The Living and the Dead
Writer: Jason
Artist: Jason
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Released: 2007
[[ buy it @ amazon ]]
As I sat on a plane flying from Miami to New York, I was surrounded by what I am certain was every baby and young child from Miami being flown to New York. Every single one, each of them screaming their heads off the entire flight. I contemplated silence. Sometimes, silence is just pleasant and refreshing.
In terms of telling a story, silence can be even more powerful then word. This is what the graphic novel medium is all about. Graphic novels use images in conjunction with word in order to tell a story, but do so in a unique way. What makes a graphic novel different from an illustrated novel (one that simply puts pictures to the words) is the way the former uses the pictures; how the images become an integral part of the story’s narrative.
The use of images is what sets the graphic novel apart from oral and written storytelling. In this medium, a book’s success in using the images can be a measure of the success of the book itself. Like a film, the art must capture (through framing, expressions, color, etc.) every aspect of emotion and story. Even in dialogue-heavy books, the artwork is constantly there, guiding the store in a very subtle manner. As the dialogue and narration fades away, the art, and all the decisions the artist makes to correctly display the author’s vision, becomes all the more important.
In this respect, The Living and the Dead, by Norwegian graphic novelist Jason, shines. It is a nearly silent book (there are only seven lines of dialogue total), which in and of itself can be dangerous. However, Jason’s minimalist artwork shoulders the burden and soars.
Unlike in most comics, here the author and the artist are the same person. This is an advantage to the graphic novel since the artist does not have to worry about whether or not he is truly capturing the author’s vision. After all, in comics, it is really the artwork that truly relates the story. Text is used mainly to set up the drawings and give it a sense of context. This is not to say that writers are secondary; it is still their story being brought to life through the art. (Some authors [e.g. Neil Gaiman] write there comics like screenplays to truly direct the artist.) Here, however, due to Jason’s minimal text, his art becomes that much more significant.
The story follows a down-on-his-luck dishwasher driven on by his unrequited love for a prostitute he passes on the way home from work every night. He is works to earn enough money to fulfill his desire, but an unfortunate event encumbers him. On the day he finally manages the courage and money, a mysterious meteor lands in a nearby graveyard, turning the deceased into zombies. What is supposed to be a happy occasion for our protagonist turns into a harrowing fight for the survival of himself and his lady love.
Jason’s artwork fits perfectly with his twisted story. He draws simple characters and backgrounds, eschewing all detail and flair. The story is told in two tones, black and white, with no grays at all in the artwork. Somehow, this austere method allows The Living and the Dead to pack everything one can possibly want from a zombie story. The standard gore of the genre is present and accounted for, except a lot of it is hinted at and not overtly displayed. A specific example of where this approach shines is a three panel sequence towards the beginning of the zombie infestation:
Panel one: A mother leaves a stroller with baby outside a store, and quickly runs in to buy something.
Panel two: Outside the store, there is a zombie standing over the stroller.
Panel three: The mother leaves the store, and is horror struck when she sees the zombie holding a small skeleton.
Jason never actually showed the most horrific part of that sequence (the zombie eating the baby), but the implication is enough to make readers cringe.
The Living and the Dead has everything a good zombie title needs: confrontations with zombified loved ones, gripping escape sequences, social commentary (much like in Edgar Wright’s film Shaun of the Dead, there is a marked similarity between the zombies and the pre-infestation people mindlessly going about their routine lives), gore, and self sacrifice. This is all wrapped around a core that, at its heart, is really a tender and touching love story. Jason’s book is a refreshing reminder that pictures really are worth a thousand words, and that heavy narration is rarely truly necessary in the visual world of graphic novels.
by Dylan Kurlansky