Book Review: From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics

 reviewed by Brian Flota, Humanities Librarian and Associate Professor, James Madison University Libraries

Neale Barnholden. From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics. University Press of Mississippi, 2024. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/F/From-Gum-Wrappers-to-Richie-Rich

 I was immediately drawn to the title of Barnholden’s book because of my role as an academic (comics) librarian. Librarians, particularly those working in or with Special Collections, are especially attuned to the materiality of comics, and often juxtapose them with materials more commonly associated with rare book reading rooms–such as illuminated manuscripts, illustrated hard-bound books, broadsides, serialized novels, early comic strips in newspapers, and dime novels, for example–to demonstrate for students the evolution of the form and its continuity with these earlier material forms. In a recent book chapter, Michael C. Weisenburg, the Director of Rare Books & Special Collections at the University of South Carolina, discusses how, in 1977, Pizza Hut restaurants gave away six DC Comics that reprinted Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman issues from the 1950s as part of a promotion. Despite the claim, on the back cover of these books, that “these comics are identical to the originals with the exception of the paid advertising,” Weisbenburg notes, “the format, cover, and other elements beyond the ads were also changed due to basic differences in production and distribution of the issues” (116). He concludes his discussion by arguing, “The point is not to scrutinize the historic claims of either DC or Pizza Hut but to show how diffuse comic books were during this period and to illustrate how being mindful of the bibliographic elements of any given copy might teach us unsuspected things about comic books and their history” (116).

This is a roundabout way of demonstrating the affinities between a librarian working with comics and Barnholden’s thesis in his book. In the introduction, he rightly acknowledges the slow turn towards the materiality of comics in Comics Studies. He is also correct when he observes, “although book history methods are present in comics scholarship, auteurism is still the predominant mode of comics criticism, and stories rather than editions are the common units of study” (17). As such, Barnholden selects four case studies to show how a cultural materialist approach to Comics Studies can deeply enhance and contribute to the interpretation and analysis of comics. The book’s four main chapters focus on the Uncle Scrooge story “Back to the Klondike,” which first appeared in Four Color #456 (March 1953, Dell Comics), the DC Comics series Watchmen (1986-87), the comic books associated with Harvey Comics character Richie Rich, and Dubble Bubble Funnies, the free, tiny comics given away with individually-wrapped pieces of Dubble Bubble Bubblegum. With each example, Barnholden provides rich material analyses, unraveling how meaning can and is changed in these properties over the course of time.

His first two examples, “Back to the Klondike” and Watchmen, pierce through the auteurist approaches that have been broadly applied to these works in Comics Studies scholarship. Barnholden traces the printing history of the notable Uncle Scrooge story over time from its first appearance in 1953 in a comic book that cost 10 cents to its inclusion in Vol. 12 of hardcover series of books published by Fantagraphics titled The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library in 2012 with a cover price of $35. When it first appeared in 1953, its artist and writer, Carl Barks, was unknown to all, recognized by Walt Disney comics obsessives as ‘the good duck artist.’ He is not credited at all in Four Color #456. The credit goes to the Walt Disney brand instead. In subsequent 1966 and 1977 reprints, Barks is again uncredited. These two reprints come in slightly different sizes, have different stories packaged with them, are colored differently, and have different advertisements. After Barks’ identity becomes known, the nature of subsequent appearances of “Back to the Klondike” changes drastically. Barks claimed pages were cut from the original issue, and since the original art for the issue no longer exists, it was recreated by Barks in the early 1980s and added to later reprints of the story. Barnholden discusses in great detail the changes made to this story, its recontextualization over the decades, and how contemporary readings of Barks’ work remove the “lowbrow” context which they were originally part of and replace it with the prestige afforded to the “graphic novel.” This first section is a great example of Barnholden’s approach, one in which materialist approaches successfully blend with close readings, and one he will repeat, with different emphases, in the chapters that follow.

