Angola in the Comics #10: Swamp Thing #19

Here's another very brief look at an appearance by Angola as the setting of a DC super hero comic. Like my previous look at a 1977 Batman comic, Angola appears for only a single panel. The book in question is Swamp Thing #19 and the story "Rootless" by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artists Giuseppe Camuncoli & Cameron Stewart, originally released in 2001. It seems appropriate that a DC super hero visited Angola near the beginning of the Civil War and likewise one visited near the conclusion. (there doesn't seem to be any appearances from the middle though)

Swamp Thing is normally a thoughtful horror/fantasy book about the plant elemental creature Swamp Thing who, per Alan Moore, once thought he was a man named Alec Holland. However, the star of the Swamp Thing series which ran during 2000-2001 was Tefé Holland, the half-human/half-plant daughter of the original. Brian K. Vaughan was a relatively young comics author at the time, this being before his breakout work on Y: The Last Man or Runaways. In fact, Vaughan has said in interviews that he doesn't think too highly of his early comics work, that he saw it as a means to get "bad writing" out of his system.

It seems Tefé and her friend Pilate are searching for the literal Tree of Knowledge and their quest has brought them to Africa. Like, the entire continent. In a quick series of panels we see them visit just about every hotspot in Africa circa 2001: first an "amputee camp" in Sierra Leone, then to the civil war in Angola, then rescuing slaves in the Sudan, then opposing female genital mutilation in Ethiopia, then starvation in Somalia, and finally battling rebels in Namibia. Any one of those subjects could have been the subject of a half-decent post-Alan Moore Vertigo comic, but it's ultimately Namibia where the bulk of issue #19 goes down.

So all we're left with is that panel of Tefé & Pilate fighting nondescript people in a nondescript location which is only identifiable as Angola because the caption tells us it is; are those guys UNITA? MPLA? Mercenaries? Or just criminals? Heck if I know. Giuseppe Camuncoli has come a long way since 2001 - his work in this comic is very thin on detail. Even with Cameron Stewart inking him, it looks very dashed-off.

Swamp Thing was frequently a great platform for authors to talk about environmental issues they were passionate about and there is much to discuss about Angola - you could talk about how landmines have wrecked the agricultural industry, discuss the perfect environmental conditions they enjoy. You could talk about the unique plant life found only in that part of the world, like yesterday's Poison Ivy comic did. But nope, it's just glanced over, which is a pity. The actual plot in Namibia reads a little strangely as Tefé & Pilate encounter an African mystic who talks to them in English. Pilate says it's the first English he's heard in weeks, which is... huh? There's a pretty visible white population in Namibia and plenty of English spoken there. Heck, they'd just come from Sierra Leone, which has a lot of English spoken. Good rule of thumb for writers: former English colonies tend to have English-speaking populations.

Quadrinhos em Português 1: Private Eye

It's been some time since I last spoke about Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin's digital comic book series Private Eye. During this interval, the series wrapped itself up after ten installments and it's been announced that a print collection is forthcoming - but seriously, when you can purchase the entire book for whatever price you like (even free) from their website, why bother with print?

Besides my adoration for the artwork of Marcos Martin, my interest was drawn to Private Eye by the presence of their Portuguese-language translations. Insofar as comic books did so much to help teach me how to read, I thought a Portuguese comic book would be a fun teaching aid. At this point in my attempt to learn the language I've exhausted all of the material provided by my employer's Continuing Education program and thus must educate myself.

I know some armchair quarterbacks on the internet are offering opinions as to whether bringing Private Eye to print is an admission of failure on the part of Vaughan & Martin. For myself, I spent a long time completely disengaged from the series because I forgot it was being published; that's the only real flaw I can see with the model they adopted - that it requires you to frequent their home page on a regular basis to keep up with the story.

Private Eye turned out to be a pretty simple story. Given the title of the series and the occupation of the protagonist I was led to believe it would be a detective series - but no, not really. There was a question as to what the villain was after, but was not much more than a MacGuffin. The story constantly shifted perspectives to show what the villains were doing so the protagonist basically played catch-up for ten chapters. It's a futuristic crime thriller, not a futuristic mystery.

One odd effect of the translation was that a pair of French assassins whose dialogue was printed in English with in the original were, naturally, translated into Portuguese for that version. However, the few times in which the duo spoke French in the original remained French in the translation. It all works, but it does make one wonder: how would a French version solve that issue?

In this scene above, Marcos Martin gave the lead female character a half-page panel to show off her outfit. The first time I read it I assumed the enlarged panel was intended to establish how taken the protagonist was with her beauty - but later, he turns out to be gay. So why the large panel? For the benefit of male readers? Or the benefit of Martin?

More thoughts about Portuguese-language comic books over the next two days.

"Confie mas confira, como dizia meu pai." Private Eye em Português

Continued from yesterday...

When I began studying Portuguese last year I made an effort to seek out comic books printed in Portuguese which might help me... but the internet failed to turn up many leads. To my immense pleasure, Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin's Private Eye is sold in a variety of languages - even the ever-elusive Portuguese!

Of all the languages I would choose to learn, it had to be one seldom used in North America, sim? Print resources on Portuguese are lacking, especially in the European dialect I'm trying to favour. Although the internet has been very useful to me, very few online comic books offer Portuguese translations - and those Portuguese comics I have located were series I'd never heard of before (they probably originated in Brazil).

Having seen how Private Eye manages their translations, one wonders why every major publisher doesn't offer multiple language versions of their work? Surely the big companies are better able to afford these services than a little creator-owned digital book with a "pay what you like" donation box? As seen above, the finished project doesn't go to the trouble of translating advertisements, book covers and other English-language background details - it's just a matter of finding a decent translator for the dialogue balloons.

Best of all, thanks to the DRM-free nature of Private Eye I can read the English and Portuguese versions at the same time on my computer, running samples side-by-side. I'm certain to be back for more of Vaughan & Martin's series... if only to aid my pitifully poor vocabulário.

"Trust, but verify, my Dad used to say." Thoughts on the Private Eye#1

I may not be the first to climb aboard Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin's Private Eye#1, but at least I'm not the last. Although I was a huge fan of Vaughn at the beginning of his career and for a time collected everything with his name on it, I broke away when he wrapped up his Runaways series. I might not have come back for the Private Eye except for two factors:

1. The compelling artwork of Marcos Martin, perhaps the best adventure hero artist in the business today and
2. A very compelling creator-run distribution method, enticing readers to choose the format, language and price point which they prefer.

Projected to run just ten issues, the Private Eye is sold online here; the series is set in a world where people have rebelled against our present-day lack of privacy by installing intense levels of secrecy and privacy as virtually everyone wears wears masks and aliases; naturally, this is the perfect landscape for a mystery thriller and thus our protagonist, known only as "Patrick Immelmann," is hired to learn people's secrets the old-fashioned way - legwork, surveillance and evading the law. Following the usual pattern of a "typical" escapade, Patrick is hired to investigate the background of his client to ensure he can't find anything incriminating (and thus, hopefully no one else will). Naturally, complications ensue and amongst people this paranoid, would you be surprised to learn a few lies are spoken?

The premise is fine for an excuse to see Marcos Martin unleash his creativity on futuristic cityscapes and fasionable disguises. The concept is not believable, but we'll see how the story itself plays out; if the ride is fun, I won't complain about the suspension.

More about the Private Eye coming tomorrow...