<i>Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin</i>, and: <i>God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post–World War II Manga</i>, and: <i>Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip</i> (review)
2010; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/chq.2010.0004
ISSN1553-1201
Autores Tópico(s)Comics and Graphic Narratives
ResumoReviewed by: Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin, and: God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post–World War II Manga, and: Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip Craig Fischer (bio) Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin. By Pierre Assouline. Translated by Charles Ruas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post–World War II Manga. By Natsu Onoda Power. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip. By Nevin Martell. New York: Continuum, 2009. Two or three weeks before Christmas, my friend Beth asked me to go to the local comics shop with her. Beth's eight-year-old son Beckham had put manga on his Christmas list—manga are the Japanese comics published in paperback and available at every chain bookstore and comic store in the United States—but Beth knew that some manga is extremely violent and sexually explicit, and she wanted my help in finding a book appropriate for Beckham. We ended up buying two books for him: the first volume of Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist (a moderately violent but well-told fantasy tale) and a volume of Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&! (an all-ages comedy). I also recommended that Beth pick up Jason Thompson's Manga: The Complete Guide, a comprehensive survey of manga titles rated for quality and age-appropriateness. I realized, though, that Thompson's book, which came out in 2007, is already out of date. There's been hundreds (if not thousands) of manga volumes translated into English since then, including such acclaimed books as Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack and Naoki Urasawa's Pluto. And then I wondered: what other books out there, besides Thompson's, guide parents in their purchases, and guide librarians when they order manga and other types of comics for their collections? What books give teachers the information they need to incorporate comics into their classrooms? It seems to me that there's a dearth of solid, introductory-level critical texts about the comics medium as a whole and about important cartoonists in particular, though perhaps this situation has begun to improve. Three recent books—Pierre Assouline's Hergé, Natsu Onoda Power's God of Comics and Nevin Martell's Looking for Calvin and Hobbes—aspire to be comprehensive, accessible biographies/critical studies of their subjects, though these books vary widely in quality. Pierre Assouline is a Parisian journalist and author whose previous books include biographies of writer Georges Simenon and photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Undoubtedly, Hergé is a more widely read writer than Simenon and a more popular visual artist than Cartier-Bresson. The twenty-three book-length comic adventures that Hergé wrote and drew (with a cadre of uncredited assistants) about the boy reporter Tintin between 1930 and 1976 still command a worldwide audience in the tens of millions. An example of Tintin's clout: Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are collaborating on a Tintin movie, and it takes these two cinematic powerhouses to equal Hergé's singular impact and popularity. [End Page 320] In his introduction, Assouline writes that he took on the project because Hergé's heirs gave him total access to the artist's papers and files. This caught my attention; I've read several books on Hergé, and I was hoping that Assouline's unprecedented access to the Hergé Foundation archives would result in new revelations, but not so. In large measure, Assouline's Hergé is a well-written recapitulation of facts already presented in various sources (most notably for U.S. audiences, in the documentary Tintin and Me [2003], which aired as a program in the PBS series POV in 2006). All the chronicles of Hergé's life, including Assouline's, focus on the same formative influences, including his love for the Boy Scouts, his early work for the Catholic newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle (Twentieth Century, edited by conservative priest and Hergé mentor Norbet Wallez), his friendship with Chinese artist Chang Chong-Chen, and his two marriages. Rabid Tintinophiles may not learn anything...
Referência(s)