In his chapter on Watchmen, the emphasis shifts, because, unlike the Barks story from 1953, the twelve-issue DC Comics series, written by Alan Moore with art by Dave Gibbons, was “an instant classic,” immediately recognized as a significant work upon its publication in 1986 and 1987. Commonly considered part of the highlights of 1986 which led to the popularization and codification of the “graphic novel” trade paperback–which in time would become the primary printed means of reading comics–along with Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight, Watchmen did not appear as a bound single-volume collection until late 1987. Due to the popularity of the series in this format, and writer Alan Moore’s unwillingness to participate in its subsequent rebranding and corporate canonization by DC Comics, Barnholden argues that reprints of the series that follow, containing added material, commentary, and pricier “prestige” editions, impose a highly-manicured edifice around this instant classic. In one interesting aside, he notes that the first trade paperback printing adds the Juvenal quotation “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“Who watches the watchmen”) after the text, which did not appear in the original twelve-issue series. The quote is added in the context of the long-forgotten Tower Commission report on the Iran-Contra scandal, which is referenced nowhere else in the series. Barnholden argues, “The citation places Watchmen in conversation with the world around it in an unusually direct manner, part of the trade paperback’s agenda of positioning Watchmen as a weighty graphic novel with something to say about ‘real life’ using the debased genre of superheroes” (55). In these ever-evolving attempts by DC to shape the continuing sales of Moore and Gibbons’ comic, Barnholden writes, “Watchmen has come to exemplify a certain kind of prestige comic book, one that transcends its genre subject matter and context through the use of realism and becomes timeless rather than remaining dated” (80). I think this gets to the core of his project: using cultural materialism to unmoor the perceived and/or received timelessness affixed to canonized works by the cultural and corporate monoliths who have ascribed those values, by pointing out the (possibly contrary) systemic values in place at the time of their original production.

 The next two chapters are not quite as engaging, but that is mainly the result of Barnholden choosing subjects–the character Richie Rich and Dubble Bubble Funnies comics–which lack the fan and critical apparatus afforded to the works of Carl Barks and Alan Moore. Barnholden is not trying to “rehabilitate” or canonize these two comics series, but rather illustrate how these two different cultural artifacts have been relegated to figurative and literal dustbins of (comics) history. In the case of Richie Rich, a “glut” of product in the 1970s and 1980s–at one point over thirty different Richie Rich titles were in production at Harvey Comics simultaneously–led to the company’s demise. Barnholden cites how subsequent rehabilitations of the character (such as the 1994 live action movie, directed by Daniel Petrie and starring Macauley Culkin as the titular character) failed to resonate, culminating in the contemporary use of “Richie Rich” as an insult. His analysis shows how this is at odds with the ways the character is portrayed in the comics, suggesting a complex and strategically misremembered cultural memory regarding the character.

 In his analysis of the Dubble Bubble Funnies, he differentiates them from Bazooka Joe, another tiny comic given away with pieces of Bazooka bubblegum, because comics and art world luminaries such as Art Spiegelman and Wesley Morse were, at times, involved in their production. He discusses these comics in terms of “trash”: “While Bazooka Joe made a return from the trash through the operations of nostalgia and the association of several famous creators, Pud [the main character in Dubble Bubble Funnies] remains in the cultural sphere of garbage” (125). The role of trash is important for his discussion. He astutely observes:

 The rhetoric of trash also existed for comics creators. The attitude that, in the words of historian David Hajdu, comics were “a diversion that may serve a purpose for a time but is best considered abandoned before too long,” could also be expressed with the same rhetoric of rubbish put forth by [comics historian Les] Daniels, [historians George] Perry and [Alan] Aldridge, the Senate [S]ubcommittee [on Juvenile Delinquency], and [Helen] Meyer [the longtime president of Dell Comics]. Of course, this rhetoric also reflects the material fact that as ephemera, the majority of comics and comic books were literally trashed [...] [T]he evaluative words used here indicate a midcentury conversation in which people with a variety of relationships to comics, from fans to politicians, could agree that there was something trashy (and not booky) about comics, a move that eventually had to be undone by salvage. (127, ellipses added)

 By commenting on the trashy and disposable nature of most comics throughout history, Barnholden’s project also seeks to highlight how many Comics Studies scholars have been guilty of positioning the subjects and objects of their study as prestigious and exclusive ones, and, in the process, reinforce the notion that all comics are trash save for a select certain few. The deliberate erasure of the history of comics as lowbrow cultural objects and transformation from cultural product to literal trash from these analyses obfuscates the trashy roots of comics, and that is something Barnholden has no patience for!

