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WORK TITLE: One Week in the Library
WORK NOTES: with illustrator John Amor
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CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
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https://imagecomics.com/creators/view/w.-maxwell-prince * http://comicsalliance.com/tags/w-maxwell-prince/
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PERSONAL
Married; children: daughter.
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Writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
W. Maxwell Prince’s first graphic novel, Judas: The Last Days, was published in 2015, and it reimagines the story of Judas Iscariot. In Prince’s version of events, all of the apostles, even Judas, are sentenced to walk the earth as immortals until the second coming of Christ. Over the course of millennia, several apostles fall into sin, one becomes a drug addict and one owns a brothel. As Judas wanders through his never-ending life, he reflects on his betrayal of Jesus, and readers learn that Judas chose to betray his friend so Jesus could be martyred and fulfill his destiny. Even as readers learn that Judas is more complex than they might have believed, they also learn that he is tired of living. Judas is determined to find a way to kill himself, despite his own immortality.
Sharing his inspiration for Judas on the Multiversity website, Prince told Leo Johnson: “If anything, this story started as a play on Borges’s ‘Three Versions of Judas’—my favorite (and for my money the best) of his so-convincing-you-think-it’s-real faux scholarly articles from Labyrinths and Ficciones.” Prince added: “In that short, a wonky theorist posits that maybe Judas was an extension of Jesus, or even God incarnate; he took the burden of ‘betrayer’ on his shoulders in order to enact the story of Salvation and Second Coming. It’s just so rich and dense, one of those magical Borgesian things. So at some point I decided to write the fourth version of Judas–though I had no idea it would turn out to be so weird and full of monsters and goblins.”
Praising the result on the Big Glasgow Comic website, a critic announced: “All in all Judas may not be for everyone but it is much more than simply an attempt to take Christian icons and twist them to simply raise the hackles of those who seem to be all too easy to offend these days. It’s a story with a big idea.” An online Book Ramble correspondent was also positive, asserting that “The representation of the apostles was really interesting. It was interesting to see Judas as not a bad person but as playing into a larger plot to create a bigger/greater version of Jesus.”
One Week in the Library
One Week in the Library, Prince’s second graphic novel, followed a year later, and it is narrated by a librarian named Allen. The protagonist works in a fantastical library where the stories have lives of their own. In fact, Allen inhabits the very stories he is sworn to protect. The books appear to be in open rebellion, so Allen must enter into them in order keep them in order. Along the way, Allen meets with several recognizable characters, including those from Alice in Wonderland. In the end, Allen eventually meets Prince, the book’s author, and the two have a direct conversation about the purpose of Allen’s story. Notably, the metafictional romp is paired with shifting artistic styles as Allen moves through the many books in his library.
In the words of online Comic Bastards writer Laramie Martinez: “I liked this book. I liked the direction it took and I’m still thinking about it a week after I read it. I will read it again and I’ll probably have a new opinion about it by the time I finish it a second time.” Martinez went on to advise that “this book is for a certain person looking for something a bit more literary in their comic book.” An Outright Geekery Website contributor was also impressed, asserting that One Week in the Library is “most definitely one of the weirdest books I have ever read. Period! It makes totally [sic] sense and absolutely no sense whatsoever at the exact same time.” As Jess Camacho in Multiversity Comics put it, “despite the bigger ideas, this is still an easy to follow story that has those bigger ideas as an added bonus. Prince’s story has a lot to unpack and the language he uses is deliberate and beautiful.” Indeed, Camacho observed, Prince will “present a fun quip and then jump right into this deep exploration of the meaning of life and stories. He does this without ruining the momentum of the plot and he does this without making the reader feel unintelligent.”
The Electric Sublime
Prince’s third graphic novel, The Electric Sublime, was published in 2017. Like its predecessors, the book draws on well-known figures and reimagines their possibilities. This time around, Prince focuses on famous artists, referencing Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, and Leonardo Da Vinci, among others. The story begins when Margot Breslin takes a job as director of the Bureau of Artistic Integrity. Her mission is to keep the world of paintings (The Electric Sublime) from influencing the world of men. When things begin to go away in The Electric Sublime, Margo must call on Arthur “Art” Brut for help. Art has bipolar disease, and he’s also one of the few people who is able to enter and exit The Electric Sublime.
Discussing the book in an online Paste interview with Steve Foxe, Prince explained that “every second Arthur spends in The Electric Sublime makes him more unfit to operate in the real world. One arm of the thesis of the book is that capital-A Art can act as a sort of salve to madness. It’s a therapy that so many people exercise. But for Arthur, it’s paradoxical: every second of his ‘therapy’ just destroys his rational mind more and more. He has to jump into paintings, but it’s ruining him in the process.”
An online Comicsverse reviewer lauded the story, announcing: “With a bipolar protagonist who is hurt by the work he does, The Electric Sublime has the perfect opportunity to explore the way the myth of The Tortured Artist can be just as damaging as it is empowering for those who live with mental illness. And, if not, it is still very cool to see an institutionalized bipolar character who gets to be a hero rather than a murderous villain.” Etelka Lehoczky, writing on the NPR Website, was more reserved in her assessment, commenting: “It’s ultimately both sad and ironic that Prince feels the need to concoct a world where art can literally kill people. Can’t we acknowledge that culture is awesomely powerful, a matter of life and death, without resorting to theatrics or gore.” Nevertheless, an online Comics Crusader critic observed that Prince “takes the reader on a journey of semi magic and different perspectives. The idea of an alternative world hidden in paintings is used effectively, even if at it [sic] simplest form . . . The dialogue in the book is engaging, drawing you into to Breslin’s reality before the swipe of a paint brush changes the texture and composition.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, December 5, 2016, review of One Week in the Library.
