Four graphic novels, among the many fascinating titles hitting stores this winter, delve into a range of subjects: the stark politics and emotional legacy of the Mariel boatlift, a family’s fraught experiences with digital reincarnation, thrilling exploits of hip-hop’s pioneers and a graphic adaptation of a beloved Italian book series.
Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey
By: Edel Rodriguez. Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 304 pages, $29.99.
One of America’s smartest illustrators, Edel Rodriguez grew up in a small Cuban town where paranoia was as rife as poverty. His graphic memoir “Worm” grippingly evokes his life’s dramatic turns and how political passions turn to hate. The book’s title derives from the slur hurled by pro-government Cubans against those who decided, like Rodriguez’s family in 1980, to leave what he calls an “island prison.”
There are glimmers of Cuban kitsch: lush landscapes, fading colonial architecture, ironic revolutionary art. But though Rodriguez spent only nine years in Cuba, his memories have scars like those of escapees from other oppressive regimes.
Readers buying into the revolution’s utopian mythology will be disturbed by the harrowing violence (a student mob beats a teacher to death) and thought control (people terrified of being overhead by a “chivato,” or government snitch). But those wanting a schematic “Communism bad/America good” narrative may be disappointed by Rodriguez’s take on Donald Trump: “I saw shades of my childhood in Cuba, of the repudiation acts against people considered enemies of the homeland.”
Rodriguez’s MAGA anguish — his image of an orange-faced Trump holding the Statue of Liberty’s severed head was a common sight at protest rallies — grew as America seemed to turn against refugees like himself. Rodriguez ends “Worm” with a note of potent familial love, tinged with the anxiety of somebody who has lost one country and worries about losing another.
My Brilliant Friend: The Graphic Novel
By: Elena Ferrante, adapted by Chiara Lagani, illustrated by Mara Cerri. Publisher: Europa Editions, 256 pages, $26.
Like many fictional narrators, the voice powering Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend” is an introspective personality enthralled by a more confident pal. But as fans of the Neapolitan Novels know, there is nothing common about it. The latest classic to get the graphic novel treatment (“Kindred” and “Watership Down” are among many others), Chiara Lagani’s adaptation targets the story’s emotional core: the impassioned yet combative relationship between narrator Elena and Lila, who morphs from friend to enemy to doppelganger.
Growing up during the 1950s in a poor neighborhood outside Naples, the two bond as precociously smart girls in a world that crushes the hope of living outside gender norms. As the pair moves into adolescence, the dichotomy grows between Lila’s impetuous, anger-flashing brilliance and Elena’s cautious, analytic worry. Their relationship splits into jealousy, misunderstandings and emotional re-engagements. In a dramatic, fireworks-strobed moment where Lila suddenly demands eternal loyalty, it’s unclear if she is driven by love or envy.
Though Lagani hits the story’s emotional beats well, her adaptation is a bit too serene. This is partly due to Mara Cerri’s illustrations. They cast a dreamy spell but their underpopulated spaciousness fails to transmit the clannish claustrophobia and nerve-rattling violence of Ferrante’s novel.
Artificial: A Love Story
By: Amy Kurzweil. Publisher: Catapult, 368 pages, $38.
Many artists would be too intimidated by having a father like polymath futurist Ray Kurzweil to draw a one-page comic about him, much less a whole book. But in the philosophical memoir “Artificial,” Amy Kurzweil faces up to that challenge.
The author of “Flying Couch” goes further by incorporating another imposing familial figure: her late grandfather Fredric, a Viennese composer who fled the Nazis and whom Ray wants to reincarnate through an algorithm. Amy’s deftly humane spirit makes this idea come across as a loving investigation of the ineffable rather than a Dr. Frankenstein project.
Deputized into sorting Fredric’s journals and letters so they can be fed into the program Ray calls “Dadbot,” Amy uses that structure to jaunt off on loosely associated recollections of her family, husband and career. Amy caricatures herself in winning self-deprecation as an anxiety-rattled New Yorker cartoonist (is there any other kind?) and as the frazzled artist barely keeping up with Ray’s laser-focused scientific inquiry.
Unsurprisingly, Ray’s fantastic techno-utopianism — he popularized the “singularity,” the claim humans can achieve immortality by uploading their consciousness to computers — comes across better when communicated by his daughter. “Artificial” brings the potentially absurd aspects of its story down to Earth with humor, spirit and a loose, Alison Bechdel-like style that brings light to the mortality-fraught subject.
Hip Hop Family Tree: The Omnibus
By: Ed Piskor. Publisher: Fantagraphics, 504 pages, $75.
Every genre of music deserves as passionate, raucous and encyclopedic a treatment as Ed Piskor’s “Hip Hop Family Tree: The Omnibus.” This deluxe edition collects Piskor’s four-volume, Eisner Award-winning graphic history of early hip-hop. Communicating the movement’s frenetic energy through an exaggerated, 1970s comic-book aesthetic and crackling with edgy humor, the book is densely researched and deeply serious.
Piskor starts at the source: Bronx parties, circa 1973, where DJ Kool Herc created a new music by mixing two simultaneously playing records. But while it highlights trailblazers like Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, the story branches unexpectedly like a true family tree.
Less-remembered artists like the Disco Brothers and Newcleus get their due. Later, the first generation is challenged by boundary-smashing upstarts Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys. Piskor is New York-centric but still dips out to the nascent Los Angeles and Philly scenes, where Ice-T and the Fresh Prince were honing their craft.
Battle raps, feuds and larger-than-life personalities fit Piskor’s exuberantly combative visuals. The book also details the genre’s cross-pollination with New York’s punk, New Wave and avant-garde art scenes through trendsetters like Fab 5 Freddy and Rick Rubin. While ending abruptly in 1985, Piskor seeds origin stories for hip-hop’s next stars such as Q-Tip and Dr. Dre.
Lavishly packed with extras like an over-the-top Criterion DVD gift set, “The Omnibus” is an extremely giftable collection and a fitting tribute to the 50th anniversary of one of America’s greatest music genres.