Because of the lack of a critical apparatus around either Richie Rich or Dubble Bubble Funnies, Barnholden employs some novel techniques for reading them. In the case of Richie Rich, he painstakingly attempts to capture every variation (he counts 43) in the drawing of Richie Rich’s face on the 1,723 covers he appeared on. His distant reading of the covers, which prove that Richie Rich’s appearance on the covers of his comics show him “luxuriat[ing in his wealth] in a way that the Richie of the stories seldom does” contributes to the fact that “Richie Rich” is now a term of derision for those with inherited wealth (104, 110). Sadly, it is a fairly laborious read to have him arrive at this rather anodyne conclusion. To assemble the collection of 175 Dubble Bubble Funnies he analyzes in the final chapter, he describes buying a one-kilogram bucket of Dubble Bubble gum to get a large and representative sample of the comics (134). (In the Acknowledgements, he writes, “thanks to everyone who has, over the years, helped me eat the bubble gum”! [ix]) This approach, random distribution, yields better results, though these one- and two-panel comics do not offer much to actually analyze, but Barnholden does his darnedest. While he was quick to point out Richie Rich’s renovated signification as a specific contemporary popular slur, he misses the fact that the name of the protagonist of Dubble Bubble Funnies, Pud, although created in the 1930s, has  slipped into the vernacular as a slang term for “penis” and “loser” in the 21^st century. I feel this is ripe for commentary as well. These criticisms are fairly minor though.

Barnholden’s first book is a fascinating, intriguing, well-researched and -theorized read that rises near the top of the heap of Comics Studies monographs. My only other criticism is that I wish it was longer! To return to Weisenburg’s example at the beginning of this review, I would love to read Barnholden’s take on those Pizza Hut giveaways from 1977, for example. I think even Barnholden would agree, as he writes, “Comics offered as ‘premiums’--inducements to consumers to purchase items–are an undertheorized material form of comics, where the cultural values associated with the materiality of ‘the book’ or ‘the magazine’ are replaced by the visibility of consumer culture in such marketing schemes, and by the related concept of trash” (113-4). Another example that comes to mind is the IDW-produced mini-comic that comes with Anchor Bay’s 2004 4-DVD “Ultimate Edition” of George A. Romero’s zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. I would love to read Barnholden’s analysis of this packaging, the synergies between movies and comics, and the history of film adaptations. But now I am just giving him more work to do, work that I or any other Comics Studies scholar could (or should) take up. That this book is inspiring such ideas as I write this is a testament to the quality and originality of the slim but dense volume From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich.

Works Cited

Weisenburg, Michael C. “Bibliography, Print Culture, and What to Do with Comics in a Rare Book Library.” Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library, edited by Brian Flota and Kate Morris, ACRL, 2023, pp. 103-119.

Graphic Novel Review: Kenji Miyazawa’s The Restaurant of Many Orders and Other Stories

 
reviewed by Jon Holt, Portland State University

Kenji Miyazawa.  Adapted by Yasuko Sakuno and translated by Moss Quanci.  Kenji Miyazawa’s The Restaurant of Many Orders and Other Stories.  North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle, 2024.  192 pp. $14.99.  ISBN 9784805318249. https://www.tuttlepublishing.com/japan/kenji-miyazawas-restaurant-of-many-orders-and-other-stories-9784805318249

                      

