Books

Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Gods of Jade and Shadow

OK, so here’s a book that reminds me of Neil Gaiman a lot. Part of it is the subject matter. The story is almost a primal narrative, brimming with character and story tropes spanning cultures. There are multiple references to fiction affecting reality, and how myths inform the present. There is even a talking raven.

“Words are seeds. With words you embroider narratives, and the narratives breed myths, and there’s power in the myth.

Casiopea Tun dreams of doing her own thing, of escaping from a family that treats her and her mother as outsiders, wanting more than the hint of a thousand-peso inheritance from her autocratic grandfather. One fine day, Casiopea finds an escape from her life of drudgery through, of all things, a Mayan death god, who she awakens from imprisonment. She becomes a willing co-passenger to this deity on a journey across Mexico, as he seeks to regain his powers, his missing body parts, and his throne from his treacherous brother.

“You’ll give me your name,” he said as the station and the town and everything she’d ever known grew smaller and smaller. She adjusted her shawl. “Casiopea Tun.” “I am Hun-Kamé, Lord of Shadows and rightful ruler of Xibalba,” he told her. “I thank you for liberating me and for the gift of your blood. Serve me well, maiden, and I shall see fit to reward you.” For a fleeting moment she thought she might escape, that it was entirely possible to jump off the tram and run back into town. Maybe he’d turn her into dust, but that might be better than whatever horrid fate awaited her. A horrid fate awaited her, didn’t it? Hadn’t the Lords of Xibalba delighted in tricking and disposing of mortals? But there was the question of the bone shard and the nagging voice in the back of her head that whispered “adventure.” For surely she would not get another chance to leave this village, and the sights he would show her must be strange and dazzling. The pull of the familiar was strong, but stronger was curiosity and the blind optimism of youth that demanded go now, go quickly. Every child dreams of running away from home at some point, and now she had this impossible opportunity. Greedily she latched on to it.

If you remember the first eight issues of Sandman, the arc of the god Hun-Kamé’s quest to regain the missing parts of his body follow a similar pattern, bargains and stand-offs (I was tempted to add ‘Mexican’ as an adjective there, but that wouldn’t have made sense except as a cheap chuckle) and the occasional bloody confrontation against demons, wizards, and even a succubus. As in American Gods and Anansi Boys, there is the thesis that the gods and mortals exist in a co-dependent manner, and that the locale determines the power and relevance of a god. The monotheistic ideal of divinity is dismissed with a scathing sentence: “The god of your church, if he is awake, does not live in these lands.”

The relationship between Casiopea and Hun-kamé takes center stage, as mortal and god give and take parts of each other into themselves. From the god of death, Casiopea learns that her problems with family were a tad more universal than she thought, and that control over one’s life does not bring contentment. Hun-kamé, attached to the mortal world by the shard of his bone implanted in her hand, finds himself comprehending the nature of human existence. He gazes at Casiopea marveling at the beauty of stars and the ocean, and they converse about poetry and death, dreams and flowers. They are on the clock. The longer time passes, the more Casiopea finds her essence leeched away, while Hun-Kamé becomes better accustomed to his mortal body.

“Dreams are for mortals.” “Why?” “Because they must die.” Somehow this made a perfect sort of sense. The volume of Aztec poetry she had read was full of lines about dreams and flowers, the futility of existence. “That’s sad,” she said, finally. “Death? It is unavoidable, not sad.” “No, not death,” she said, shaking her head. “That you don’t dream.” “Why would I need to dream? It means nothing. Those are but the tapestries of mortals, woven and unwoven each night on a rickety loom.” “They can be beautiful.” “As if there’s no other beauty to be had,” he said dismissively. “There’s little of it, for some,” she replied.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia nails the tone. The book is dedicated to her grandmother, and the story is narrated with the sort of omniscience that elderly tale-smiths possess, an ability to talk about the innermost workings of the heart and to soak you in the atmosphere of the setting. In this case, Mexico in 1927, which comes alive in all its sun and dust.

Mexico City in the 1920s was all about the United States, reproducing its women, its dances, its fast pace. Charleston! The bob cut! Ford cars! English was sprinkled on posters, on ads, it slipped from the lips of the young just as French phrases had once been poorly repeated by the city folk. A bad imitation of Rudolph Valentino, hair slicked back, remained in vogue, and the women were trying to emulate that Mexican wildcat, Lupe Vélez, who was starring in Hollywood films. The pace was absolutely insane in Mexico City. Everyone rushed to and fro, savage motorists banged the Klaxon looking for a fight, the streetcars drifted down the avenues packed with sweaty commuters, newspaper vendors cried out the headlines of the day at street corners, and billboards declared that you should smoke El Buen Tono cigarettes. Kodak film and toothpaste were available for sale in the stores, and, near an intersection, a poor woman with a baby begged for coins, untouched by the reign of progress and modernity.

