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Ben Towle is the creator the critically-lauded Midnight Sun, a graphic novel that started out as a series. Ben talks about the tough market for non-superhero "floppies" and the quandary independent publishers face when they have to consider monetary matters versus the issue of creator ownership.
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But there's nothing not to get in Ray Ellis's opinion of Ben's acclaimed work: "...Ben Towle has managed to bring a historical environ to life. His ear for dialogue and his eye for little details make Midnight Sun a rare treat not only for comics fans, but a remarkable little piece of storytelling."
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Midnight Sun's creator, Ben Towle, is interviewed extensively at the literary blog Chasing Ray, where he discusses the finer points of writing historical fiction and what we should make of the bird that H.R. rescues. I like it because Ben gets in a critique of Ayn Rand's work:
So, to bring things back to the bird, if in my wrestling with that part of the story it ever seemed that something really transparent was developing like “the bird represents so-and-so,” I’d rework things—which is why I can’t really give you a quick answer for “what does that bird mean?” It strikes me as really unsubtle when I encounter that sort of thing in, for example, those Ayn Rand books where each character represents some sort of really obvious trait or belief and the story then gives us the author's "message" via what happens to those characters within the narrative. I know some people really enjoy those sorts of things, but perhaps it's my background as an undergrad philosophy major that makes that a turn-off for me: if you have some particular philosophical point you want to make, then state it clearly and be done with it. This isn't really what narrative is good at.
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Steve Higgins at Playback: stl praises the paralleling the reporter H.R.'s story with the story of the crew of the Italia stranded on the ice, as well as the range of emotion he can convey in his clean brushstrokes: "Towle's art is relatively uncomplicated, but it is also beautiful in its simplicity. The facial expressions of the characters are conveyed through minimal lines, and despite the fact that the characters' eyes are mere dots, even these are incredibly expressive."
Michael May at Blog@Newsarama points out what no reviewer has yet: that there is a polar bear attack in Midnight Sun. I have complicated feelings about polar bears. On the one hand, they're adorable, especially as babies; on the other, they will tear your skin off and eat it. Hmm. Besides the polar bear attack, there are other attributes to recommend Midnight Sun, like the relationship between H.R. and the Russian journalist Zowie: "...the connection between the successes (or failures) of the two rescue operations holds together until the quietly haunting end. It’s a lovely device that elevates Midnight Sun way above just another survival/adventure story.
In Zowie's first appearance in Midnight Sun she takes H.R. to account for being surprised at seeing her: "Why do you stare?" she asks. "Should I be darning your American socks -- or tending your children? I am here for same as you: work."
I thought this scene kind of anticipates the debate about gender roles between the Soviet Union's and the U.S.'s respective propaganda machines. Later, during the Cold War, the comparative roles of women in the USSR and the USA would become part of both sides propaganda, with the USSR claiming superiority in that its liberated women worked outside of the home, the USA claiming the same because its women adhered to traditional roles within the home. I wish I could find some references to this propaganda online, but quick searches have been fruitless.
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"What’s fascinating about this book is that so much is left unknown. People tell their stories about what happened, but they may be lying or have incomplete information. Ultimately, H. R. learns some lessons about himself and the way he’s lived his life, but even that is implied more than stated. What makes the book so powerful is this vagueness, which, instead of angering us because there’s not much of a resolution, makes us consider each character more and what they have learned. We each draw our own conclusions about the events on the ice, and it makes the ambiguity more interesting than if we had definitive answers."Ben, whose gift for recognizing "teaching moments" makes for many an interesting blog post, takes up the question of the unreliable narrator, explaining how he made this tricky narrative device work in comics form at his blog: "Pictures have a sort of existential authority that prose does not necessarily have, particularly prose that we know to be from an unreliable source. But in comics, even when a bit of first-person dialog is placed in a caption box over an image, the image will tend to be seen by the reader as an accurate telling of events, and getting around that can be difficult."
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French!
