FANTAGRAPHICS AT 50! Working conditions and fair recompense for comics creators is a subject that feels, unfortunately, eternally relevant and never-changing (in anything but a superficial degree.) Joe D’Esposito’s The Outsider – a graphic biography of the noted EC Comics artist Bernie Krigstein – touches on themes that have a definite degree of topicality even now, decades after the events depicted in these pages. Some years in the making it comes to us next month via Fantagraphics’ Underground imprint.
Clearly extensively researched, D’Esposito’s telling of Krigstein’s story takes a slightly different approach to its subject matter than many similar works might. Rather than giving us an account that is more objective in its summary D’Esposito instead mostly opts to present events from the perspective of the characters. This injects a speculative element into the proceedings through internal monologues that, nonetheless, allows the audience a greater degree of emotional connection to Krigstein.
We follow the artist from his tough childhood to the creative frustrations of his early career in the medium, from family tragedy through to the struggle for workers’ rights. In terms of social commentary there’ s a lot to cover here. With its main setting being the 1950s it’s more a case of touching on the prevailing issues of the era in the industry rather than honing in on any in great depth. But this is Krigstein’s story after all and we observe his living through Wertham’s attack on the medium, his reactions to the Pop Art plagiarism of comics, the period’s attitudes to race, and his involvement in the creation of the seminal strip ‘Master Race’ for EC. Throughout it all his wife, Natalie, acts as a centring anchor point in his world.
The Outsider is a highly atmospheric book with a very distinctive and moody look. D’Esposito’s style here is described as painterly and there’s something about its monochromatic, blue-hued presentation that gives it a lugubrious, at some points almost morose, feel. It’s a style that fits the subject matter perfectly because for much of the book we get the sense of artistic unfulfillment, of an industry that has no regard for those who are its lifeblood and, in the case of the attempts to unionise as a labour movement, of a fight that is inevitably doomed to failure.
While the The Outsider isn’t entirely unhopeful – its coda gives us something to hold onto for the future – it’s an unflinching exploration of an era where those who laid so much of the groundwork for what was to come were treated with such casual indifference. Uncompromising but realistic, this is a fascinating account of Krigstein’s life.
Joe D’Esposito (W/A) • Fantagraphics Books, $25.00
Read our interview with Joe D’Esposito on The Outsider here
Review by Andy Oliver
Fantagraphics at 50 Month runs through August at Broken Frontier. You can see articles as they’re published in one tagged list here.
