The Page Count

Category: Graphic novel

  • 300

    Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, 1999 

    Read March 2023 and re-read September 2025 

    Published by Dark Horse Books, 1999

    Page count: not sure. It’s around a one-hour read. 

    Graphic novel, historical fiction 

    The blood-and-guts film adaption of this inspired every 17 year-old boy circa 2006 to actually believe that they would have held the Hot Gates. Since then, however, I’ve had the chance to mend my ways and reapproach this historic event via Tom Holland’s Persian Fire. Combined with a now fuller, not quite so heroic-mythical, less mental worldview and actually quite glad I am not a Spartan Hoplite*, let’s just say, Miller took certain liberties. 

    A Greek alliance (not Sparta alone) consisting of 7,000 troops, held the pass for most of the battle – not the titular 300 (which 300 does partially acknowledge). The 300 were the holding force left behind when the Spartan king and commander, Leonidis, realised they were about to be outflanked – well, plus the 700 Thespians who were written out of the story by Herodotus, the primary source for this period.** The Greek army was betrayed, but more likely by a shepherd who wanted his fields back from the logjammed Persian army (what’s Greek for ‘get off my lawn?’), than by a deformed pariah of Sparta, jilted at birth for being the weak link in the phalanx. 

    Now that the question of revisionism has been answered – is this a good read? Spartans, what say you?***

    Well, citizen, the format of the book was well chosen, is the first thing they would say. Sized halfway between A4 and A3 landscape, it depicts the fighting and the landscapes of Greece in large scale. There is a lot of use of darkness, with features half-drawn with the other half blacked out – bodies, faces, cloaks, shields, rocks, piles of bodies – all the things you might expect to find at the Hot Gates. It’s a singular style and it’s easy to see Miller’s Sin City and The Dark Knight Returns in here and vice versa. It also gives an idea of the confusion of hand-to-hand fighting, with some panes take a couple of seconds to visually comprehend. 

    Starting in media res, the story moves along at a good pace and is well balanced, providing context about Sparta and why it was the way it was, complimenting the swords and sandals. The perspective is entirely Spartan – the Persians are given short shrift, depicted as the conscripted, decadent, undisciplined invading force of a foppish emperor, who ultimately can only win via underhand tactics. (The limited democracy of Sparta is underplayed and its subjugated neighbours go unmentioned.) 

    Read as a piece of fiction, it’s fine. Besides playing fast and loose with the facts of the event, it somewhat idealises Sparta, although any consideration that goes deeper than ‘those guys sure did kick ass’ should make it clear that it wasn’t a particularly fun place to live. The form of the hero’s journey is told in a way that feels like a story around a campfire, which, as a story drawn from the earliest history book, is fitting.**** It’s a bit short, at around an hours’ read, but this does serve to make it quite a punchy read. THIS WAS SPARTA (KINDA)!

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes – but now to hold the Hot Gates! 

     

    *Obviously Sparta of antiquity predates fascism as a philosophy, but there is a big overlap in ideas and practices between the two. 

    **Miller does include the Thespians in his telling, but rather than being part of the last stand, they surrender and are then immediately cut down. 

    ***Go on. Make the noise.  

    ****The Battle of Thermopylae was later set down in history by Herodotus (one of those ancient Greeks whose street cred eschews the need for a surname) in Histories, which is widely considered to be the first history book. 

  • The Fixer

    Joe Sacco, 2004 

    Read: June 2025 (bought in Edinburgh) 

    Edition read: Jonathan Cape, 2004, 106 pages 

    Graphic Novel, black and white 

    *Spoilers* 

    The Fixer starts with Sacco’s return to Bosnia – specifically, Sarajevo – in 2001, having been there before during 1995 and 1996,* to continue his – now retrospective – reporting on the Bosnian War. 