Billed as “the first manga version of three modern fables by Kenji Miyazawa one of Japan’s most read and best loved authors,” Tuttle’s next entry into their manga-ization of modern Japanese literature is the short and inexpensive collection of The Restaurant of Many Orders and Other Stories.  Those other stories are “The Acorns and the Wildcat” (“Donguri to yamaneko”) and “The Twin Stars” (“Futago no hoshi”).  The press release says that this book is “the first manga version” of Miyazawa’s work, but that is not true at all.  In fact, in the mid-1980s, Shio Shuppansha released a masterful five-volume “Manga House” (“Manga-kan”) anthology series that had some of the most amazing and varied artists of the day doing manga adaptations of Miyazawa’s stories into manga.  Witness that contributor list:  Mizuki Shigeru (Kitarō), Yamada Murasaki (Talk to My Back; Second-Hand Love), Nagashima Shinji (Mangaka zankoku monogatari), children’s picture-book artist Suzuki Kōji, manga artist and animator Murano Moribi, Hatanaka Jun (Mandaraya no Ryōta)—just for starters.[i]  For Tuttle’s book, we instead get Sakuno Yasuko (creator of The Conditions for Being a Princess [Himegimi no jōken], an 8-volume series published from 2002 to 2006).  As manga goes, Sakuno’s adaptation of these classic Miyazawa stories is passable.  She originally published these in Japan in 2010, according to the colophon.  Was her manga good enough to originally justify publishing in almost 200 pages, the equivalent of 47 pages of text (in Japanese)?  Was it then so good enough to republish her work, translated into English for a foreign audience?  After all, whether one reads the stories in Japanese or in English (as in John Bester’s superb translations of the same stories), one could probably actually enjoy the originals in less time than it takes to read them in this manga adaptation. 

If we put that aside, there are some merits to Sakuno’s manga adaptation of this children’s story author, who in Japan has a stature like that of Lewis Carroll in the West.  Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933)[ii] is not only one of Japan’s most well-read children’s story writers (even if during his lifetime no one did read him), but also he was an avant-garde poet.  Actually, he was a modernist writer. So, to adapt him into manga should be a pretty heady and steep challenge.  Fools rush in, as they say.  Compared to Tuttle’s other recent manga outings, like their horrifically awful Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human or their Haruki Murakami’s Manga Stories (volume one reviewed earlier this year in IJOCA), Sakuno’s work on Miyazawa here is not that bad.  Her manga is not great, but it is not that bad either.  She nearly meets the challenge.  For hard-core Miyazawa fans, it might be worth experiencing her effort, but I would not want Tuttle’s manga versions to be anyone’s “first Miyazawa Kenji.”

            In fact, like a lot of other of Tuttle’s new manga series entries, it really is better to think of these books as collections of illustrated stories, probably intended for a younger or teenage audience as a way to encourage students to read more Japanese literature.  At times, Tuttle’s offerings have barely aspired to be more than digest versions of novels or short stories. At the very worst, they are “Modern Japanese Literature for Dummies in Pictures.”  Certainly, the Dazai and Murakami collections reveal only a minimal desire either by the artist or the publisher to make the pictures really matter and add something to the enjoyment of the original author’s writing.  When Sakuno does succeed in elevating the pictures beyond visually answering the question of “what happens next?”, she does so by using small, quiet moments that require the reader to wonder instead “wait, what just happened?” or “what is happening now?”  These moments of quiet mystery are really what can make the original Miyazawa stories tick—so Sakuno is wise to try to use multiple panels or even the whole page to open up questions instead of simply providing answers, answers, answers to the reader.  Plot is never the point of a Miyazawa story, so kudos to Sakuno for respectfully handling the source material.

Figure 1.  A shōjo (girls’) manga approach to Miyazawa Kenji’s children’s story, “The Restaurant of Many Orders.”  Sakuno Yasuko, Kenji Miyazawa’s The Restaurant of Many Orders and Other Stories (Tuttle, 2024), pp. 22-23.

            A case in point comes early in Sakuno’s adaptation of the title story, “The Restaurant of Many Orders” (“Chūmon no ōi ryōriten”), where two avaricious and gluttonous hunters first have the tables turned on them when the remote mountain restaurant starts to give them orders.  Sakuno takes two pages to deliver this ironic turnabout in very minimal (but in no way minimally satisfying) panels (Figure 1, pages 22-23).  Much of the original story simply involves cutaways from the narrative to show isolated “sign” texts that both protagonist pair and the reader must pause to consider.  In Sakuno’s manga, too, she dedicates a whole panel to a panel of whitespace with text written on it.  It might seem a bit lazy or unimaginative, but in her way, Sakuno is respecting the source material.  She takes some liberties with the Miyazawa text in having her protagonists sometimes think (thought balloons) rather than voice (speech balloons) their impressions of the signs, but that is not altogether out of keeping with the feeling of the original story and it provides an interesting flow for the reader.  In Sakuno’s adaptation, the two bigoted hunters sometimes keep their ugly thoughts to themselves, as if each man is a bit embarrassed to share his petty thoughts with his petty companion.  The last panel on the page is a completely silent shot of the next (of many) doors leading deeper into the restaurant, effectively working to set up a growing sense of foreboding doom and claustrophobia.  If you want to keep score, this two-page and five-panel sequence came out of only four truncated lines of text.  This is why I mentioned that readers of the original text could probably enjoy the richness the Miyazawa in the original (or translated English) prose faster than by reading this Tuttle manga version. 