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The reviewer wishes there were more of it (always the best criticism, if there has to be any, I think): "Somewhat too brief but vividly imagined, this is high-quality graphic historical fiction, bringing an obscure but colorful page of history to dramatic life. Suitable for young teens."
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It's the last review on the list, right before the comments, and can I just say that the A.V. Club has some of the stupidest comments this side of YouTube? Fortunately, Ben makes up for it by using the reviewer's criticism of the chronology he used in Midnight Sun as an impetus for an examination of craft at his blog, complete with a PDF with some notes for a lesson on chronology and storytelling.
*(Note to reviewers: The company goes by SLG now--people outside comics don't really get the joke about slavery and instead think we're making light of slavery. "Slave Labor" by itself isn't even right; from the start, the company's name has been Slave Labor Graphics.)
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Mike takes a thoughtful look at how Ben uses white space, gray tones, and black-and-white contrast to create the world and moods of Midnight Sun. "The story is well-paced, well-imagined, and well-designed...; what I like best about the book, though, is the drawing."
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Of course I'm talking about the crew members of the airship Italia in Ben Towle's Midnight Sun. Johanna Draper-Carlson reviews it at Comics Worth Reading and calls it "recommended." She notes the presentation of the book, which is all Ben's doing (he writes about his design decisions here): "It’s a squarer book than typical, making for a compact volume that feels great in the hand and suits the rectangular panels and straightforward presentation. No fancy layouts here, just good storytelling."
And no fancy colors, am I right? "Views of desolate icy wastelands seem particularly suited to comics. When done right, the medium perfectly captures the silent cold… and this one is done right. Black, white, and grey tones show the speckled sky of falling snow over the shadows and crevasses of the endlessly stretching icepack and its drifts."
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Morris wasn't quite taken with Midnight Sun when it was a series, feeling that the pacing was a bit slow and the characters a bit flat. However, having read the graphic novel he sees how the pacing and depiction of character work in their proper context: "in its collected, compact digest form, Midnight Sun is brillant. The pace of the story, which might have felt slightly deliberate in the periodic version, now takes on a poignancy as a collected whole."
He also mentions some of the lighter moments in Midnight Sun. As Ben writes in his blog, "Midnight Sun is for the most part a straight drama, but like any genuine representation of human goings-on, there’s intended to be some humor there as well."
For those who have already read the first three issues, which were published as individual issues, the final two chapters are now available at SLG's digital comics site Eyemelt.com.
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Tingley notes that Midnight Sun is probably best suited for high school classrooms. I think it would be a fantastic "text" for teaching people how to use the sequential art format for storytelling. Ben is so skilled in using the medium, knowing how to set a scene and portray his characters' moods and thoughts with image alone. I find a panel in which a rescued man lies in a boat, wrapped in blankets, his eyes open particularly haunting. I've been paying especial attention to how characters are placed within panels, too -- often they are alone, though there are people around them, and there is often a lot of negative space around them or they are a small figure in a large setting. This reinforces Midnight Sun's themes of isolation and desolation, but by the end of the book, the image of the main character H.R. alone in a panel takes on a much different meaning.
I'd hazard this is true, but only outside of superhero comics, which remain the prevailing genre of the medium in this country. As superhero books remain serialized, they conform to a different storytelling mode that relies on re-establishments of conflict, 20-page story development arcs, and cliffhangers. Just yesterday, Dan was talking about what Jim Shooter, editor-in-chief and Marvel Comics from 1978 to 1987, used to tell his writers and artists: Remember that every issue of a comic could be someone's first exposure to this title, these characters, or even comics in general. This isn't really a good or bad thing, for it suits some purposes and not others (some say this kind of approach has gone out with the Big Two's increasing reliance on "event comics" with storylines that are largely incomprehensible to all but the initiated) but it is certainly limiting in the kinds of stories that can be told.
The format of the graphic novel gives the author quite a bit more freedom: a story may be told episodically, if that's what best suits it, or may be told as a free-flowing, uninterrupted narrative. In both instances, the format brings a greater emphasis of story as a whole rather than in a bite-sized chunk at a time. What does this mean? Hopefully, a potential for greater concentration on craft and -- dare I say -- artistic and literary qualities rather than exclusively on entertainment.