    A major theme, constant across Sacco’s oeuvre, is conflicting narratives. Here, the narrative that receives (or demands?) the most (although not entirely uncritical) attention is that of the titular ‘fixer’, Neven. Sacco’s story morphs from that of the Bosnian War to that of Neven. He is a metonym for the whole of the Balkan conflict, as Sacco astutely identifies in his telling of this story, and his understanding of the value of Neven to him as a journalist. A Serb who fought on the side of the Bosnians, Neven is multi-faceted and contradictory. He makes his post-war living by helping journalists, with Sacco constantly unsure whether he is getting a deal or being fleeced, or if Neven is somehow a victim. 

    Sacco has a good sense of story and pace for what could be a morass of details and isn’t afraid to show himself as occasionally clueless and sweating over his own perceived amorality. His black and white crosshatching is as detailed as ever, eschewing exaggerated features in favour of a more restrained, serious style. 

    Worth reading? Yes. 

    Worth re-reading? Yes. 

    *Besides Sarajevo, Sacco also spend time reporting from the Bosnian enclave of Goražde, which resulted in Safe Area Goražde. 

  • March: Book One

    John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, 2013

    Read: March 2025

    Edition read: Top Shelf Productions, 121 pages

    Non-fiction graphic novel

    Part 1 of 3

    I read this – the opening volume of an autobiographical graphic novel of the American civil-rights activist John Lewis – a coincidental 60 years after the Selma to Montgomery march.

    It moves between the two narratives of Lewis’s day on 20 January 2009, and his life as a child on a sharecropper farmer in Alabama, establishing how one man’s story transformed into history.

    In a style best described as sober (although it is not without creativity – the panes change shape, with content often spilling over outside of them), it has the feel of a documentary (the black and white shading further adds to this), to tell Lewis’s story, including how the civil-rights movement largely worked not in rivers but in drops. The US civil-rights movement – at least in the UK – can sometimes be told in a reductive manner that is reduced to just Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, with Lewis not a particularly well-known figure (‘Big Six’ was not a term I was familiar with), so this was an educational read. As much as March tells Lewis’s story, it’s also about the story of the civil-rights movement, combining the personal with history, making it as much a memoir as a history book. As volume one of three, it ends with the story and struggle still very much in motion. 

    So – why a graphic novel, especially given that Lewis already has a couple of published memoirs? The dramatic devices, such as the contrast between opening with the civil-rights activists beginning to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on 7 March 1965 and Lewis waking up in Washington D.C. on 20 January 2009, as well as the aforementioned black-and-white feel, are powerful, but the references by Lewis and his co-authors to the 1958 comic book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story are instructive; where we were, where we are, and where we might be in another 60 years.

     

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes.

  • Kingdom

    Jon McNaught, 2018

    Read: January 2024

    Edition Read: NoBrow, pages unnumbered

    Graphic novel

    In contrast to my other recent graphic-novel readings (The Road, Safe Area Gorazde, Ducks), Kingdom is not about crimes against humanity. It is far gentler, a slice of life, specifically, of a family holiday. Nothing dramatic or traumatic takes place. An unnamed mum and her two children (Andrew and Suzie) – the former a teenager, the latter around 10 – go on holiday to a caravan park somewhere on the British coast. It is understated and the pacing measured – as such holidays can be. It is a poignant snapshot of the parts of holiday that are rote, mediocre, uninspiring, and enforced fun that turn out to be anything but. Even the nature that surrounds Andrew and Suzie, the two protagonists, also becomes the minutiae of their life on holiday.

    It is written in lots of very small panes, capturing a scene and all of its details (there are lots of onomatopoeias), shot by shot (up to 35 per page). The colour palettes are monochromatic hues of blues and reds, sometimes mixing together. There are relatively few words, and it takes several pages until someone talks.

    It has its melancholic moments; I got the impression that the shot of the mother and Suzie driving away from Great Aunt Lizzie’s house is probably the last time they will ever see her, and despite Andrew making a friend (who is maybe a local, or perhaps someone just like him – on holiday and bored), there is a telling scene where they scorn a group of children, around their age, having fun in the distance. Whereas Suzie is still young enough to be curious about the world, Andrew seems to be keeping it at arm’s length, generally preferring to spend time alone or playing videogames. The mother is generally depicted as trying to do something for her children; at no point does she ever get to do anything for herself.

