the cartoons used the general themes that Hanuka established early on:  Israeli citizenship, his Jewish religion, and his status as Mizrahi. Hanuka, by his own admission, wondered why the comic was picked up as he did not work in economic terms, and his comic was not overtly funny (p. 52). In this regard, Hanuka’s work is similar in tone to that of Paul Madonna’s recent work on All over Coffee.

Within the Realist, Hanuka often uses science fiction, fantasy and famous comic book characters to show his work. The themes in his work are often universal, stating issues that many have run across in some form, such as young children trying to wake their parents on an average morning (“Dad, Wake up,” p. 57). While working with either universal themes, or the three principal themes, Hanuka’s politics have also shown through. He often noted the comparisons between IDF forces to those of the U.S. police forces in regard to handling protests, especially from minorities (64-65). Even at the time of the writing, when Reingold was conducting interviews with Hanuka, the veiled swipes at Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu came through the cartoon “Take Care,” which told the story of immigrant workers having their children deported from Israel, tearing them from their family, while showing the perceived trauma of an Israeli child being forced to go to a relative’s house. The universal theme of unease and the unknown future is downplayed when context is known.

Hanuka also utilizes historical figures from time to time, such as Theodor Herzl, to tell of the different perspectives within Israeli politics. Other cartoons have used the mascot of Israel, Srulik, or the struggles between the Orthodox Jews who fastidiously observe holy days, versus many Jews who only have a passive relationship with holidays such as Passover. In one cartoon, Hanuka shows his family frantically preparing for Passover, which, in this case, means a trip to the beach (From Slavery to Freedom, p. 78).

The third chapter discusses the sabbatical that Hanuka took from Calcalist, to create the graphic novel The Divine. The storyline which involved U.S. contractors attempting to exploit natural resources from a mythical country, worked off the real story of the Burmese twins who ran “God’s Army” in the early 2000s in Myanmar, and was also heavily influenced by “ukiyo-e” prints, as well as the Japanese anime, “Akira.” The two main characters, Jason and Mark, often are at odds over what to do ethically while exploiting a mythical country for natural resources. Mark has a moral compass, but needs this work to accommodate a wife and child, while Jason sees the country as one for mere exploitation, as the people are simple. One important aspect of Israeli artists in general, noted by Reingold, is that because of the constant warfare in Israel’s history, there is not a lot of fantasy within comics. There are simply too many issues otherwise to tend to directly.

The fourth chapter is Hanuka’s return to an autobiographical aspect of comic story telling. The issues of being Arab in ethnicity and a Jew in religion was often one of tension, and this struggle played out in Hanuka’s history, when a great grandfather was killed by a ward he had taken in. As with any sort of family history, especially one that is controversial, the facts Hanuka uncovered and drew into the series, were far more complicated than was first relayed via family storytelling. In this more recent aspect of Hanuka’s work, the differences between the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi are more pronounced, and he takes issue with the creation myth of Israel, noting that many Mizrahi were not necessarily welcome in the new Israel, and that considerable Palestinians were displaced by the creation (p. 150). This gives Hanuka both an insider and outsider perspective on Israel (161).

Finally, there is a section on Hanuka’s new project alongside his brother. There has been a dive into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) based on the moods of people. Entitled “moodies,” the NFTs elicit a variety of art to express both engagement of the viewer, as well as express through symbols the emotions of people.

The book that Reingold has written is engaging and thought-provoking. As noted at the start, Hanuka has been able to challenge generalities through his work. His perspectives have allowed different groups to be heard, or at least be recognized. In the political climate of 2024 where voices are often lost because of perceptions, this book helped to widen the view. In any review, a complete anthology of work would have been appreciated, but the work that was included was well-utilized.

Book Review: We Are Not Strangers by Josh Tuininga

reviewed by Shanna Hollich, retired librarian

Josh Tuininga. We Are Not Strangers: Based on a True Story. Abrams Comicarts, 2023. $24.99 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-1-4197-5994-9. https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/we-are-not-strangers_9781419759949/

Josh Tuininga’s We Are Not Strangers is not getting nearly as much hype as it deserves. Often billed as yet another “touching tale of friendship during World War II” (Kirkus), or a “slice of Seattle history” (Seattle Times), this historical graphic novel delivers much more than a trite tale of being nice to your neighbors, even (perhaps especially) during times of great turmoil.

