Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #215 by Drew Barth

Turning Against

I’ve written in the past about how comics can help to illuminate some more obscure moments (to a western audience’s understanding) in history. Much of the time, these accounts can help to draw readers in with compelling visuals that create immediate connections to the people being talked about or help to immerse their audience in the moment. And that’s what these graphic novels should be doing: illuminating and immersing. And that’s exactly what Andrea Ferraris’ graphic novel, The Battle of Churubusco, does so well as he shows us a soldier’s view of one of the more devastating battles of the Mexican-American War.

Ferraris begins this story in media res, after the titular battle, with characters we’ll come to know well, all culminating in finding the body of the story’s focus. Gaetano Rizzo, a Sicilian immigrant, based on a real soldier, has troubling dreams. He’s seeing a wolf with peculiar eyes and is being chased by voices he can’t understand or recognize. The captain of his small band is intrigued by his dreams, believing they may be able to lead them in the direction of the San Patricio Battalion—a group of deserters made up of immigrants from the US army who joined Mexico’s side in the Mexican-American War—which has eluded him for some time. Rizzo, however, is one of those immigrant soldiers, one promised citizenship and land so long as he fights in this war. After his group raids and kills a home filled with a farmer, his dogs, a child, and a few Mexican soldiers, Rizzo’s conscience can no longer take the violence he has to be accomplice to.

The rendering of this story is where much of its impact comes from. Ferraris utilizes a distinct charcoal style that continually straddles the line between impressionistic and stylized realism. His landscapes, particularly in the story’s opening, take on this vast, sweeping feeling even while much of the page is covered in a dark charcoal haze. But that haze mainly hangs over the aftermath of violence—either the titular battle or Rizzo’s own scuffle with another soldier. And their faces, one almost obscured with his charcoal stubble, provides an essential contrast to the world surrounding them. And this is only broken with the stark white clarity we see as the story moves forward and into the San Patricio’s hidden plateau. Ferraris’ eye continually points us toward the feeling of the moment more than anything.

There’s only so much history that can fit into a single volume and it’s comics like The Battle of Churubusco that help to fill in some gaps. While Rizzo is only based on a soldier in this battle, his story is not unique as the San Patricio Battalion was made up of Irish, Italian, German, Spanish, and Polish immigrants who realized the US’s war was only an exercise in cruelty. But it was that cruelty that would eventually lead to their demise as the battle ended bloodily and the war ended under a year later.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #210 by Drew Barth

Rush of Blood

Greed can make us all monstrous. Sometimes this is more literal than not. Greed can start to strip away chunks of humanity like trying to dig gold out of your skin. Anyone in the Yukon Territory during the gold rush at the turn of the last century could attest to that, provided they hadn’t already passed from exposure, violence, or old age. But then that’s what a series like This Hungry Earth Reddens Under Snowclad Hills by Si Spurrier, Nathan Gooden, Addison Duke, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou can show us despite the passage of time—even if their telling exaggerates some of those more monstrous qualities.

The Rush centers on Nettie Bridger and her search for her missing son, Caleb. Her husband had taken their boy into the gold rush to find their fortune and reappeared some time later without him, raving about the cold and his lack of luck. This only spurs Nettie forward to find her missing, diving deep into the Yukon Territory and to the tiny village of Brokehoof. It’s there she encounters The Pale, a man with a hole for a face that stops anyone from leaving Brokehoof’s gold mining valley, as well as the bitter cold that traps people in the village just as much as The Pale’s bullets. But the story of Brokenhoof unfolds around Nettie as she digs for more information on her son—from the land claim made in his father’s name to his disappearance from the village to the funeral that was supposedly held for him. The homestead claim of Brokenhoof keeps the more monstrous at bay, but the fever for gold festers throughout the village while burying the secrets of Caleb’s disappearance.

Spurrier, Goode, Duke, and Otsmane-Elhaou give us the monstrous in an uncompromising way. For the most part, every person in Brokehoof harbors something within them—be it the fever for gold or the greed that drives them to kill without compromise—except Nettie. Her thoughts and mission are singular: find her son. In a way, this protects her from the more monstrous aspects of Brokehoof and the gold that has drawn so many people there, but it also leaves her open to the more physical monstrosities of the valley. The Pale itself looms on the edge of the valley as a constant threat while a massive, decrepit moose invades Nettie’s dreams and obscures her visions of Caleb’s final moments. There is a deep vein of rot throughout Brokehoof that permeates everyone’s lives, some more than others.

The Rush is one of those short series that Si Spurrier is known for—a quick blast of six to ten issues that makes a reader sit and think about what they know about comic storytelling. It’s the slow unfolding of information and the percolating drama book-ended by a singular character that drives the narrative like an engine that has become his staple. And with Goode, Duke, and Otsmane-Elhaou, it’s the kind of series that feels like a classic with the rest of his work. 

Get excited. Get monstrous.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.