            Overall, Sakuno’s style here reads like a shōjo manga, with her open and airy panels.  Sometimes there is even the trademark layered page, where panels overlap over panels, balloons overlap panels, characters pop out and are layered over other panels and characters.  Many of the panels are cut into diagonals, so it feels much more like a shōjo manga from the 1970s or the 1980s than a contemporary text in girls’ manga mode.[iii]  As with other Tuttle manga books, the company seems to be targeting older readers with classic manga sensibilities in terms of the art, but the packaging otherwise is designed for readers actually in their teens.  For this reader, who enjoys classic shōjo manga, the older touch was quite welcome and at times I could completely appreciate what Sakuno was doing by opening up the story and the manga to moments of reflection.  The most important characteristic of classic shōjo manga is seen here every few pages:  we see the “interiority” (naimen)—the thoughts and feelings—of Miyazawa’s characters, who really only had such feelings inferred by his readers.  In other words, Sakuno’s greatest skill in adapting these stories into manga form was her brave move to allow her own manga readers to slow down and infer from minimal, often blanked-out visual context, that her characters are thinking.  Her manga readers too are forced to think and ponder what the characters are thinking and feeling.  Compare though her approach to that of Murano Moribi, who instead uses numerous beautiful panels to render with love and respect the wilderness of Miyazawa’s beloved Iwate prefecture (Figure 2), as seen in the Miyazawa Kenji Manga House (1985) anthology.  I must say that I favor the Murano over the Sakuno in terms of the former’s ability to present in pictures the larger worldview of Miyazawa, but Sakuno can convey something palpable and real, even though it is invisible.  Such is the power of manga.

Figure 2. Miyazawa’s worldview: what you do not get in the Tuttle Miyazawa manga.  Murano Moribi, “Oinomori to Zarumori, Nusutomori,” in Miyazawa Kenji Manga House (Vol. 2, Shio Shuppansha, 1985), pp. 6-7.

            Lastly, when it comes to manga-izing literature, one is curious how the translators and adapters will choose to comic-book-up the story through the use of onomatopoeia.  As seen in my review of Tuttle’s Murakami Manga Stories, the team had a special person who added onomatopoeia words to Murakami’s text that were never there.  In that case, the words were kept in the original Japanese in Romanized form, so unless the Anglophone reader knew some Japanese, most of those additions must have come across as noise and distractions.  In this Sakuno edition, it seems that she conservatively added or swapped in her own onomatopoeia on her own to convey action or feeling in combination with her panels and layout.  For example, in the original Japanese, Miyazawa often has the doors open with a clicking sound, perhaps showing the two hunters’ anticipation of the next door and the next room; in her manga, Sakuno often makes the sounds of the doors SLAM or BA-TAN shut— as written in this English translation.  Overall, this move on her part enhances instead the creepiness of this Restaurant of Many Orders. Moss Quanci, the translator, has wisely provided these English equivalents, so the action soundtrack is intelligible, even if not always necessary for the reader.  Sometimes Quanci fails to consistently do this, so among the sounds of WOOOSH and BANG, there is the odd holdover of ZAWA-ZAWA from the Japanese left untranslated. Having read these stories numerous times in the original Japanese, I can attest that Quanci’s English translations of the narration and dialogue are appropriate, and, for the most part, are in keeping with the spirit of the original text with minimal contemporizing of the language from the way it originally read in Japanese in the 1920s.  John Bester and Roger Pulvers are still, to my mind, the best translators of Miyazawa into English, but Quanci does not do injustice to the words of this beloved literary figure.          

