Speechless: World History Without Words

by Paul Fitzgerald (aka Polyp) (Illustrator)

Speechless is a never-before-attempted work of cartoon ingenuity, condensing the whole of world history into a graphic and completely wordless narrative. Through this very simple, yet intriguing concept, the reader will experience the intensely real but often ignored political and environmental truths of our era. It's funny, poignant, and painfully true. Tracking everything from the very beginning of evolution to the industrial revolution, from the Cold War to the oil wars, no aspect of world history is too challenging for Polyp. He draws on cartoonists' long tradition of rendering complex situations down to their essences, and adds subtle visual cues and plot structures lying below the main narrative. The viewer must engage with each episode, puzzling out what is going on down below, as if watching the Earth in miniature through a microscope. Published in association with Friends of the Earth International, Speechless is a celebration of human resistance, ingenuity, and bravery in the face of war, greed, and environmental pillage. And the full-color cartoon novel contains a hidden internal book—a further distillation of world history into a penetrating parable. Radical political cartoonist and activist Polyp has been working with campaigning organizations around the world for over fifteen years and is a regular cartoonist for the New Internationalist . He is the author of Big Bad Cartoon Molotovs in the Face of Corporate Rule . He lives and works within a large cooperative housing block in Manchester, United Kingdom.

Genres: History, Comics

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Zack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable and good short history and work of art. Not the most in depth or sophisticated, but I don't think it's going for that. I've "read" it several times.

[Jason Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Polyp is a political cartoonist whose acutely observed works get straight to the heart of things. His is a leftie-liberal environmental agenda, well-informed, unapologetic and humane. "Speechless" is a history of the world in images alone, although cunning use of symbols in speech-bubbles helps to clarify the author's points. Although certain landmark events are highlighted - the Holocaust, Tiananmen, Columbus - the 'history' is more a record of trends: colonial exploitation, corporate control, the endlessly recurring motif of people in the corner of the picture hoping for food. As such, it's a polemic, rather than an academic work.

Despite the limitations Polyp has set for himself, this little book manages to be witty and inventive: there is, for instance, an entire comic-within-a-comic, which we read through the eyes of a guy sat on the toilet! The whole thing is around 100 pages: it can certainly be read in an hour or so (perhaps on the toilet...) and is definitely time well spent.

[Julie Rylie · Rating 4 out of 5]

speechless leaves you speechless (!) Especially this mini book that the guy is reading in the toilet about this worms that live in a tiny place until they fucked the whole thing up, but still at the very end you see a tiny little leaf growing from the destroyed tree. lovely. I think it summound pretty much our life on earth.

And the book could be just that and it would be already awesome, but no, then while you are thinking about your life on the planet, the guy on the toilet is also doing the same and then the story of our planet beings... starting from the dinosaurs, going through all the wars and violence and stupid decisions (...) it was also lovely to see that sometimes some pages in a brownish tone would appear and it was like the current life of common people in the meanwhile. so sweet.

[Geoff Sebesta · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the more interesting comics I've read in a while. They take the whole "pictures in word balloons instead of words" farther than I've ever seen it, actually getting a level of political discussion out of it! Quite a feat.