ONLINE
Big Glasgow Comic, http://bigglasgowcomic.com/ (January 20, 2015), review of Judas: The Last Days.
Book Ramble, https://thebookramble.wordpress.com/ (January 27, 2015), review of Judas.
Comic Bastards, https://comicbastards.com/(August 21, 2017), Laramie Martinez, review of One Week in the Library.
Comics Crusader, http://www.comiccrusaders.com/ (October 20, 2016), review of The Electric Sublime.
Comicsverse, https://comicsverse.com (October 20, 2016), review of The Electric Sublime.
Multiversity Comics, http://www.multiversitycomics.com/ (December 12, 2014), Leo Johnson, author interview; (December 9, 2016), Jess Camacho, review of One Week In the Library.
NPR Website, http://www.npr.org/ (April 29, 2017), Etelka Lehoczky, review of The Electric Sublime.
Outright Geekery, http://www.outrightgeekery.com (December 11, 2016), review of One Week In the Library.
Paste, https://www.pastemagazine.com/(August 21, 2017), Steve Foxe, author interview.
W. Maxwell Prince Website, https://www.wmaxwellprince.com/ (August 21, 2017).*
W. Maxwell Prince writes in Brooklyn and lives with his wife, daughter, and two cats called Mischief and Mayhem. He is the author of ONE WEEK IN THE LIBRARY (Image), The Electric Sublime (IDW), and Judas: The Last Days (ibid). When not writing, he tries to render all of human experience in chart form.
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W. Maxwell Prince Murders Your Favorite Works of Art in The Electric Sublime
By Steve Foxe | September 15, 2016 | 1:00pm
Main Art by Martín Morazzo & Mat Lopes
Comics Features W. Maxwell Prince
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If you imagine the world just outside the frame of the Mona Lisa to be a peaceful renaissance setting, The Electric Sublime’s Arthur Brut sure has a surprise in store for you. Debuting next month from writer W. Maxwell Prince, artist Martín Morazzo and colorist Mat Lopes, The Electric Sublime follows Margot Breslin, newly anointed director of the Bureau of Artistic Integrity, a not-so-secret agency tasked with policing “art crime.” When famous works of art start ending up…different, she’s forced to call upon Arthur “Art” Brut, a special consultant whose relationship to the art world makes him an invaluable resource—and lands him in a mental institution.
Prince gave Paste an early look at the first three issues of the upcoming IDW series, packed with murderous Warhol idolaters, fine-art sacrilege and the most interesting wooden drawing model in the western canon. Check out the interview below to learn more about the head-tripping series’ take on the intersection of creativity and mental health, as well as a first look at Morazzo and Lopes’ interior art.
Paste: The Electric Sublime is all about art, so let’s start by talking about Martín Morazzo and Mat Lopes’ contributions to the book. Between the bizarre real-world crimes and the surreal dreamscapes “inside” these works of art, Morazzo is stretching a wide range of artistic muscles. How’d you connect and how has working together influenced your approach to The Electric Sublime?
W. Maxwell Prince: I had made a shortlist of a handful of artists that I considered to be very good, but for some reason weren’t currently doing published work. Martín was the first and only person to respond to my emails, and I think that was probably for the best. (I found out later he’s got some very specific family history that drew him to the pitch—the sort of stuff that makes him a natural at visualizing a world where art history and mental illness meet.) Mat was recommended to me by another colorist, and, as the story often goes, there’s really no other team that could have worked on this book.
Between Martín’s Quitely-meets-Crumb style, and Mat’s delicate treatment of Martín’s lines, we’ve wound up with something here that, to my mind, is the perfect execution of art-about-art.
As for my approach, I find myself now conceiving scenes in their precise tag-team delineation, which I think has freed me to write a lot more ambitiously; I know that whatever I scribble down, the two of them will knock it out of the park.
The Electric Sublime Interior Art by Martín Morazzo & Mat Lopes
Paste: In your announcement interview, you talked a bit about tackling the complex reality of mental health. Do you plan to explore the contrast between the manic Art Brut of the “real” world and the much more focused, capable Art Brut of the Electric Sublime? Is Brut’s mental state an inevitable consequence of breaching that divide?
Prince: That’s a good question, and you’re hitting it right on the head: every second Arthur spends in The Electric Sublime makes him more unfit to operate in the real world. One arm of the thesis of the book is that capital-A Art can act as a sort of salve to madness. It’s a therapy that so many people exercise. But for Arthur, it’s paradoxical: every second of his “therapy” just destroys his rational mind more and more. He has to jump into paintings, but it’s ruining him in the process.
Paste: Brut connects with the Electric Sublime via painting—will future issues or arcs reveal the worlds within other media?
Prince: Absolutely. The hope is to have Arthur contend with the magical worlds of not just painterly art, but also sculpture and music and the written word. Anything with a rich internal world and history is fair game.
Paste: What is Director Breslin’s personal connection to art? Her partner is a painter, but Breslin doesn’t strike me as the creative type herself. What led her to the B.A.I.?
Prince: For starters, her father, T. Holmes “Brez” Breslin, was a jazz musician, and good friends with Margot’s predecessor at the B.A.I. If we’re greenlit for an issue #5, you’ll get to meet Brez and learn about Margot’s relationship with him. And you’re right: Margot isn’t what we’d call a “creative type.” But this actually makes her uniquely fit to head an organization charged with maintaining Artistic Integrity—she’s got no emotional connection to the artistic world, no stake in it other than doing her job well. It gives her a clearness of mind that I think might not be possible if she, say, really loved the works of Da Vinci.
It’s interesting though: she’s utterly surrounded by and drawn to artists and musicians and expressive thinkers. There’s a reason for that. We’ll find out why eventually.