      Is Tuttle’s Miyazawa manga worth buying?  Probably not when comparted to other manga adapted from literature.  Consider other options one has out there for one’s dollar that do something similar.  Zack Davisson’s superior and thrice Eisner-nominated translations of Tanabe Goh’s Lovecraft manga (Dark Horse Comics) are much more wondrous cross-media and cross-cultural comic adaptations of literature.  Fueled by an English translation based on that by Columbia Professor Emeritus Donald Keene, when Viz released Itō Junji’s adaptation of No Longer Human, the classic Dazai angst novel, they provided North American audiences with a far superior reading experience than Sakuno’s Miyazawa manga, because Itō’s manga visuals truly adds to one’s understanding and appreciation of Dazai’s words.  Interest in contemporary and modern Japanese literature is quite strong these days—which is a very welcome thing for this reviewer—so perhaps one should not complain about Tuttle’s effort to bring classic stories and novels to a younger demographic here in North America.  Will Sakuno’s comic-book version of Miyazawa spark a reader to go out and try to read him in the original prose format?  I have my doubts about that.  What is most interesting about this effort—and Tuttle’s larger push—to put modern/manga Japanese literature into the hands of new readers is that a major publisher of Japan-related books in North America believes that the market is hungry again to read Japanese authors, and, that manga is the vehicle to get them to do just that.  No one ordered Tuttle to produce all of these fusion dishes—much of them mediocre fare—but then again, maybe the customer isn’t always right.

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[i] I would be remiss if I failed to mention the most famous manga illustrator of Miyazawa Kenji’s works:  Masumura Hiroshi, an artist who always turns human protagonists into anthropomorphized cats.  His 1983 cat-charactered adaptation of Night on the Milky Way Railway (Ginga tetsudō no yoru), Miyazawa’s greatest full-length story, into manga was even adapted later into a full-length anime film.  To read more about the difficulty of working with Miyazawa’s stories like it that were often never completed, see my article on Night of the Milky Way Railway:  Holt, “Ticket to Salvation: Nichiren Buddhism in Miyazawa Kenji’s Ginga tetsudō no yoru,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 42:2 (2014), 305-345.

[ii] Japanese names should be listed in their proper order of first surname, then personal name, which I follow: Miyazawa Kenji, not Kenji Miyazawa.  I only deviate from this traditional practice when I am quoting PR material or book titles by Tuttle, who has chosen to reverse the order to please Anglophone readers and is not proper in Japan.

[iii] For a concise description of the genre’s visual characteristics, see Deborah Shamoon, Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan (Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 2012), especially Chapter Five.  For further discussion on how to teach shōjo manga in the classroom using Shamoon’s insights, see my chapter “Type Five and Beyond: Tools to Teach Manga in the College Classroom” in Exploring Comics and Graphic Novels in the Classroom (edited by Jason DeHart, IGI Global [2022]), pp. 46-63.

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: Batman and the Shadows of Modernity

reviewed by Felipe Rodolfo Hendriksen, Profesor y Licenciando en Letras, Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina

Rafael Carrión-Arias. Batman and the Shadows of Modernity: A Critical Genealogy on Contemporary Hero in the Age of Nihilism. Routledge, 2024. ISBN 1032423145. $180. https://www.routledge.com/Batman-and-the-Shadows-of-Modernity-A-Critical-Genealogy-on-Contemporary-Hero-in-the-Age-of-Nihilism/Carrion-Arias/p/book/9781032423142

Rafael Carrión-Arias’s Batman and the Shadows of Modernity is not just another analysis of a beloved superhero—it is a profound interrogation of the dark forces that shape our modern world, reflected through the lens of one of pop culture’s most enduring icons. By examining Batman as a product of our existential anxieties, Carrión-Arias crafts a narrative that pushes beyond conventional superhero studies and plunges into the philosophical depths of modernity itself.

At its heart, this book is a meditation on heroism and nihilism, themes that intersect in Batman’s tortured psyche. Carrión-Arias does not merely critique Batman as a character but positions him as a mirror for the postmodern age—a figure grappling with the collapse of meaning and the moral uncertainties of our time. He asks readers not just to observe Batman’s actions, but to understand the cultural and philosophical forces that drive them. It is a brave and ambitious endeavor that establishes Batman as not only a figure of justice, but a symbol of the fragmented self caught in the shadows of modern life.