As with the real world, Moreno-Garcia paints the fantastic world of Xibalba in surreal imagery with her words, making the realm of death (pun intended) come alive in your mind. Once again, shades of the Dreaming from Sandman.

Xibalba, splendid and frightful, was a land of stifling gloom, lit by a cheerless night-sun and lacking a moon. The hour of twilight did not cease here. In Xibalba’s rivers there lurked jade caimans, alabaster fish swam in ink-black ponds, and glass insects buzzed about, creating a peculiar melody with the tinkling of their transparent wings. There were bizarre plants and lush trees, though no flowers bloomed in the soils of the Underworld—perhaps some had, at one point, but they’d long withered. These were all bits of dreams that had taken physical shape, but the nightmares of mortals also abounded in the fabulous landscape of Xibalba.

Before I read the book, I was told that it’s slow-paced and that “nothing really happens”. I am not sure what the detractors were looking for, the pacing was deliberate and measured. The road trip does not feel repetitive, and the slow-burn change in the relationship between the two protagonists is organic, as is the realization of the duality in the actions and motivations of mortal and deity. The quest is not just that of one god and his acolyte, but is mirrored by his rival and brother Vucub-Kamé, who had imprisoned Hun-Kamé many years ago to occupy the throne of Xibalba, and his followers. Specifically, Martin, Casiopia’s cousin and bête noire, whose aggressions, both micro and macro, were among the main reasons she fled from her hometown. And there too, the writer weaves in surprising plot twists. Was Martin really all that bad, we find ourselves wondering, or was he weak, his frailty possessing him to be jealous of Casiopea’s strength of will?

Like in a good story about gods and myth, this one also features the use of prophecy as a storytelling device. Vucub-Kamé is gifted at foresight, and in multiple sequences, ex-sanguinates and eviscerates various animals to understand what the future holds for his reign. The answers he sees are unclear, but it is Casiopea’s presence that is the most confusing for him. At the same time, there are disturbing visions that appear in our lady protagonist’s dreams, of blood and death in the city of Xibalba. Hun-Kamé warns her about the power of words and stories, and his recalcitrance to speak about the myths she knows, of him and the stories around him, further muddy the path ahead.

All of these separate threads come together incredibly well in the end-game. Far better, I would say, than Gaiman’s American Gods ended, if we are still comparing. The winner of this game of throne is decided not by gods wielding bolts of magic and blood, but by the choices and actions of their champions. The overall theme, that of gods depending on mortals for both their existence and sustenance, is something that is a recurring theme in both Sandman and the prose works of Gaiman. Moreno-Garcia adds a delectable layer of romance and a historical milieu that make it more than just another twice-told tale. The four principal characters have distinct voices and motivations — Casiopea’s distaste for her fate and headstrong demeanor contrasting against Martin’s obedience to his grandfather, and Hun-Kame’s self-assured hauteur plays well against Vucub-Kamé’s insecurities. The decisions that drive the ending are laid out wonderfully across the story. We hold all the pieces, and once events transpire, we see how descriptive paragraphs like this scatter clues in plain sight.

Mortals believe gods to be omnipotent and ever-knowing. The truth is more slippery; their limitations are multiple, kaleidoscopic, and idiosyncratic. Gods cannot rudely move mortals like one moves a piece across a game board. To obtain what they wish gods may utilize messengers, they may threaten, they may flatter, and they may reward. A god may cause storms to wreck the seaside and mortals, in return, may raise their hands and place offerings at the god’s temple in an effort to stop the hurricane that whips the land. They may pray and bleed themselves with maguey thorns. However, they could also feel free to ignore the god’s weather magic, they could blame the rain or lack of it on chance or bad luck, without forging the connection between the deity and the event. A god can make the volcanos boil and cook alive the villagers who have made their abodes near its cone, but what good is that? If gods destroyed all humans, there would be no adoration and no sacrifice, which is the fresh wood that replenishes a fire.

Among all its virtues, most of all its inherent readability, this book provided a great introduction to Mayan myth and encouraged me to look more into Popol-Vuh. I am intrigued by the story of the Hero Twins, alluded to throughout this book. Also, Moreno-Garcia seems be a genre-surfer par excellence — her other books include one that’s described as Lovecraft meets the Brontes in Latin America, another that combines music and magic in Mexico City, yet another that’s a magical romance set in a world inspired by France of the Belle Epoque. A lot to dive in, in the coming months.