The Electric Sublime Interior Art by Martín Morazzo & Mat Lopes
Paste: The B.A.I. doesn’t seem to be a closely guarded secret in the museum world of The Electric Sublime. How aware is the general public of what Art Brut and other sensitives are capable of?
Prince: Much like the actual world of art, the B.A.I. and its fantastical mission act just on the periphery of popular consciousness. Those that spend enough time in museums know something’s going on—but who spends a lot of time in museums anymore?
Paste: The plot hinges on real works of art, from the Mona Lisa to Warhol to The Scream. Was there anything you couldn’t incorporate for legal or rights issues? Any great Damien Hirst or Yayoi Kusama subplots left on the cutting room floor?
Prince: We’re operating under pretty plain fair use laws: all of the works featured are made by artists long dead, whose images have scuttled into the public domain. To boot, the whole problem in the world of The Electric Sublime is that something about these famous paintings has changed—they’re different than they’re supposed to be. Martín has done a great job altering classical works; his winking Mona Lisa might be more compelling than the original. I guess you can say we’re doing something like graffiti.
The Electric Sublime Interior Art by Martín Morazzo & Mat Lopes
Paste: Is there a cathartic element to literally murdering great works of art? By the third issue, you’ve violently disposed of two of the most recognizable figures ever committed to canvas. Did you take a particularly frustrating Art History course in college?
Prince: I actually remember LOVING my art history classes. I didn’t declare, but I believe I had enough credits to have an Art History minor.
And I used to spend hours making these (pun incoming) baroque flash cards to prepare for tests. This was back when college campuses didn’t monitor how many color printouts you made in the computer lab. I’d print a color version of each painting I had to study, maybe a hundred works, glue that picture to one side of a flash card, and on the other side I’d write all the pertinent info like title, artist, medium, current location, etc.
I was able to sell those babies for a few hundred dollars at the end of each semester.
But yeah, I suppose I’m doing some serious violence to painterly figures. It’s not cathartic, not really. I’d describe it more as something like Controlled Blasphemy. Here’s this sacred work of art, and I’m diving in, pulling it apart and chopping off the central figure’s head (or burning her alive, as it were). I experience a perverse kind of thrill each time I do away with something holy. But then I get nervous and feel like I’m being needlessly irreverent. It’s like ripping a page out of a Bible, or something.
Paste: Your next announced work is One Week in the Library, an “experimental graphic novella” with artist John Amor incorporating comics, prose, poetry and infographics. Is there anything else in the works that you’re able to tease?
Prince: I’ve got a few things brewing that aren’t announced yet, but One Week [from] Image is the big next thing after The Electric Sublime. I’m really proud of both projects. I don’t think they’re like any other comics currently being published. And they’re both a lot more honest than anything I’ve ever done. I hope people agree.
W. Maxwell Prince writes in Brooklyn and lives with his wife, daughter, and two cats called Mischief and Mayhem. He is the author of the Eisner-nominated One Week in the Library (Image), The Electric Sublime (IDW), and Judas: The Last Days (ibid). When not writing, he tries to render all of human experience in chart form.
W. Maxwell Prince Takes Us Into The Life Of An Immortal With “Judas: The Last Days” [Interview]
By Leo Johnson | December 12th, 2014
Posted in Interviews | 0 Comments
The story of Judas Iscariot is well-known to most anyone living in the Western world. The most beloved of Jesus’s disciples, and also the one that betrayed him, Judas is infamous as one of the great betrayers in history, even earning a special spot in Dante’s “Inferno”. But what sort of life does he lead after the crucifixion of Jesus, when he’s cursed to walk the world as an immortal and to live with his betrayal? That’s just the beginning of where W. Maxwell Prince and John Amor take their new graphic novel “Judas: The Last Days”.
Read on as we chat with W. Maxwell Prince about an immortal and suicidal Judas, the touchy subject of religion, where some of our favorite Apostles are in this story, and more. “Judas: The Last Days” hits stores 1/21/15 and the final-order cutoff is 12/15/14.
“Judas: The Last Days” is coming to IDW next month and centers on the infamous Judas Iscariot, arguably one of the best known figures in Western culture. What exactly is it all about?
W. Maxwell Prince: Judas Iscariot is immortal and wants to kill himself. But he’s not doing a great job at it.
Now, religion is generally a touchy subject and comic fans are not often known for their rationality. For the most part I think you handled the material well and there shouldn’t be too many objections, with maybe the exception of a scene where Jesus engages in same-sex coitus. How do you think people will react to the various religious aspects of the book, especially the more non-traditional?
Page from Judas: The Last Days
WMP: You know, I wish I had a better gauge on the prevailing sensibilities of comics readers. I tend to view the world as very secularized, but that’s probably because I live in New York.
I’ll say that I don’t think this is a book for fundamentalists. But it’s still maybe a book for someone with a basic Judeo-Christian template of belief. For all the things in the story that might chafe a person of faith (especially the scene you mention), I think there winds up being an air of extreme reverence to it—something almost like piety.
And comic fans should be pretty inured to retconning, right? So this is just a retcon on a different order. Crisis on Infinite Gospels or some such.
One of the more interesting aspects of Judas’s character in “The Last Days” is that he’s immortal and is walking the Earth until Jesus comes back, as are the other disciples. It touches, I think, on the “Wandering Jew” myth a bit, and also the early belief in the Beloved Disciple who was said to live until Jesus’s second coming. Did either of these ideas play into the immortality of Judas and his companions?
