Broken Frontier

Anafae Book 1. Written by Monica Richards.  Illustrated by Monica Richards and James Neely. 2006. www.lulu.com

Last September, Library of Babble was fortunate to interview educational comics pioneer Leonard Rifas about cartooning for activists.  In Rifas’ view, activist comics are best seen as opportunities for sharing information.  In response to a question about avoiding despair, Rifas said the following:

Human beings have created a situation that makes unprecedented demands on our abilities to understand our global situation, rethink our customary ways of doing things, and share and evaluate our ideas. […] To my thinking, sharing information can provide a deeper awareness of our present situation and of human history, give a stronger foundation to our efforts to make our next evolutionary leap, and remind us that our species has accomplished a series of such leaps in the past.

In Anafae Book 1, Monica Richards and James Neely bring these qualities to the fantasy genre.  When the story opens, it is springtime in the year 2051.  A global catastrophe of species extinction has begun.  In three years, everything dies.  Seeds don’t sprout.  Animals and humans no longer reproduce, water dries up, and the sun turns living tissue to ash.  As the last human voice dies away, an ancient three-headed statue bursts apart, and from the rubble the goddess Anafae arises.  Anafae is Mother Nature, her form made of living flora.  She sets off on a quest to learn what happened to her creation, and as she walks, new grass grows in her footsteps.

Anafae Book 1 tells the story of the Goddess’s journey to discover the events of the final moments of life on earth.  Through this storytelling device, Richards and Neely have created an activist comic book that sets out to help readers apprehend the seriousness of the global climate crisis by imagining the consequences of a failure to change.  As an educational comic, it serves to challenge the reader to rethink her customary ways of doing things, and provides a deeper awareness of our present situation.

Book 1 establishes the story and the characters.  The art is beautiful, the moral concerns are universal, the characters are appealing, and there is a suggestion of two intriguing conflicts—between nature and technology, and between the forces of creation and destruction in two of the faces of Anafae.  Anafae herself is so beautiful that the reader wishes the whole book could be in color. Richards and Neely do a wonderful job of building gripping narrative drama through the interplay of dialogue and images, especially in the introduction, and in the end sequences where a key character’s dream recedes and he wakes up. 

One of the challenges of sharing information in any format is the risk of being boring.  Educational comics can avoid becoming boring in many ways, including the use of humor, or creatively imparting information in imagery instead of words.  Richards and Neely use the comic book form to particular advantage in the pages where they describe what went wrong, such as the inventions and use of nuclear weaponry and non-biodegradable plastics.  With great clarity, they generate a mere list of events, inventions and values, placed against a distorted background of clear-cut forests and wastelands.  You may not agree that every item on the list is leading to environmental catastrophe, and that’s a good thing.  The point is to share information and ideas to generate discussion, and Richards and Neely do a fine job of making this possible.  Particularly impressive is the page that lists solutions in just as specific and straightforward a fashion, against soft gray swirls, spiraling to a center.  This comic book invites dialogue as much as it encourages a sense of urgency.

Anafae Book 1 is a contribution to a growing discussion on ways to avert environmental catastrophe.  This past week, Living on Earth reported that Harvard scientists and the 30 million strong National Association of Evangelicals have joined forces and released an "Urgent Call to Action" to President Bush and political leaders to address global warming.  The discussion is showing up everywhere, and its spread is our main hope that we can make our next leap. 

It remains to be seen if Richards and Neely will sustain the project of sharing ideas for discussion and evaluation.  The fantasy genre allows the two to incorporate a thesis about the relationship between the spiritual and scientific aspects of the crisis.  While this is the reason for the beautiful and breathtaking main character, Anafae, the concern is that the introduction of religious values will lead to a mystification of the challenges that face us, and the power of our potential to change.  A more thorough grounding in science will strengthen the story. 

Anafae’s greatest potential is to add to the store of stories that give strength and continuity to our actions to save our planet, and our lives.