Scott McCloud's memories of the response to The New Adventures Of Abraham Lincoln aren't happy ones. "People hated this book when it first came out!", he's written on his blog, adding that he prefers to think of the work as a "noble failure". I'm not sure that I can agree with him there. The book is profoundly flawed, and in places it reads as if McCloud, the arch-formalist, had entirely lost control of his own material. The computer-generated art can seem trudgingly banal, while the narrative's often uncomfortably caught between sharp if somewhat hesitant political satire and thin Hanna-Barbera cartoon pastiche. There are even moments when it's impossible to believe that The New Adventures Of Abraham Lincoln would ever have seen print in this form if McCloud's name hadn't been attached to the project.
Yet to agree that the book's a "noble failure" and little else would be to obscure how absolutely brilliant certain of its set-pieces are. A curate's egg in the modern, though very much not the original, sense, The New Adventures Of Abraham Lincoln is a graphic novel which I'd be absolutely loathe to find missing from my bookshelves. This week's column in The Year In Comics series is my attempt to explain why I feel so passionately about this fundamentally marred book, and I hope you might join me over at Sequart to take another look at one of comic's most beguilingly odd, compromised, and occasionally quite enchanting projects.
K
Really, I just wanted to say thanks for trying to do justice to this flawed, but charming and singular work. But...but...where's the love for the scene where Pres. Lincoln tries to find out about his legacy without learning the manner of his death. "Why, if there were a poll, there'd be no question you'd be the most popular president ever!" "Damn! Assassinated." I've even used that line to demonstrate inference when teaching English as a Second Language. (As well as the current limits of machine translation.)
ReplyDeleteHello David:- Thank you :) Trying to do justice to TNAOAL is really challenging, and it's certainly beyond me. Which of course is a good reason to give it a try. You're absolutely right about that quiet but absolutely telling scene. One aspect of the book which I underplayed was the characterisation of Lincoln. I enjoyed the way McCloud focused upon the negative - or should I say 'human' - aspects of AL's character without ever making him less appealling. There was a whole piece in that, to be honest. Was there ever a book so problematical which was also so enjoyable?
DeleteFirst: thank you for writing an excellent piece about this comic. I read the book last year for the first time and was a bit dismayed to find that the internet didn't have anything particularly insightful to say about it.
ReplyDeleteSecond: I don't think that this comic is a failure, in that I don't think that it is technically possible for it to fail at what it tries to do. It's a highly experimental story. Whether or not the experiments result in reader enjoyment is important, of course, but the book is just there to conduct them. I'm no scientist, but I've never understood how a properly conducted experiment could be said to have failed; surely the question of whether or not you liked the result has no bearing on the experiment itself, right?
As such, I think that the book is highly successful in putting a number of theories into practice. It ends up being wildly inconsistent in tone, but that's a small price to pay for the story's pleasures.
(If what I've said is true, though, I wonder if there's an upper limit on how good something this experimental could be. Is it possible to tell a consistent story with a bunch of techniques one has never previously employed?)
Hello SofS:- well, thank you for your kind words and for persevering for the piece. I knew that TNAOAL wasn't the kind of blog to get the link engines burning up, but I thought it could help me to grapple with one the most idiosyncratic graphic novels I can think of. I don't think that it deserves to have been dismissed and forgotten as it has been; out of print since it was first published is a daft business.
DeleteYou're right that "failure" is a problematical word where the book is concerned. I hope I avoided using it, I really do. Aspects of it do fall short of what was surely intended; the Scooby-Doo too-ing and fro-ing never catches fire, meaning that the narrative is compromised by its own narrative. And yet, as I think we both agree, who'd ever turn their nose up at the story's highlights, which are often remarkable? In that, you're absolutely right; it's a "small price" for "the story's pleasures".
Your closing question is, of course, a good one, and one which only SM might answer where TNAOAL is concerned. Was he happy to have the book out as it stood, did he consider that it was a success? Could another pass at the work, or some solid editing, have turned the potential of the book into consistent achievement? In the end, I find that I'm just glad that he did make the book as he did, and even the pieces which I might think are somewhat lacking still function to make me wonder about what's going on and how it's been achieved. In that, TNAOAL is always asking questions even when its not working a graphic work of fiction. That alone puts it ahead of 98% of the competition:)
Colin, thank you for providing me with an excuse to re-read the New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln - it's been far too long since I last read it.
ReplyDeleteOn this read-through, I was interested to notice one point where the false-Lincoln seems to paraphrase Ronald Reagan during the Lincoln v. Lincoln debate. It's interesting to see a gross exaggeration of one President invoke a different personage.
I wonder just how larger-than-life Lincoln appears to present-day USAers. I mean, is he a man who once lived and breathed, or is he a pop culture persona only marginally more relevant than Optimus Prime? By the time McCloud wrote this novel, we'd already seen the likes of Police Squad! (starring Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln!) and since then Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter has emerged. But such exploitation of a popular President isn't restricted to Lincoln - McCloud could have easily made a book about a false-JFK depicted as a chowderheaded-horndog who quotes "Ask not what your country can do for you" out of context, which seems to be the Cliff Notes version of his Presidency. As TNAOAL reminds us, symbols come to replace ideas until perpetuating the symbol becomes the goal.
I wonder how much of TNAOAL is a reaction away from McCloud's work on later issues of Zot? Did he feel a need to escape the heavy realism of those latter stories and delve into something a little more broad and comedic? Personally, I like that my copies of Understanding Comics, Zot!, Destroy! and TNAOAL don't sit anywhere near each other on my bookshelf - they have different shapes, sizes, colouring, content and audiences. I'm glad McCloud has that freedom to follow his muse and that he's been pretty successful in being his own man.
Hello Michael:- Well, thank you for getting me thinking about TNAOAL! It remains a book of contradictions to me, and I'm grateful for your perspective on it.
DeleteI've often thought that TNAOAL would be a perfect book for a media class to read and debate. For example, your point about Reagan is of course a fine one. And I find it strange, but not in any way misplaced, that Ronnie R. looms over McCloud's book. You'd think that more recent events such as the Hoo-Hah about the reprehensible Newt's Contract With America would seem to loom larger, but it's the Great Communicator who seems to often be the subject of the book. (Of course, Newt is seen giving over Congress to the fake Lincoln, but its a passing moment.)
It's worrying how many Presidents McCloud could've chosen for his book, isn't it? From Washington onwards - and Washington was keenly aware of the process - Americans have tended to reduce their politicians to symbols with a fervor which is positively frightening. It's not that other nations don't do the same, and yet Britain, for example, never goes as far as Americans have tended to. By that, I don't mean that we're smarter, cleverer etc etc. I just mean that we don't idolize our leaders to the degree that the Republic does. Obviously not a matter to close in these comment boxes!
I love the picture McCloud has given of TNAOAL being a great whirl of fun for him, a project carried through without care for any particular audience. I too would love to know what inspired it and whether he saw it as a reaction to Zot! (The wonderful Zot!) I agree entirely with you that it's inspiring to think that SM didn't plough the same furrow, although I find it deeply disturbing on a "fan" level that we've seen no new full-length work from him since TNAOAL. Was he disheartened by the response? I hope not. But I do wish we'd seen a new graphic novel every few years.
As always, I've enjoyed your new Nick Spencer/Bergman piece. I bought TOT without noting who the writer was. Sigh, sigh and sigh again ....
http://section244.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/nick-spencer-comicdoms-answer-to-ingmar.html