The story itself is a relatively simple one, and though it is based on a true story from Tuininga’s own family lore, this work is first and foremost one of historical fiction. The tale follows Marco, a Sephardic Jewish immigrant in the Seattle area, as he witnesses the impact of American policies towards Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II. In his own quiet way, he works tirelessly to do what he can to help his friend Sam Akiyama, who is about to lose his family home and business. In this way, it is a familiar story of discrimination and its ripple effects throughout an entire community.

What makes this story unique, however, is the meticulous care and attention to detail that Tuininga has demonstrated throughout. The book begins with a foreword from Ken Mochizuki that gives some initial historical context and ends with an extensive Notes and Sources section that includes hand-drawn historical maps of Seattle, detailed descriptions of historical landmarks featured throughout the story, actual newspaper headlines from the time, and a glossary of terms. One of the most satisfying reader experiences I have ever had involved looking through the list and drawings of historical landmarks from the Notes and Sources section and then going back through the actual graphic novel to find where those same landmarks are drawn into the story, often only in backgrounds or scene settings.

This attention to detail in the artwork is perhaps the most satisfying piece of the entire book. One could pore over the pictures on these pages for hours and still find new details to admire. The art is realistic without crossing into the uncanny valley, a perfect dividing line between feeling real enough to drive powerful points home, but still being cartoony enough to allow the reader some degree of self-preserving psychic separation. The chapters tend to jump back and forth between the present and the past, and while this sort of narrative device can sometimes be confusing for readers, the detailed artistic settings and color schemes make it easy for readers to keep their place and bridge the gap between time periods. We can expect no less from Tuininga, who has a solid background in art and design.

This is truly a book for all ages, which makes it a valuable addition to any library (public, school, or personal). Younger children will appreciate looking at the artwork and having a simple understanding of the basic story, while older teens and adults will be able to delve in to more of the nuance and history that lies beneath. An afterword by Devin E. Naar, Professor in Sephardic Studies, sheds light on a particularly interesting and understated aspect of the story: the fact that Marco, while attempting to help fight discrimination against a marginalized community (Japanese immigrants), is himself a member of a marginalized community (a Sephardic Jew and speaker of Ladino). The cross-cultural solidarity on display here is both remarkable in that we see it so rarely in stories like this, but also in that it is not over-dramatized or used purely as a selling point. There are thankfully no “white saviors” here; even Marco provides his help quietly and mostly in the background, never seeking spotlights or accolades, just quietly doing what is right.

Abrams typically delivers a nice physical artifact with its books, and this one is no exception; make sure to remove the dust jacket in order to fully appreciate the illustrative details on the actual hardcover and both front and back endpapers. This book is a welcome addition to a pantheon of graphic novels that portray the experiences of marginalized folks, immigrants, and the history of America during World War II. Don’t sleep on this one.

 A version of this review will appear in the print edition of IJOCA.

Book Review: Ben Katchor by Benjamin Fraser

Benjamin Fraser. Ben Katchor. University Press of Mississippi, 2023. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/B/Ben-Katchor3

reviewed by Matt Reingold

            Benjamin Fraser’s recent biography of American cartoonist Ben Katchor is the first book to explore Katchor’s lengthy career and vast catalogue. Much like his previously published monograph Visible Cities, Global Comics (University Press of Mississippi, 2019), Fraser draws upon his own training as an urban geographer to consider the ways that cities take on a life of their own.

            Readers expecting a traditional biography that tells a chronological narrative of Katchor’s career will quickly realize that this is not the approach that Fraser employs in Ben Katchor. Instead, each chapter (aside from the introduction and the conclusion) is built around one or two of our senses – sight, touch, sound, smell, and taste – and how they are featured in Katchor’s illustrations of urban life. The cumulative effect created is a work built around showing the ways that Katchor creates an immersive and sensory experience.

