I stumbled across this title while searching at my local library for books published by Fantagraphics. I deeply admire the folks at Fantagraphics for their complete dedication to publishing an astonishing array of comic arts, including their efforts in securing the work of underground artists. I try to read much of their work for my own edification and entertainment and am often pleased at their curation of new and established artists.
The art of Andrea Pazienza, ranging from free style, intricate black and white line drawings to vibrant watercolor, is exceptional and I would have given a much higher rating to the book based on that alone. His stories also capture a particular time in youth culture that creates more value in archiving his work. However, I could not stomach the the unreflective presentation of the violent main character, Zanardi, who is at the core of the stories collected here. Pazienza, as the creator of this character, may be making a pointed artistic choice in presenting Zanardi's actions in a unchallenged way, but the publishers failed to even mention the unrelenting violence in their cheerful description of the work and that was a failure of either judgement or insight to me.
The blithe blurb on the back of the book describing the stories as "iconoclastic, outrageous, humorous, and deeply personal," left this reader completely unprepared for the violence that permeates this collection, especially the multiple stories of the humiliation and rape of male and female characters, passed off without remark as the clever pranks of teenagers boys. Even the mention of "school, sex, and drugs," fails as a realistic description of the stories of heroin use, murder and rape. These terms could have been used to describe the angst tv show "My So-Called Life," for cryin' out loud! For example, one such story titled "A Mother's Heart," follows Zanardi and his two sidekicks as they skip class and go to the apartment of a female high school student where they show the girl's mother photographs of the girl engaging in oral sex. They proceed to threaten the mother, claiming they will make posters of the image and place them all over the high school if she will not give them sex. They gleefully gang rape her and the "funny bit" is that one of them is so polite, asking nervously "excuse me if I join in, Ma'am. but would you open your mouth please?" The artist's only nod to the incredible inhumanity in this story is invested in one drawing of the woman's face, a heart-breaking image of pain, revulsion, and shame. In a book full of such occurrences, this is one of the few hints we have that Pazienza even acknowledges the sickness of his main character. Even this is upended when the boys leave and the woman reflects on how handsome one of her attackers was and how "big his c@$k" was. This may be a defensible artistic choice but when the publishers blurb only describes the tales as "iconoclastic" or "outrageous" without any mention of the unchallenged violence, one wonders if the characters deeply questionable actions even registered with them as violence at all. This is especially true of the rapes for this reader.
Let me make clear here, I do not question the publisher's decision to archive this work, and I do not need them to harshly judge the artist's approach, but a more realistic description of the violent nature of the stories would have prepared me for their impact. I can't imagine how angry I might have been if I had purchased this book based on the blurb, especially if I had selected it as a gift for my teenage son!
The second of two introductory essays, neither of which even mentions the rapes, at least made an attempt to analyze the moral void at the center of the character. In the essay Emanuele Trevi cites Bret Easton Ellis' work and that is a fair comparison, especially the way Ellis cooly presents his shallow, psychopathic character Patrick Bateman in "American Psycho." Trevi also mentions the dark character, Kurtz, at the center of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." However, these two characters are effectively used to illustrate the hidden everyday madness of the societies they live in. Pazienza offers no such reflection on Zanardi's violent, criminal behavior. In fact, by giving Zanardi willing sidekicks, and allowing him to escape any punishment, he creates a premise in which Zanardi is unchallenged in anyway by the narrative or the author. Ultimately documenting Zanardi's violence seems pointless or merely for the entertainment of the author's audience, and if that is indeed the nihilistic message of Andrea Pazienza, I can live without it.
I still respect the choice of the publishers at Fantagraphics to preserve the work of this artist, but the blurb is misleading and the essayists are disappointing in their utter failure to frankly address, or even mention, the rapes included in these stories, describing the book only as "erotically charged" or explaining away the central character as a symbol of "powerful narcissism." From this girl's point of view that is some amazing BS.