Midnight Sun : A Thin slice of Brilliance

This much is true.

On 25 May 1928, returning from her third expedition to the North Pole, the airship Italia crashed on the Arctic icepack, killing one crew member on impact, and stranding nine more. The remaining six members of the crew were carried off in the envelope of the airship, never to be found. An international rescue effort ensued, but because of apathy and political considerations on the part of the Italian Fascist government, it took more than 49 days to find the survivors.

For whatever reasons, the crash of the Italia has become a footnote in history. Truth to tell, I was completely unfamiliar with the incident before happening, quite by happenstance, upon Ben Towle’s quietly brilliant graphic novel Midnight Sun. This is a work firmly entrenched with what makes historical fiction work when done properly, using the details of the event as a backdrop to tell a tale that touches the human condition.



History means precious little until it’s placed in the context of how its participants view it in their own lives. In Midnight Sun, we view the crash through the eyes of a reporter only identified as “A. J.”, an alcoholic whose last chance at redemption is covering the final fate of the Italia survivors. His paper books him passage aboard the Russian icebreaker Kasspin, headed to rescue the Italia survivors. Meanwhile, the survivors of the Italia grapple with survival on an ice flow moving inexorably north.

The ice flow is a metaphor for the story, to be sure—it represents salvation and death on several levels. And it works admirably, due in no small part to Towle’s storytelling gifts. What really hooked me on Midnight Sun, though, was the way he illustrated the story. His style is stark, simple, a bit reminiscent of Herge, but with atmospheric details that call to mind the detail work of Eisner. Towles refers to himself as a cartoonist—not an artist—and that modest attitude about himself leaves him free to concentrate on telling his story.

At its heart, Midnight Sun isn’t about a desperate rescue mission, or about coming to grips with one’s mortality or even about a final shot at redemption. It’s more about how events, seemingly unrelated, converge and influence each other, making for larger, equally unrelated events. Towle paints the story in stark lines, accentuated by minimal gray washes, creating an effect that reflects both the growing desperation of the stranded explorers and the edgy boredom of the rescuers and the reporter.

Midnight Sun isn’t a bombastic graphic novel—in fact, I’d liken it more to a cinema verite than a graphic novel. In the confines of a 6.5" X 5.5" format and a mere 136 pages, Ben Towle has managed to bring a historical environ to life. His ear for dialogue and his eye for little details make Midnight Sun a rare treat not only for comics fans, but a remarkable little piece of storytelling.

Contraband Considered As Video Angst

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You can pretty much lay that “fifteen minutes of fame” theory to rest. We move way too fast for that. You have fifteen seconds—and that’s if you’re very lucky. Our cell phone culture makes everybody and everything newsworthy for at least a blip on the cyberspace network. The most miniscule moment, whether it’s a clip of a skateboarding dog or an impassioned plea to save Britney, can garner rave reviews and a gazillion hits in a matter of hours. And it falls into oblivion even more quickly.

The graphic novel Contraband, by TJ Behe & Phil Elliott, attempts to look at the consequences of such homegrown media endeavors. It’s a day after tomorrow scenario in which a youth subculture records, and in some cases, manufactures events for fun and profit in hopes for a slot on the cell phone video network Contraband. It’s a concept not far removed from our current culture, replete with references to mercenaries in Afghanistan, club culture and YouTube-style “citizen journalism.”

Contraband has all the ingredients for a near-future cautionary tale, a noir-drenched mystery or a twisting and turning action story. Unfortunately, it never really settles on one point of view. Yeah, it’s serpentine, but the twists it takes are more convulsive than constructive.

A large part of the problem with Contraband is Behe’s propensity to talking a point to death. According to his bio, he’s spent the last few years “developing compelling mobile content for global entertainment companies including BBC, SkySports, Playboy, MTV, and O2.” It’s a pity he never learned to master the art of the graphic novel, even sadder that he doesn’t recognize the most basic rule of storytelling: show, don’t tell.

Graphic novels, by definition, are visual storytelling. They’re like cinema, letting imagery flow as the narrative device. When they succeed, graphic novels are beautiful things, with illustrations and words merging as a seamless whole. When they fail, they’re jarring, a cacophony of pictures sparring with exposition. Contraband falls into the latter category.

Despite UK illustrator Phil Elliott’s best efforts, the art in Contraband is overshadowed by ponderous soliloquies by the characters, most of which serve only to make the novel read more like a manifesto than an actual story. Word balloons, arranged haphazardly, crowd out the art in too many panels, resulting in a jumbled mess that’s at best confusing, and at worst, seriously challenges the reader’s attention span.

Elliot’s art doesn’t really mesh with Behe’s story—rather, it comes off more as hurried sketches more suited to storyboards than an actual graphic novel. His style is somewhere between R. Crumb and Herge, sans the subtle intricacies of either artist. Thus, the reader feels disconnected from the characters, despite Elliots keen sense of establishing shots and perspective. Behe’s story, with its arbitrary flashbacks and flash-forwards, grows tiresome quickly as it is, and Eliot’s simple drawings of the characters, devoid of any outstanding features, make the story all the more difficult to follow.

It’s all presented in black and white wash, presumably to give it a noir feel, but it only serves to make the characters less discernible, and the contrived story even more murky. Contraband might work as a B-movie, and perhaps that was the intention of the creators. As a graphic novel, however, it comes across as a poor adaptation of a movie yet to be made.