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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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James Sturm's "American Trilogy": Above and Below and The Golem's Mighty
Swing
However, both the propagandists and the anti-propagandists most often
end up doing little more than preaching to the converted. Those who love
the symbols of their country are outraged and shocked by the treatment
they receive at the hands of those who attack them, becoming further
solidified in their thinking in the process. Those who despise their
country's foundational mythology are equally disgusted by the jingoism
and unreflective flag-waving of those who parrot the received slogans of
"America," and ignore or downplay positive aspects of their cultural
milieu. And both can be equally guilty of dishonesty, of intellectual
laziness, of playing to the crowd. Because, as in all of life, the truth
is complex, not easily reduced to slogans (pro or con), and usually
somewhere between the two extremes. But because it is easier to build on
someone else's foundation, or to merely tear down what someone else has
built, much of the art that a society produces in examining its culture
falls into one of these two categories.
While these works can be read with an eye to the Big Theme, their focus
is not on the Big Event; they come at the stories of America from a
unique and highly individual slant, focusing on the sort of people who
didn't make the headlines. So instead of a baseball story about the New
York Yankees or a World Series, we get the story of a group of players
who never quite made it to the big time. Instead of a story of one of
the leading religious figures in the second Great Awakening, we get the
story of an anonymous couple who face tragedy and loss within the same
historical context. And rather than the story of John Sutter and the
California Gold Rush, Sturm gives us the story of a few of the thousands
of now-forgotten men and women who lived and died on the gold fields of
the Western United States.
The writing in all three installments is superb; the characterization is
memorable, the dialogue is concise, yet lively, and the stories
themselves have a depth that belies their brevity. Sturm's inkwork is
bold, and his use of hatching, line, and shadow brings his deceptively
simple-looking drawings to life. And while I enjoyed Sturm's art in all
three stories, it is in Hundreds of Feet Below Daylight that I
found the most to love. Many of the panels are reminiscent of woodcuts,
bringing to mind the work of Lynd Ward, whose 1929 "wordless novel" Gods'
Man explored similar themes of greed and the drive to become
wealthy, regardless of the cost.
James Sturm is the director of the Center for Cartoon Studies in White
River Junction, Vermont, and the founder of The National Association of
Comics Art Educators. Not only does he take his comics seriously, but
his American Trilogy can only be considered essential reading for
fans of what Sturm calls "pictorial narrative," and can serve as a great
introduction to the medium for anyone who might just be getting started
in the wonderful world of graphic novels.
-- Jim Witt
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Above and Below contains Sturm's first two stories (originally
published separately in 1996 and 1998), The Revival, a brief tale
set during the famous "Cane Ridge Revival" of 1801, and Hundreds of
Feet Below Daylight, a longer story set in the fictional mining town
of Solomon's Gulch, Idaho, in 1886. The Revival tells the story
of Sarah and Joseph Bainbridge, a couple that travels to Cane Ridge,
Kentucky, looking for a miracle, while Hundreds of Feet Below
Daylight is an account of greed and avarice among mine owners and
workers struggling for possession of a surprising mother lode. The
Golem's Mighty Swing is the final entry in the series, and the only
full-length graphic novel of the three. This book tells the tale of Noah
Strauss, the "Zion Lion," and his Stars of David, a (nearly) all-Jewish
barnstorming baseball team of the 1920s that takes on a new promoter,
and a new gimmick, to draw in larger crowds.