WMP: I actually didn’t know much about the Wandering Jew or the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved until I started to unpack the New Testament as part research for this book. (My worldview tends to skew Darwinian, so there were some major lacunae where my knowledge of biblical lore was concerned.) If anything, this story started as a play on Borges’s “Three Versions of Judas”—my favorite (and for my money the best) of his so-convincing-you-think-it’s-real faux scholarly articles from “Labyrinths and Ficciones”. In that short, a wonky theorist posits that maybe Judas was an extension of Jesus, or even God incarnate; he took the burden of “betrayer” on his shoulders in order to enact the story of Salvation and Second Coming. It’s just so rich and dense, one of those magical Borgesian things. So at some point I decided to write the fourth version of Judas–though I had no idea it would turn out to be so weird and full of monsters and goblins.
Page from Judas: The Last Days
In addition to Judas and, of course, a bit of Jesus, we’re treated to your takes on the various early followers of Jesus, mainly Matthew, James the Lesser, and Paul. Each, just as Judas, is immortal. How all they all handling the long wait until their Messiah’s return?
WMP: I don’t want to spoil too much, but the breakdown is: Matthew is an occasionally crossdressing proprietor of a harem-cum-brothel whose employees are all demons/monsters; James the Less spends his time roasting away in a flophouse called The Rapture Closet, keeping company with the likes of flying monkeys and art-addicted madmen; and Paul (not one of the original twelve apostles, mind you) is doing something, somewhere in a circular room. It all looks a bit cooky on paper, seeing it laid out like that, but I think the story holds at the center—the world itself has permitted myriad fictions to come true (from stories about saviors who walk on water, to yarns about winged chimpanzees), and an eternity in that world has made Jesus’s disciples totally strange. Judas might actually be the only halfway sane guy of the lot.
Continued below
You say you’re not a very religious person, so what sort of research did you do into the New Testament and the subjects within it
WMP: Golly, a ton.
Yes, my orientation towards the world doesn’t allow a lot of room for religious worship. (I worship plenty of stuff, though: music, coffee, language.). But I’d also be willing to say that faith or “belief” and all the stories wrapped up with those virtues—especially where Christianity is concerned—have for a long time been really interesting to me. (Imagine a novel/book so powerful that everyone who read it became unswervingly convinced that it’s real, and then proceeded to let the content of that book inform almost every aspect of their lives….imagine the church of Moby Dick, or Seventh Day Hemingwaysians.) So I started reading the gospels, and eventually found myself in a NT class at a local university, presided over by a pretty well-known theologian. (Side note: most of the students in the class were 30-40 years my senior, and all Jewish. I think they were maybe hedging their bets vis-á-vis the afterlife and trying to get some New Testament on their spiritual resumés.) Anyhow, that’s all to say that I read and read—and I’ve still got a long way to go if I’m ever gonna wrap my head around this stuff.
Page from Judas: The Last Days
Some publishers may have shied away from a book like this, such as it is with the previously discussed scene with Jesus. How was it pitching to IDW and getting them on board for the book?
WMP: This book’s publication owes everything to Tom Waltz (editor and senior staff writer at IDW). It took me and John (Amor, the artist on the book, who is a genius and deserves to walk away from this with offers from the Big 2 and the Small Many) over four years to make the thing, and from about the tenth page Tom was showing it to the brass at IDW, evangelizing its merits and infecting it with his inexhaustible positivity.
Finally, is there anything else you’d like to add?
WMP: Just that I hope everyone enjoys and is challenged by the book when they read it.
One Week in the Library
263.50 (Dec. 5, 2016): p58.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
One Week in the Library
W. Maxwell Prince and John Amor. Image, $9.99 trade paper (96p) ISBN 978-1-53430022-4
In a new story from the creators of Judas: The Last Days, Allen, the narrator, is both librarian and prisoner in a library variously described as "the sum total of its innumerable stories" and as housing "all narratives, in all their possible shapes." When the books seem to be rebelling, Allen lives through a week of stories including one with familiar storybook characters, a brief sojourn in a literally colorless office, and a final tete-a-tete with the author. Amor, with colorist Kathryn Layno, produces kaleidoscopic and hallucinogenic images that pair perfectly with Prince's experimental tale, with looming book stacks giving way to bizarre creatures and handy infographics as needed. In the final fourth wallbreaking scene, Prince confesses to his character that he hopes that this work "will give the reader the impression that I'm a bright guy," and it certainly does that. Amor's art is filled with references to pop culture, and it may take a few readings to get all of them. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"One Week in the Library." Publishers Weekly, 5 Dec. 2016, p. 58. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475224885&it=r&asid=a35d2d3b7b3fe4ec29b3d009700ac425. Accessed 11 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A475224885
Art Is A Matter Of Life And Death In 'The Electric Sublime'
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April 29, 20177:00 AM ET
Etelka Lehoczky
The Electric Sublime
by W. Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo and Mat Lopes
Paperback, 0 pages
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In a time when most types of government spending are under attack, a few brave souls have stepped up to defend those perpetually endangered hillocks of federally funded refinement, the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. The defenders haven't always managed so well. In a recent New York Times piece, Nicholas Kristof went so far as to argue that the august tradition of human cultural achievement should indeed be sustained because it has helped, somehow, to limit the practice of keeping hens in small cages. "The humanities have even reshaped our diet," he marveled.
Kristof is just the latest in a long line of commentators who've felt the best way to justify culture is to scrounge up concrete examples — however strained — of its impact on day-to-day existence. W. Maxwell Prince feels the same compulsion, but he's markedly more successful. Instead of constructing tortuous rationalizations involving chickens, he's created The Electric Sublime: a bloody, silly and deeply likable celebration of the life-or-death power of art in our lives.
Prince has been thinking a lot about that power lately. In last year's One Week In the Library, "the books [were] written in the very blood of the living stories held within." One of the library's titles featured a man who'd gouged out his own eyes, driven to despair by the staggering number of stories demanding to be read, the infinite possible truths to be grasped.
