Marzi [ペーパーバック]

I was excited to get a chance to read the DC Comics Vertigo English release of the Belgian comic Marzi, which was originally published as short stories in the pages of Spirou Magazine. Marzi follows the autobiographical adventures of Marzena Sowa as she grew up and came of age in 80s era communist Poland. This first English language volume combines the first four Belgian collections (Petite Carp, Sur la terre comme au ciel, Rezystor, and Le bruit des villes), written by Sowa and illustrated by her partner Sylvain Savoia.

Getting a chance to peek behind the iron curtain and to see what Polish life was like was fascinating, particularly because it illustrated how normal the day to day really was. There are a lot of interesting shorts, like what it was like preparing for the Christmas dinner by keeping a live Carp in the bathtub for a few days, or the routine of waiting in lines for grocery staples. But what surprised me the most was the overall tone of the stories and how honestly Sowa presents herself as sort of a bratty spoiled child. Simply judging from the cover illustration, which features a young scowling Marzi awkwardly manhandling a plush bunny, tiny amongst a sea of Polish soldiers in riot gear, you get the impression that this would be a darker memoir about the struggle and hardships of life. While this is certainly a part of the backdrop to the story, it's actually more upbeat and a tad whiney. The cover illustration is actually a reworking of the cover to the second Belgian collection (Sur la terre comme au ciel - On the Ground as with the Sky), which features a more quizzical and curious Marzi. I'm wondering if the folks at Vertigo might be getting a little bit underhanded with their marketing.

Similarly, this English volume contains a complete re-coloring of the original comics. The Belgian editions were very vibrant and whimsical in tone, whereas this new volume is upping the tone of hardship behind the curtain by rendering the pages in drab browns and dull reds. It's almost as if they pulled their monochromatic color scheme from the scenes of the girl in the little red dress from Schindler's List trying to make the work more heavy and dramatic than it really is. I found this heavy-handed marketing distracting, but the content of the stories still manages to shine through.

Overall my favorite aspect of Marzi: a memoir are Savoia's illustrations. His style is much in the vein of Jeff Smith, which features the beautiful juxtaposition between realistic and exaggeratedly cartoon-y renderings. This duality in the artwork combined with the coming of age stories evokes the work of Bill Waterson's Calvin and Hobbes at times, yet still manages to feel completely like it's own work. I think fans of auto-bio comics, in particular strip comics, will find a lot to enjoy in Marzi. I just wish the translation of the comic ended with the text, instead of co-opting the tone as well.

I love graphic books, but have never seen one I enjoyed more than "Marzi." Having lived through the era of her childhood, I thought I already knew something about what was going on then in Poland. But really, I didn't, and this memoir was both highly-enjoyable and very educational about life there during the fall of communism and rise of freedom.

The book is also for me (a guy) an excellent introduction to what it was like for a young girl to grow up poor in turbulent times, and very honest about both the good and bad ways she coped with her challenges. Overall, Marzi is a person I'd really like to have as a friend, and a wonderfu ambassador for her country and culture.

The artwork added quite a lot to my enjoyment of the book.

This would be a great book to read together with kids, but isn't only for kids. It touches on some tough topics, but gently and respectfully.

Highly recommended.

The Amazon description of "Marzi" doesn't clearly spell out that this is a graphic novel. It's composed of multiple stories of various lengths, convincingly told from a child's perspective, all detailing Marzi's life in Poland circa the 1980's. The stories are simply told yet never less than interesting.

The translation is a little off at times, but not distractingly so. The illustrations are a bit too literal, yet they occasionally delight. The only real weakness is the callow introduction by the author, which they would do well to remove.