Standard
Comic Art, Comics

Comic Art Update

For most of the later part of 2011, I had stayed away from Comicartfans, that great big time-sink of a site. Last year was fairly decent for my art habit. I streamlined my addiction quite a bit, paring down the collection to minimize the chaff. Yes, that means I sold and traded a bunch of pages that would have never really gone up on the wall, but which I bought just because it seemed like a good idea at that time. This has had the fortunate effect of making me feel contented about the pages that I own right now, being on a plateau of sorts, where I can just relax and not worry about art-related expenses. Pages come and go, and nothing really grabs my attention unless it’s really cheap or truly one-of-a-kind. The former makes me wonder if I really need one more portfolio-warmer, the latter inevitably makes my bank account whimper.

This may sound zen, but the art-habit seems to have settled down from a burning “I-want-this-page-now” feeling to a gentle simmer of a “Do-you-really-belong-in-my-collection?” question.

High points:

A Kelley Jones Sandman page and a Dave McKean Sandman commission. ‘Season of Mists’ is one of my favorite Sandman arcs, as I have mentioned before, and I already have a Dringenberg page from it that fills my heart with joy every time I look at it. A bulk of the art from the run though was by Kelley Jones, who does not sell most of his originals. Whatever’s available in the market comes from Jones’ inkers, Malcolm Jones III and John Beatty. This page came up for sale on Scott Eder’s gallery at a mind-numbing high price during Wondercon last year. It did not sell. He put it up on eBay a few weeks later, and I emailed to ask if he would accept time payments. Long story short, I bid on it, won it for a little less than my final bid, and much less than the original asking price.

The Dave McKean commission was bought at San Diego, thanks to my friend Joe’s contacts with McKean’s agent Allen Spiegel. McKean himself did not make it to the con, thereby putting my plans of asking for a personalized commission on hold, but he had sent a few pre-done pieces to Allen’s booth, and I got a chance to select and pick one of them up. This conveys just the right amount of grandeur and melancholy associated with the Lord of Dreams. Also, it did not involve me paying $25000, which is the price that one of McKean’s covers usually go for.

 

Kelley Jones - Sandman 22, page 6 and Dave McKean - Sandman

Two Batman pages by Kelley Jones again. One of them was the promotional poster image from a Batman and Dracula crossover, which is one of the most recognizable images of Batman from the nineties, if you were buying comics back then. Jones, in my opinion, is one of the top 5 artists that have worked on Batman, his neo-Gothic, somewhat-surreal style meshing perfectly with the tone of the character. The other one is a cover pencilled and inked by him, and knowing what I just mentioned about him not selling his art, I have no idea how this came into the open market. I saw both of them on a dealer’s page a few days before San Diego Comicon, and jumped on it without hesitation. They were priced well below-market, and also, I fucking love Kelley Jones’ art, man.

 

Click on each image to enlarge

Three Preacher pages. I owned a Preacher page before which was a self-proclaimed placeholder – quite cheap, but not really something I would put on the wall. It got traded away this year. One of these came from eBay, from the collection of Albert Moy, dealer extraordinaire. It encapsulates the story of Preacher so far in a single-panel spread that caught my eye. The one with the bar scene from a collector who was, in his own words, cutting himself to the bone to get money for a Bolland Killing Joke page. And the third from a close friend. The three of them represents three different art styles through the series, as Dillon drastically stripped down his line-work as the issues chugged by, sort of evolving as an artist and also increasing his output to meet his deadlines.

The third also has an interesting history – it came up on eBay one fine day a few years ago at a ridiculously low Buy-It-Now price, so ridiculous that most of the usual Preacher-maniacs were wary of pulling the trigger. That ensured that my friend saw it and bid on it, and was deluged with higher offers over the years from the ones that missed it. I had asked him to let me know if he was selling it any time, and he made up his mind recently. Needless to say, I pounced on it.

  Click to Enlarge 

Three Preacher Pages (Click to Enlarge)

And finally, something that came in a few days ago. An Adam Hughes painting of Jean Grey as the Black Queen from the Hellfire Club. Now I could give you a manic foaming-at-the-mouth rave about how Adam Hughes’ work combines early 20th century pinup-girl aesthetics with a distinctive art-deco-influenced style and how it is so gosh-darned beautiful and so on and so forth. But I’ll just let you go take a look at his site to decide for yourself. If you collect comic art, getting an Adam Hughes page is a trial in itself. But getting your hands on a good Adam Hughes pinup without breaking the bank? Forget it. He used to do special sketches for fans at conventions – with rates at 200-400$, the pinups would fetch 10 times the amount on eBay when collectors went around to selling them. Due to some “fans” selling their pages a day after a convention was over, Hughes stopped those sketches, causing prices to jump even more.

So I do not exaggerate when I say that this piece fills a very important hole in my collection, and does so in style. It’s 26 inches by 19 inches, and drawn using a combination of crayons, colored dyes and markers. Adam did it as a commission for a collector, and made it extra-large because he made the guy a long time. The collector went on to sell it to someone I know because he was getting married and he needed to raise money quickly, and I bought it from the latter recently. Not cheap, but not that expensive either. And it makes me really, really happy.