            Fraser’s approach focused on the small details in panels like sight lines, noises, the ways that panels abut each other, the beautiful onomatopoeia created with the sounds of eating, and the ways that words can convey multiple meanings. He conducts beautiful close readings of the choices that Katchor makes to draw readers in to the richness of urban life. I left the Fraser’s biography with a deeper appreciation for Katchor’s techniques and world-building approach. At the same time, I would be remiss in not acknowledging that I also feel like I left the work with a limited understanding of the stories that Katchor tells in his comics or the larger thematic considerations that cut across his works (if any such exist). This is a consideration that Fraser, too, recognizes in his conclusion when he suggests that more books about Katchor still need to be written. Nevertheless, I found myself impressed with how Fraser engages with urban spaces and physical geography to analyze comics in a way that differs from other such scholarship. It is an emphasis on methodology, technique, and intention and left me thinking deeply about both Katchor’s cartoons and the urban spaces where I live.  

 

Book Review: Tokyo Rose--Zero Hour: A Japanese American Woman’s Persecution and Ultimate Redemption After World War II.

 reviewed by John A. Lent

Andre Frattino and Kate Kasenow (ill.). Tokyo Rose--Zero Hour:  A Japanese American Woman’s Persecution and Ultimate Redemption After World War II. Rutland, VT:  Tuttle Publishing, 2022. 128 pp. US $16.99. ISBN:  978-4-8053-1695-5. https://www.tuttlepublishing.com/japan/tokyo-rose-zero-hour-a-graphic-novel

Those of us who grew up in the 1940s certainly heard about Tokyo Rose but had no idea who Iva Yoguri was, let alone were we aware of the injustices she endured from both the Japanese and U.S. authorities, an unfair judge, a manipulated jury, and shameful reporters the likes of Walter Winchell, Harry Brundidge, and Clark Lee.

Iva Yoguri was a Nisei (born of Japanese immigrant parents and educated in the U.S.) who fulfilled her family’s wishes and visited a sick aunt in Tokyo in mid-1941. Her passage back to Los Angeles was thwarted when war against Japan was declared by the U.S. on Dec. 8, 1941. By November 1943, she was coerced to join Radio Tokyo as an announcer of Japanese propaganda, using the name, “Orphan Ann.” During her broadcasting stint, Iva found subtle ways to change her messages from what the Japanese intended.

After Japan’s surrender, Iva was accused of being a traitor, suffered through a stacked courtroom that sent her to prison for ten years. After serving more than six years, she was released. In 1977, President Gerald Ford granted Iva Yoguri a full and unconditional pardon, and in 2006, she was honored by The World War II Veterans Committee for “her indomitable spirit, love of country, and the example of courage she has given her fellow Americans.”

This is an important story that, like other travesties of injustice and inhumanity, needs to be told (or retold). Fortunately, comics, comix, and graphic novels, in recent decades, have unearthed some of them, such as the sending of Japanese-Americans to concentration camps in February 1942; the brutalization of Native-Americans, and the sad history of African Americans. There are many other injustices or controversial events, both historical or contemporary, deserving to be treated by graphic novels (e.g., the circus-like, 1930s trial of Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnapping/death of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s child; the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, etc.)

This type of investigative cartooning requires much research and a yeoman effort to get the emotional and cultural modes correct. Andre Frattino was very much aware of these needs--pulling information from “recorded testimonies, personal interviews, and documented statements” and including in his seven-person team, three of what he called “sensitivity” readers. The team provided a few extras to aid in contextual, historical, and linguistic understanding, such as an epilogue, timeline, quotes from actual broadcasts by “Orphan Ann,” and a small bibliography. Letterer Janice Chiang shared her own experience of “straddling two worlds and two cultures,” as Iva Yoguri did, in the Foreword, bringing in issues of assimilation, racism, and xenophobia, while Frattino’s Preface prepared readers to enter the visual story with background.

The publisher, Tuttle, has a long and proud history of bringing awareness to East Asia. Its founder, Charles E. Tuttle, served on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur in 1945, charged with reviving the Japanese publishing industry. He founded the company in 1950, and since then, Tuttle Publishing has brought out more than 6,000 titles, including James Michener’s classic, Hokusai’s Sketches.

Tokyo Rose… is an eye-opening volume, written and drawn simply, but meticulously and authoritatively, making it a book that needs to be read by all who exited an educational system that favored only the America is flawless refrain.