Playwright David
Zane Mairowitz has a history of mixing the literary classics with the comic
book format. He was the author of Kafka For Beginners, famously illustrated by
Robert Crumb, and also adapted two Kafka novellas for the comic book format:
The Trial (with Chantal Montellier) and The Castle (with Jaromir99). In
addition to this, he has adapted Crime and Punishment and Heart of Darkness.
With the exception of The Castle, all of these publications have been
translated into Norwegian, so it the Norwegian audience had ample opportunity
to get familiar with his works by the time he decided to adapt one of Norwegian
literature’s greatest classics - Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt.
Penned by Ibsen as a “dramatic poem”, Peer Gynt was originally intended to be read rather than performed on stage, but was later reworked for the stage and has become one of our most famous plays ever.
The most important task – to illustrate the adaptation
- went to Geir Moen, a Norwegian artist who’s neither a stranger to Ibsen, big
drama nor 18th century imagery. One of his previous works was illustrating De
Fire Store ("The Four Great Ones") based on scripts by Øystein
Runde; a steampunk/proto-superhero comic
starring four of Norway’s greatest 19th century writers (including Henrik
Ibsen) as secret agents. Both conceptually and art-wise, the premise was
somewhat similar to Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen.
This background serves
him well when illustrating Peer Gynt. As
previously mentioned, the work was originally meant to be read, not performed
on stage, but in retrospect it comes across as a visually strong story with
many burlesque and imaginative ideas. So Moen has a committed to tradition,
while at the same time he and Mairowitz have a commitment to try and renew it.
Geir Moen has a somewhat rigid art style, and his characters are often lacking in animation. On the other hand, he also has a detailed and expressive line, which looks great in this story. His creativity is considerable, and his respect and enthusiasm for the original is very transparent. In his own statement he has "taken a million reference images" from the text.
A pattern becomes
evident as soon as you begin reading: The images that are (probably) only in Peer’s
head are brightly colored, while the images from reality are dimly colored. But
just as you have gotten accustomed to this pattern, it becomes more
unpredictable again. The scene with Anitra and from the madhouse, for example,
are both dim, while the homecoming scenes (which admittedly include some
surreal images) are in color. The distinction between fantasy and reality, and
what symbolizes what, are becoming more ambiguous, and the reader is being
challenged. This makes for a more interesting read.
The comic also
has an international flavor. Some of it is probably due to Mairowitz' contributions,
but Moen has a certain international artistic flair himself. Many of his Gynt
characters are reminiscent of Vertigo Comics boogeymen, including the Strange
Passenger and the Button-Molder. The
trolls in the hall of the Mountain King look more like demons from medieval art
than traditional Norwegian folk-art. The Mountain King himself is obviously
Ibsen, and he resembles the playwright more the further out in the story we
get.
If you know the
original well*, you'll appreciate that relatively little is cut from this version, all in
all. Every scene of some importance is included and the flow of the original
story is retained. Mairowitz has done a very good job of keeping that. The
spelling is cautiously modernized, and for the sake of the format some rhythm
and rhymes had to be broken down, but are mostly kept very recognizable.
Comics Norway in
general are breathing a sigh of relief well these days, even though we did have
faith in Geir Moen all along: One of Norway's foremost literary works have made
a successful transition into comics.
* Translations of Peer Gynt are widely available on the net. Here are a few links:
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/peer-gynt-1716/1 (German translation)
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k54702240 (French translation)
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