In The Electric Sublime, Prince imagines that art has the same power to annihilate. The title refers collectively to the worlds inside works of art: "countless very real, and very important, places, all made by geniuses and madmen." When something's wrong in the Electric Sublime, it leads to hundreds of deaths that must be investigated by the Bureau of Artistic Integrity. In one case, two homeless men beat each other to death over a picture of a can of tomato soup. In another, students in an amateur art class follow Matisse's dictum that a painter ought to have his tongue cut out. Time to call Art Brut! That's Arthur Brut, detective, a man with the power to inject himself into paintings. Soon, he's on the trail of a mysterious boy who can alter reality by drawing. Brut chases the lad through Seurat's pointillist parkland, Hopper's diner and the fragmented terrain of Guernica.
Of course, it's ultimately both sad and ironic that Prince feels the need to concoct a world where art can literally kill people.
Unfortunately, the artworks in The Electric Sublime don't get much more recent than that; Prince and his illustrators seem to think art stopped evolving sometime around the 1920s. True, cover artist Brendan McCarthy gives us a Jeff Koons bunny, but even that's a bit of a chestnut — and they just get nuttier. Munch's The Scream? Escher's steps? "Ceci n'est pas une pipe?" Come on, guys. How about injecting Art Brut into an Anish Kapoor or a Takashi Murakami?
Still, this problem doesn't sink the book. For one thing, you have to suspect Prince is deliberately choosing works his audience will remember from college art history classes or field trips to museums. It's understandable that he would reach out to readers through their favorite pieces. And in the end you have to like someone who loves art this much — however cobwebby his taste. Martin Morazzo's nimble lines and Mat Lopes' perky palette help too. Their adaptations of celebrated works, broken apart by the wars being fought within, are deft pastiches.
Of course, it's ultimately both sad and ironic that Prince feels the need to concoct a world where art can literally kill people. Can't we acknowledge that culture is awesomely powerful, a matter of life and death, without resorting to theatrics or gore — or, for that matter, the specious use of chickens? If you're a contemporary politician or New York Times columnist, apparently not. Whatever its flaws, at least The Electric Sublime is free of fowl — caged or no.
Etelka Lehoczky has written about books for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Salon.com. She tweets at @EtelkaL.
THE ELECTRIC SUBLIME #1 Review: Mental Illness and The Tortured Artist
By Morgan Slade
Posted: October 20, 2016
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THE ELECTRIC SUBLIME #1 BY W. MAXWELL PRINCE, MARTIN MORAZZO, AND MAT LOPES
Plot
Art
Characterization
Summary
THE ELECTRIC SUBLIME #1 holds a lot of potential as an exploration of mental health and creativity. The visual concept works well thematically and is beautiful when it tries to be.
94 %
INVENTIVE AND FASCINATING
If you’ve studied Vincent Van Gogh or Sylvia Plath, you’ve probably come across the concept of The Tortured Artist. This archetype is pervasive throughout discussions of art history and art in general. Essentially, The Tortured Artist is a tragic hero who lets mental illness consume them in order to access creative genius. The more isolated and suicidal an artist gets, the better, since that means they are suffering in order to create a masterpiece. This archetype is the centerpiece of THE ELECTRIC SUBLIME, created by W. Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo, and Mat Lopes.
In THE ELECTRIC SUBLIME, a new comic series from IDW Publishing, someone is changing famous works of art, causing viewers to go insane. It’s up to Art Brut, a detective with bipolar disorder and the ability to jump into paintings, and Margot Breslin, director of a government agency that investigates art-related crimes, to save the day. In Issue #1, Director Breslin pulls Brut out of a mental institution in order to tackle a case involving a winking Mona Lisa. Meanwhile, a mother drives her son, whose drawings have psychic qualities, to a children’s mental hospital.
From the beginning of this story, the relationship between mental health and art is a major theme. A nurse tells Breslin that the only treatment for Art Brut that seems to be working is allowing him to paint. That makes sense, given that art can be an extremely useful therapeutic tool; it encourages self-expression, physical activity, and a sense of accomplishment. However, interviews with W. Maxwell Prince have implied that Brut’s ability to enter paintings is what led him to get institutionalized in the first place. Therefore, Brut’s character runs on the paradox that art intensifies his mental illness but also relieves his mental illness.
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It is unclear at the moment how diving into artworks has hurt him psychologically. It could be that the more time he spends in these other landscapes, the more alienated he becomes from society. That might make sense as a metaphor. In real life, manic episodes of bipolar can cause people to increase in creative energy but also isolate themselves. I can’t say from my own experience, but I have close friends with bipolar, and I have seen how it affects them. In a manic state, your thinking becomes much faster and your ideas more grandiose, and you feel like you can tackle a million projects and never have to sleep or eat again. It’s very enticing at first, but the more one stays in a state like that, the harder it gets to talk to other people and the more overwhelming the ideas get. It’s like being in a different world, lonely, beautiful, and disturbing all at once. The art worlds of the story work in the same way. Instead of the monotonous muted colors and basic panels of the regular world, the art worlds use vibrant watercolors, irregular panels, and fantastic landscapes. It’s gorgeous but unstable, and it absorbs Brut, keeping him far away from human civilization.
What I am waiting to see is how this isolation is portrayed. In the archetype of The Tortured Artist, isolation and psychological distress are essential parts of making creative magic. So far, this seems to be true for Art Brut, whose meds don’t work and has no strategies or ways of coping with his bipolar except for art. Not to mention, his art and artistic worlds are by far the most visually engaging portion of the comic, and intentionally so.
However, we have yet to see whether Brut’s status as a Tortured Artist will be romanticized or deconstructed.