Click to Enlarge

Adam Hughes - Black Queen

So yes, happy happy.

Standard
Comic Art

A Good Art Year

2010  has been a good year for art.

I refer to ‘comic art’ by the way, not art as in music or drama or art art, if you know what I mean. To be even more specific, I refer to my small collection of comic art,  something which has taken up quite a bit of my daily life. Hello, I am a Comic Art Addict and proud of it.

At the beginning of last year, I was fairly convinced that there was one great piece that I would buy. It was a page that I saw when I was in LA towards the end of 2009, in a friend’s collection. I was at his place, and he had just finished showing me the pieces on his wall, and then remembered a bunch of stuff that had just been framed but were not up on the wall yet. It was a page from one of my favorite comics, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.

A brief word on the art of Sandman – in course of its 75 issues, the series had a tremendous line-up of artists, some extraordinary. most of them good, a few pretty middling. In most cases, the bad printing process on the series – remember that this was the late 80s/early 90s, where comics were just beginning to get used to computer coloring, and the quality of the paper, while not the cheap newsprint quality ‘mondo’ format from the 60s and 70s, was still far from the glossy format you young punks are familiar with today. So some of the printed art came out muddy and ugly, which ruined some of the artwork. Especially the work of Mike Dringenberg. Dringenberg was co-creator of the Gaiman run on Sandman, he inked Sam Kieth’s work in the early issues, and when Kieth moved on by the end of the first arc, Dringenberg took over the pencilling duties, along with inker Malcolm Jones III. Because of the aforementioned quality issues, I never really appreciated Dringenberg’s work all that much – and was glad when Kelley Jones, who was to become one of the all-time great Batman artists by the early 90s, took over the acclaimed Season of Mists arc. Dringenberg pencilled the first and last issues of Season of Mists, and that’s it. He moved on from comics work, apparently, going on to illustrate children’s books and album covers.

The first chapter of Season of Mists, issue 21, was the first in which six of the seven Endless make their appearance. So far, readers had seen Dream and his sister Death, and there were hints dropped by the writer about the fact that those two might have other siblings. The introductory sequence in that chapter had an interlude of sorts, where Gaiman wrote brief essays about the six Endless, choosing to omit the Prodigal (we are to find out later that it’s Destruction, who abdicates his position). Desire and Despair on one page, then Destiny and Delirium, and finally Dream and Death.

This last ‘interlude’ page was the one my friend owned.

I had to sit down. Because the art was so brilliant, so delicate and otherworldly that it made my knees weak. The expression on Death’s face, the bubbly water-color shadow that Dream cast behind him (later, when I held the page in my hands, free from the framing glass, I saw that Dringenberg had used glossier paper pasted on the bristol board – probably to enhance the watercolor effect), and the overall  My friend had asked me a few weeks ago about which page from his collection I liked the most, and I had, without hesitation, mentioned one that had struck my fancy. At the moment I saw the Sandman #21 page, I changed my mind, and I told him so. He smiled, and said that if he was ever going to sell this page, I could buy it from him at the price he had originally bought it for. Which was a lot, obviously. But yup, if there was ever a gotta-get-this-or-I-shall-regret-this-forever moment for me, it was when I saw this page. So I agreed.

A lot of collectors do not like artwork that has been personalized to other people. This page has both Gaiman and Dringenberg addressing someone named ‘Jordan’. Gaiman has the words ‘First you dream, then you die’ scrawled before his signature, while the artist just let his art do the talking, and says ‘For Jordan’. I do not mind. Jordan, whoever you are, thank you for keeping this page in  your collection and selling it to the right person who sold it to another right person.

Because 12 months later, I am the owner of the page.

It took some careful budget management, and much brain-ache. In the meantime, I prepared myself mentally – I know it sounds pompous saying it aloud ( hah! Like the rest of the post doesn’t) but really, wrapping my head around the idea of owning it needed a bit of …self-conditioning. Reread Sandman again, and enjoyed myself thoroughly. Read Hy Bender’s Sandman Companion, which gave me much deeper insight into the series, as I discovered things about it that I had not realized, or aspects of the story that I had overlooked. (I heartily recommend that you read The Sandman Companion, if you are a fan) And yes, I felt really bad for Mike Dringenberg, because his artwork, even in the Sandman Absolute Edition had taken a beating thanks to the limitations of printing technology. Or probably because the printer was high – the printed page made the blacks of the original pink – PINK! – because the text had to be given prominence.

Obviously that was not the only page I got this year. I mean, I do have self-control and all, but  the best-laid plans of mice and men….

But that, as they say, is another story altogether.

Standard