A picture of the new Towle is here, at Ben's blog.
Well, whether a Boxing Day celebrant or not, you can enjoy the icy goodness of SLG's newest graphic novel, Midnight Sun by Ben Towle. It is in stores today, a story of resilience and renewal, of survival in a desolate landscape.
Johanna Draper Carlson has already reviewed Midnight Sun in her column at Comics Unlimited: "The story is a gripping invite to think about tough choices and the human drive to survive in the harshest of conditions."
The year is 1928 and an Italian airship expedition to the North Pole has mysteriously disappeared. Excitement changes to uncertainty when the Italia and her international crew reach the pole, issue a celebratory radio communiqué, and are never heard from again. As a worldwide search effort gears up, a down on his luck American newspaper reporter is dispatched to the top of the Earth to cover the event.
Written and illustrated by Eisner Award nominated cartoonist Ben Towle, this 144 page graphic novel collects the three issues of the SLG Publishing comic book series and then adds in what would have been issues 4-6 in one handsome graphic novel. The complete story will be presented for the first time.
--For those of you who had hoped to finish out the story in serial form, we will have the later chapters of the graphic novel in PDF form available to purchase at Eyemelt.com, our digital comics site, soon.
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As Ben was recently commenting, December seems to be an unfortunate time to release a book -- everyone is caught up in their end-of-year "best of" lists before the year is even out or snoozing in a pre-Holiday feeling of coasting out the rest of the year. Meanwhile, we're anxiously watching ship lists and having our expectations dashed. Dashed, I say!
Well, I'll be dashed if I let it get me down! After Christmas, when you're in that funk with comes with getting presents that kind of suck and feeling guilty for being ungrateful, you owe it to yourself to read some fine sequential art literature. And Midnight Sun will be right there for you.
- Mood:chex mix
- Music:Vince Guaraldi
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Midnight Sun will be in stores on December 19 and is available now for pre-order from comics stores and at www.slgcomic.com, where it is 10% off.
International Mystery in Midnight Sun
New Historical Fiction Graphic Novel in December
New Historical Fiction Graphic Novel in December
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Ben Towle, a nominee for a Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition Eisner Award in 2004, captures the tense mood during the weeks of search in his graphic novel Midnight Sun, to be released in December 2007 from SLG Publishing. Midnight Sun follows H.R., a down-on-his luck American reporter. He's dispatched to cover the story of the lost Italia at the top of the Earth, where the Arctic summer means there is almost perpetual daylight.
“The tone of this series may take readers familiar with my last work by surprise,” said Towle, referring to his graphic novella Farewell, Georgia, which attracted the attention of the Eisner Awards judges. “But it’s a story that’s close to my heart—one that I’ve been developing and editing and re-editing since before I’d even conceived of any of my prior projects. It’s historical fiction, I suppose," Towle added, “but heavy on the fiction.”
The Italia was a real airship and its disappearance and the subsequent search for its crew grabbed headlines worldwide, but since then it has become a little-known footnote in the history of aviation. “My first pass at the story was basically a melodrama chronicling the real-life story of the Italia, but I realized that what I really wanted to do was use the events of the crash and the personal dynamics of the stranded crewmembers to examine more universal themes like the interaction between fate and conscious choice, leadership and democracy, and love and obligation,” Towle said.
As Midnight Sun's story unfolds, a pre-Depression-era newspaper reporter discovers the facts surrounding the airship’s mysterious disappearance while the crew of the Italia contend with the perils of Mother Nature…and human nature. Underscoring their struggles is Towle's artwork, depicting both gray city scenes and stark Arctic landscapes.
Midnight Sun is a 136-page graphic novel that will retail for $14.95. It is available for pre-order from comic book stores with the Diamond code OCT073222, as well as at SLG's website, www.slgcomic.com, where a free PDF of the first chapter is also available for download.