Personally, I’d prefer a deconstruction. I’ve seen how this trope affects real people struggling with mental health issues, and it is not pretty. Close friends of mine have dropped out of school, ruined close relationships, and even physically harmed themselves because they thought their mental illness was the key to their talent and didn’t want to jeopardize that with treatment. With a bipolar protagonist who is hurt by the work he does, THE ELECTRIC SUBLIME has the perfect opportunity to explore the way the myth of The Tortured Artist can be just as damaging as it is empowering for those who live with mental illness. And, if not, it is still very cool to see an institutionalized bipolar character who gets to be a hero rather than a murderous villain.
READ: Here’s how Pokemon GO can improve your mental health!
All in all, THE ELECTRIC SUBLIME #1 is a vibrant love letter to all artists who live with mental health issues, both throughout history and in the present. The plot, art, and characterization all work together to weave the relationship between creativity and mental illness throughout the comic. At the moment, it is unclear what Prince, Morazzo, and Lopes believe the nature of this relationship to be, but I am excited to find out.
REVIEW: The Electric Sublime #1
October 20, 2016 Johnny "The Machine" Hughes 0 Reviews,
Art is a powerful medium. It has the ability to affect our emotions, act as a means of conversation and can even transcend perception. It is no wonder why comic books can have so many different styles of art, albeit shackled into the framework of a story be writers. The Electric Sublime, from IDW, takes this idea a little further; what if art could have an almost palpable affect on real life?
The book starts with the Mona Lisa, somehow being changed. From there, pretty much all hell breaks loose. Also in play are a rash of killings and suicides across the world, all seemingly disparate with the exception of the an odd line drawing of a face with a winking eye. The director of Bureau of Artistic Integrity Margot Breslin is called in to investigate with really only plea, “We’re going to need Art Brut.” Arthur Brut is something of a recluse, if you call being holed up in a psychiatric ward on meds reclusive. As the story unfolds we see the reasons for the seclusion for Art and his sidekick Manny.
W. Maxwell Prince, a writer from New York, takes the idea of art and practically explodes it. The set up is a murder mystery with elements of, I am tempted to say pretension but I feel that is too harsh. Prince looks at art and through his creation, Art Brut, takes the reader on a journey of semi magic and different perspectives. The idea of an alternative world hidden in paintings is used effectively, even if at it simplest form, I am reminded of the Flash Rogue, Mirror Master. The characters in the book at first glance fall into grumpy cop and crazy genius; it’s Manny that provides the bridge. The dialogue in the book is engaging, drawing you into to Breslin’s reality before the swipe of a paint brush changes the texture and composition.
For a book like this, the artwork needs to be top-notch. Up to the plate steps Martin Morazzo who delivers a great looking book, with a style that is reminiscent of the great Barry Windsor Smith and more recently Alberto Ponticelli in AfterShock’s Second Sight. Morazzo’s starts the book with a mix of traditional art and photo manipulations to show the art in the Louvre. From there, its more traditional stylings, which has mature feel to it. With the tone of the book changing throughout the book, Morazzo does well to keep the characters grounded. You can’t look a this book without tipping your hat to colourist Mat Lopes, who may have the hardest job in translating Prince’s story onto the page through the variety of colors against the backdrop of mundane world.
This isn’t my normal type of book. Still, I am glad that I have read it. The story could be seen as a “where does an artist get his or her ideas from?” The mix between Breslin, who thinks she knows everything and Brut, who does actually know everything is well-defined. It will be interesting to see how the series plays out as we move further into Brut’s world.
Writing – 4 Stars
Art 4 Stars
Colors – 5 Stars
Review: Judas: The Last Days
20/01/2015The BGCP TeamComic, ReviewsAmour, Biblical, Higgins, IDW, Judas, Matt Etheridge, Occult, Prince
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: W Maxwell Prince
Art: John Amor
Colours: Kurt Huggins
IDW Publishing continue their assault on the big three and in particular Image Comics place as master of the indie comic book with their latest outside the box project this time from Prince and Amour the wonderfully titled The Judas Chronicles or Judas: The Last Days a 165 page graphic novel following Judas Iscariot cursed by his actions on that fateful night of the last supper to walk the Earth for eternity unable to die until Christ returns to release him from his sentence.
But two thousand years of life is a long time and Judah (as he’s calling himself these days what with the stigma attached to his actual name and all) has become oh so tired of life and its crushing, desperate monotony of the same. The same tick, tock of the crushing inevitability of everything but his own end. So he’s taking matters into his own hands. Surely there is a way out of this endless sameness? And he’s determined to find it! Judas is going to kill himself. Just as soon as he can find a way around the whole indestructible thing…
Judas is not alone on his endless path awaiting the end of days and eventual release however and so it is to his fellow immortals he turns in his quest for destruction. His quest to find the one man who can give him release.
Prince’s narrative twists and turns and makes the mundane extraordinary but also has the whiff of controversy for controversies sake about it. Some of the choices for his cast of Biblical superstars seems to lack much in the way of logic but much in the way of headline grabbing misbehaviour for ones so holy. Ultimately these choices serve the story but its a long time getting to the point so some may have left the theatre before the final act here and miss the point as a result of the outlandish shenanigans.
Amor’s art is not always as attention grabbing as his partners choices for his characters but it is perfectly serviceable and occasionally very good indeed as the tale really begins to ramp up and things get weird. And the collaboration with Kurt Huggins works very well from a colours point of view.
All in all Judas may not be for everyone but it is much more than simply an attempt to take Christian icons and twist them to simply raise the hackles of those who seem to be all too easy to offend these days. It’s a story with a big idea. And whilst it gets a bit out there towards the end its a trip worth taking.
Judas: The Last Days hits the shelves on the 21st of January and is certainly well worth looking out for.
Be sure to check out our previews section for sneak peeks of all the books coming up next week.
ARC Review: Judas: The Last Days by W. Maxwell Prince and John Amor
Title: Judas: The Last Days
Author: W. Maxwell Prince and John Amor
Release Date: February 3
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Source: Diamond Book Distributors on NetGalley (A copy of this book was provided to me in exchange for an honest review.)