From the outset, Carrión-Arias frames his study within the philosophical genealogy of Nietzsche and Foucault. Drawing on these thinkers, the author investigates how Batman emerges as a cultural product of late capitalism and existential despair. Carrión-Arias argues that he is not merely a hero, but also a reaction to the collapse of traditional systems of meaning. Rather than focusing solely on Batman’s psychological turmoil, Carrión-Arias positions the character as a reflection of the broader societal fears that define the modern age. And Gotham City, in his analysis, is no mere scene setting, but rather a manifestation of the existential dread that permeates contemporary urban life—a crumbling metropolis where the line between good and evil is blurred and where Batman must constantly navigate a world on the brink of moral collapse.

Where Batman and the Shadows of Modernity distinguishes itself from other analyses, such as those by Grant Morrison or Scott Snyder, is its willingness to tackle the philosophical implications of Batman’s role in a world stripped of meaning. While Morrison, for instance, explores Batman’s mythic dimensions and Snyder delves into his psychological resilience, Carrión-Arias focuses on the socio-political structures that both create and sustain Batman.

One of the book’s most compelling sections is its examination of Batman as a political figure. Drawing on Carl Schmitt’s concept of the “state of exception,” Carrión-Arias suggests that Batman operates as a sovereign figure who exists both within and outside the law. This paradoxical role reflects modern society’s unease with authority and justice, where figures like Batman become necessary yet deeply troubling symbols of order. Batman’s actions, while noble, reveal the fragility of the legal and moral systems upon which society depends. Carrión-Arias’s reading of Batman as an authoritarian figure has particular resonance in today’s political climate, where issues of surveillance, state violence, and personal freedoms are continually debated. By likening Batman to Schmitt’s sovereign figure, the author critiques the hero’s unchecked power, showing how Batman’s vigilante justice echoes the problematic dynamics of American exceptionalism.

The book’s philosophical backbone lies in its deep engagement with nihilism. Carrión-Arias draws extensively from Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, situating Batman as a tragic figure whose pursuit of justice is driven not by hope, but by a profound rejection of meaning. In doing so, Carrión-Arias presents Batman as a hero defined by his refusal to succumb to the chaos surrounding him. Batman’s moral code, particularly his refusal to kill, is framed as a Sisyphean effort to impose order on an inherently disordered world.

Carrión-Arias’s treatment of Batman’s villains, particularly the Joker, is another highlight of the book. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of the carnivalesque, the author argues that the Joker represents the ultimate embodiment of chaos and disorder, a figure whose very existence challenges Batman’s moral universe. The Joker is not simply Batman’s opposite; he is the embodiment of a world without rules, a world where meaning has been completely eroded. Carrión-Arias’s analysis of Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth as a polyphonic narrative adds depth to his argument, showing how the interplay of voices within the text mirrors the broader cultural debates about sanity, power, and morality.

While Batman and the Shadows of Modernity is a profoundly thought-provoking text, its density may be a barrier for readers who are less familiar with the philosophical frameworks the author engages with. At times, Carrión-Arias assumes a high level of philosophical literacy, particularly when discussing theories of Nietzsche and Foucault. While this adds intellectual heft, it may alienate readers looking for a more accessible exploration of Batman. That being said, the book’s strength lies in its willingness to tackle complex, often uncomfortable questions about heroism, morality, and the modern world. For those willing to engage with its complexities, Batman and the Shadows of Modernity offers a rich and rewarding exploration of one of pop culture’s most iconic figures. It is a book that not only deepens our understanding of Batman but also forces us to confront the shadows that shape our own world.

In conclusion, Batman and the Shadows of Modernity offers a significant contribution to both superhero studies and broader philosophical discourse. By positioning Batman as a figure intertwined with the moral uncertainties and existential struggles of the modern world, Carrión-Arias transcends typical superhero analysis and opens up new avenues for understanding the character’s cultural relevance. This book not only deepens our appreciation for Batman as a reflection of modern nihilism but also lays the groundwork for future scholarship on how superheroes function as ideological symbols in an era marked by fragmentation and crisis. As both a cultural critique and a philosophical treatise, Batman and the Shadows of Modernity stands as an essential text for scholars, philosophers, and comic book enthusiasts alike, one that will likely shape future discussions on the intersection of power, identity, and morality in the superhero genre.