    Although the whole point of the book is that not much happens, these memories, captured with all of their minute details, are the sort that will stay with the characters. How these children (and sometimes the Mum) relate to their environment is a big part of the story; the Mermaid’s Cave shows how memories can sometimes be better than the reality, but whereas Mum is disappointed about the reality when compared to her memory, Suzie likes it; and so the cycle continues. As such, Kingdom is about how we remember things. The caravan park that they stay at is called Kingdom Fields, but it is also memory that is a realm – a kingdom – in itself.

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes.

  • Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths

    Shigeru Mizuki, 1973 (translated by Drawn & Quarterly in 2011)

    February – May 2025

    Page count: 372

    Graphic novel

    Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is a semi-autobiographical, black-and-white graphic novel about a battalion of Imperial Japanese infantry who were commanded to hold New Britain, an eastern island of Papua New Guinea, in 1943, against approaching US forces.

    It dissembles the image of the Imperial Japanese Army as being entirely made up of fanatics; the main characters are conscripts (‘rookies’), who are poorly trained, clumsy, grumble and are subject to abuse from their commanders, including physical beatings for no reason. Shigeru depicts these commanders with little sympathy; they are largely sadistic and inept, and refuse to recognise the strategic advantage that a guerrilla war – as opposed to the culminating banzai charge – would offer. The rank-and-file come across as most likely happy to surrender if they hadn’t been commanded to die fighting  and told by their ranking superiors that to live would be dishonourable.

    In the spirit of its original language and country of publication, it is printed in reverse, read right to left. The style combines somewhat quirky figures – heads and limbs fly from explosions and there are ‘BOOM’ onomatopoeias – with the naturalistic and textured backdrops of the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. This is, until the panels that depict the aftermath of conflict, where the death and destruction is no longer semi-comic and more like inked versions of war photos; prone bodies, trees shorn off, clouds of black smoke. The closing scenes switch exclusively to the photo-realistic drawing-style for these couple of pages, as if to say, what a waste.

    There are lots of characters – enough for a dramatis personae to be provided at the the beginning – who begin to die at a rapid rate as US planes, tanks and troops close in. The US soldiers, when they arrive, are depicted with so few details as to come across as Green Army Men, but as much of the Japanese soldiers’ fight is with malaria, rationing, clean water and sadistic officers. 

    It is hard keeping up with so many characters at times, and placing who is who on first read-through; the only character arc to speak of is of a doctor who ends up openly questioning his superiors’ morality. Fewer characters, with fuller characterisation, would have made this clearer. Likewise, the narrative direction is not always clear, and occasionally details are elided; one situation suddenly leads to the next with no transition presented. On second read-through, this does come to feel like part of the unclear, disorientating experience, but this could have still been delivered with a slightly more considered narrative.

    Obviously, depicting the perspective of Axis troops is to venture out onto thin ice, but this feels less like a justification than a exposé of the abundance of pointless death. One of the few humane officers feels compelled to commit suicide as he did not die in the first charge, and two others are ordered to commit seppuku – one of whom beforehand tears up a keepsake letter into the sea, which turns out not to even be from a girlfriend, but from his mum. On multiple occasions the infantry break into song; ‘Can’t hate the hateful enemy/forced to smile for smug soldiers/why am I stuck working this shitty job/no way out/all for my country’; as they sing this just before making their final charge, panel by panel they are shown simultaneously breaking down into tears.

    It’s not a comprehensive look at the Imperial Japanese Army during World War Two, instead focusing on the author’s experience in the Imperial Japanese Army. He writes himself in as one of the characters, with the key, unsparing difference that instead of just losing an arm and contracting malaria, as he did in real life, the character survives a mauling in the suicide charge, only to be shot by an American soldier. A noble death indeed.

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes – the added clarity allows the poignant moments to come across more clearly.

    I wonder if surviving the suicide charge wasn’t, rather than an act of cowardice, one final act of resistance as a human being.