Check this book out on Goodreads.
Preorder this book at: Chapters | Book Depository
Two thousand years after he betrayed Messiah, Judas Iscariot is still alive, wandering a world he doesn’t recognize. It’s a world where the strangest of fictions have come true: monsters, immortals, gnome-librarians who monitor human history – they’re all real. And all Judas wants to do is kill himself. So why can’t he? The most transgressive (and transcendent) story of the year begins in this all-new, original graphic novel chronicling history’s preeminent backstabber and his quest for suicide. Featuring Matthew the Cross-dressing Apostle and his Harem Peculiar! (Source: Goodreads)
Present day, Judas Iscariot roams the Earth in search for an end, to his life, to his suffering, and to her search. He and the other apostles have been made immortal and sit in waiting for Jesus to return so that they can serve him once more. Unfortunately, this isn’t working out and most of the apostles have succummed to sin and the underbelly of society, each searching for an escape from the eternal damnation of immortality.
I was a little hesitant about this on, I wasn’t sure based on the description if the content would be good. I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I think the description doesn’t really do the content justice, because it just makes it seem kind of…bleh. The story is a lot more complex with connecting past events of Judas’s long life and the lives of other apostles. The story was complex, a little confusing at times, but also very interesting! I think the content was interesting painting a somewhat bleak picture of the world but ending on a, little, less bleak note.
The representation of the apostles was really interesting. It was interesting to see Judas as not a bad person but as playing into a larger plot to create a bigger/greater version of Jesus. His betrayal made Jesus more powerful but also helped to create importance in the Jesus story. This was really interesting, especially because it doesn’t completely forgive Judas, only presents more dimensions to him overall as a character. The other apostles are interesting as well as they’ve all sort of descended into sin, Matthew runs a brothel and James is a drug addict. These imperfect beings who were the apostles of Jesus are really interesting.
I think the plot was interesting. It got really complicated, which is why my rating isn’t super high, but the idea of the apostles as immortal, waiting for Jesus, falling to sin, and then Judas being unable to face life anymore was cool. Then it got more complicated as they look for a way to end his life. There are also these men who record history, they’re basically the ones who wrote the Bible, and that was a cool concept…kind of reminded me of the literals in Fables. This all got more and more complicated, can’t say much because of spoilers, but it got kind of confusing sometimes. I think it mostly cleared up at some point, but it made the story a little harder to enjoy.
The art in this comic definitely makes it. The art style reminded me of Fables, some of the character design was sort of similar too. Judas was a little like Bigby to me, which is definitely a plus. The colours worked really well with different palettes for different portions of the story. I loved the backgrounds and setting illustrations in the comic they were well detailed and well drawn. I really loved the art in this.
I would recommend this comic book, it definitely has elements that fans of Fables might like. I enjoyed it, it wasn’t exactly my favourite comic I’ve ever read but it was well written and illustrated.
Ramble on,
Kimber
Review: One Week in the Library
December 14, 2016
By Laramie Martinez
I’ve always liked library stories. Possibly because I spent most of my youth in them or maybe because, when you combine them with fantastic elements, they end up becoming dungeon crawls. One Week in the Library, however, is a different sort of crawl. While most library stories focus on the library itself or on the quest to find a certain item, this book tells the story of the librarian. This focus shift from archive to the archivist is an interesting take on an old trope. It doesn’t abandon the fantastic elements completely, there are still tidal waves, wild beasts, and strange characters, but in this story these encounters are just responsibilities in a job description. The true heart of this book is in the small details these events reveal about our protagonist.
The book’s format is fairly simple. We follow Allen, the librarian, as he makes his rounds through a library that contains every story ever told. For each day of the week, we receive a different short story. Sometimes they are bits from books he picks up. Other times, they are the experiences he has as he does his job. But while these small stories are entertaining, the meat of the plot lies in the overarching narrative. Each day we receive a little more information about Allen, we learn who he believes himself to be and what he thinks of his role in life. This is where the book excels. Allen is a relatable character whose thoughts mirror those of anyone who is questioning why it is they have become this person they see in the mirror. Throughout the week, we focus more and more on Allen, until we reach the last day. The only thing I’m going to say about the ending of the book is this: I’ve read it once and I’m not sure if I like it or dislike it, but I have a feeling after a few more reads I will have very strong opinions about it. So in terms of endings, you have one guarantee at least, it will leave an impact.
John Amor’s art in this book is perfect. Surreal, warm, and dramatic, he juxtaposes Allen’s strange chores against a tidy backdrop. There is a good deal of subtle horror in this book as well, not enough to make it a horror book but definitely enough to give some teeth to the art. Through his art Amor makes you feel as though the story really could go anywhere, his style brims with potential.
There are other art styles in here besides panels and splash pages. Charts and illustrations also make an appearance. Both are done with the same level of passion as the traditional comic art and they give this story an extra boost. As I’ve said in earlier reviews, I don’t tend to like mixing media in comics, but in this instance, I think it serves the book well.
I liked this book. I liked the direction it took and I’m still thinking about it a week after I read it. I will read it again and I’ll probably have a new opinion about it by the time I finish it a second time. The only reason I’m not giving it five stars is because this book isn’t for everyone. This book is for a certain person looking for something a bit more literary in their comic book. If that describes you or even if you think there is a chance it could describe you, check this one out.
Score: 4/5
One Week in the Library
Writer: W. Maxwell Prince
Artist: John Amor
Colorist: Kathryn Layno
Publisher: Image
One Week In the Library – Review
by Fabienne Payet · December 11, 2016
Written by W. Maxwell Prince
Colorist Kathryn Layno
Art by John Amor
Letters by Good Old Neon
Cover art by Frazer Irving
Charts by Ashley Walker
Published by Image Comics
Meet the Librarian who lives and is part of The Library where the books have come alive and decided to rebel. We follow the Librarian throughout the week and come across the weirdest things. From a man having gauged out his eyes, to infographics. How does the Librarian think of stopping a book leak and having errant chapters talk themselves out of existence? By caulking the books of course.
Can you too find an infinite space inside a word, a space in which you can fit yourself perfectly? Each string of letters is like a little cozy chair. Or a casket.
The mathematics of the section of a library will leave you dumbfounded. And keep in mind that Ink is the blood of the living stories held within a book making the pages readable. But never forget The Library comprises an indeterminate number of protean quadrate galleries.
What is a library if not the sum of its innumerable stories?
Most definitely one of the weirdest books I have ever read.Period! It makes totally sense and absolutely no sense whatsoever at the exact same time. It seems to thrive on the bizarre, on told and untold stories. We pass by Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio and Morpheus from the Matrix.
I must stress this is not a book for young children, from somewhat disturbing imagery to discussions of suicide and depression. But I liked it, even with its unexpected plot twist at the end and even the nonexistent end, I wonder if there will be a follow up to it.
It is peculiar and weird and hence so is this review, but by all means read it and see what it says to you, how you experience the story in your own way. Perhaps it will be different for you?
The art is stunning and very diverse, it goes from full color, to black and white, from infographics, to plain text. It is a mish-mash of everything but it works; it goes with the flow of the story line.
Peculiar…most peculiar, have to be my final words on this book.
Writing: 5/5
Art: 5/5
Overall: 5/5
“One Week In The Library”
By Jess Camacho | December 9th, 2016
Posted in Reviews | 0 Comments
Libraries hold the greatest stories ever told but what happens when the story is the library itself? Read on for our review of “One Week In The Library” but be warned, there will be some minor spoilers along the way.
Written by W. Maxwell Prince
Illustrated by John Amor and Kathryn Layno
Welcome to the Library. It’s here that every story ever written is catalogued and monitored by a single man, who’s begun to notice something strange: the books are rebelling. Image Comics proudly presents this experimental graphic novella from writer W. MAXWELL PRINCE and artist JOHN AMOR, which recounts a troublesome week in the Library via seven short stories—one for each day—that use comics, infographics, prose, and poetry to play with the graphic medium and explore the multivalent world of living narrative.
December is a weird month for comic book releases because so many readers are preoccupied with the holidays and lots of websites contributors (including me) are thinking about what they read this year and what they want next year. Sneaking in at the end of the year is a complete graphic novel that I would have easily included on my best of 2016 list if I had waited one more week. “One Week In The Library” is a success in every way. It isn’t afraid to be bold and while it may be a little too experimental for some readers, it’s exactly the kind of thing that I love.
“One Week In The Library” is a standalone graphic novel that tells the story of a librarian over a week. This librarian experiences seven very different things from different books each day of the week. As time passes, we get an understanding of his life and what his role here is. Through diagrams, prose, mathematical equations, we’re shown the secrets of books and literature and what they mean. As his week comes to an end, our adventure does too and we’re left thinking about what we just read.
“One Week In The Library” is the kind of cool, weird thing I wish Image would publish more of. Despite the bigger ideas, this is still an easy to follow story that has those bigger ideas as an added bonus. Prince’s story has a lot to unpack and the language he uses is deliberate and beautiful. Each short story is planned out so well with each having a distinct message and visual tone. As the book goes on, “One Week In The Library” doesn’t go down the predictable path of a lonely person becoming unhinged. The librarian wants out but he loves his world, accepts it, takes care of it and learns all that he can. Prince’s writing is heartfelt in places and kind of Morrison-esque in others. He’ll present a fun quip and then jump right into this deep exploration of the meaning of life and stories. He does this without ruining the momentum of the plot and he does this without making the reader feel unintelligent.
A few months back, “Sex Criminals” played around with self insertion in a very direct way that didn’t work at all for me. “Sex Criminals” is not this. It isn’t experimental in regards to what comic books are. I mention this because “One Week In The Library” is purposely analyzing what should and shouldn’t be in comic books. It involves lots of different things, including charts, numbers and outright prose, forcing you as the reader to question what actually constitutes a comic book. The self insertion that comes along (I won’t reveal the how or why because it’s very well done) makes complete sense with what this story is. It doesn’t read as vanity or a bad attempt at comedy.
John Amor’s art initially, doesn’t feel right for this story. It almost feels safe but as the story goes on, it becomes apparent why he’s a co-collaborator here. His works starts off sort of mechanical but clean and it quickly becomes a combination of lots of different styles. There are pages of cartoony, animation, there are pages that look like a newspaper strip and Amor even goes into trippy territory as the barrier between the library and the books becomes blurred. Amor knows when to pull back and when to let loose but what I enjoy the most is the way the librarian looks in contrast to the chaos around him. He’s steady and clean cut even as he interacts with the most unreal elements. Amor does great work showing this without making the librarian entirely cold. There is a sequence that takes place completely without dialogue and it is easily the highlight of the issue from an art standpoint.
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On top of Amor’s art, we get wonderful color work from Kathryn Layno and charts from Ashley Walker. Layno’s colors are very similar to Amor’s art in that they don’t feel right at the start. It isn’t until this story begins to develop that you see just how right the tone she strikes is. Her colors start off softer and she holds this for the most part but it works. It keeps the book feeling definitively fantasy but she also uses shadows effectively. Ashley Walker’s charts probably wouldn’t be something I’d mention in any other review but in this book, they have a true impact on the visual elements of this story. They are clear, concise and creative.
Final Verdict: 9.0 – “One Week In the Library” is $9.99 and a very good use of $9.99. I want more of this from Image.