Each week, Paste reviews the most intriguing comic books, graphic novels, graphic memoirs and other illustrated books.
The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti, by Rick Geary
NBM, 2011
Grade: 7.0
Rick Geary has made a career over the past 15 years out of focusing on historic murder. He researches diligently, then lays out the facts and theories with maps, diagrams, and deadpan narration, easily sucking in the true-crime buff. The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti is one of the less gruesome entries in his treasuries of 19th- and 20th-century murder, but it will fill in a lot of details in this case you probably only vaguely remember from your 10th-grade American history class. Really, Geary’s books should be required reading at that age. They demonstrate fair-mindedness and thorough research in action, as he lays out all theories with equal emphasis, and they help you recall events much better than a dry paragraph in a textbook, with Geary’s eye for context and details. Did Sacco and Vanzetti do it? Well, probably not. Or maybe not. The point, as ever, is the unknowability of so much in life, but being unable to firmly grasp the facts is no reason not to pursue them. (HB)
X-Men Schism #1 & #2 by Jason Aaron, Carlos Pacheco and Frank Cho
Marvel, 2011
Grade: 8.4
The last few years of the X-Men have felt weirdly contradictory to the point of a super-powered team of misfits. To recap, team leader Cyclops retreated to a rock off the coast of San Francisco with the entire mutant population, which is a bit like moving to California and then moving to California again. From there, the team has faced gene-harvesting monsters, warlord aliens and faulty plumbing. The metaphysics of the X have always revolved around confronting the complacent mainstream with the dangerous and the new. These Kevlar-wearing militants are the 2-dimensional analogues for every subversive idea that threatens the establishment, so a few years of Pacific Coast seclusion has felt oddly out of character. Luckily Jason Aaron (Scalped) is ready to shake up the status quo, which is what this group of feared freaks should be doing every month. After a punk-rockin’ mutate named Quentin Quire brainwashes the UN Council into publicly confessing their darkest secrets, every nation on earth is putting the mutant race on the defensive with giant robots. Even cooler? Cyclops wants to harbor the pink-haired villain as a refugee while Wolverine wants to do what he does best, leading to a divide that will apparently split the team in two. Aaron takes out the breaks with blockbuster action and snappy characterization. He deserves this title alone for a panel where a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caricature laments that the X-men have “sent their women here, just to humiliate us,” to which the sassy Kitty Pryde replies, “Did I happen to mention that I’m also Jewish?” These are the effortlessly cool, fearless rebels that deserve to be hung on the wall of every black sheep teenager, and they’ve never felt more like themselves. (SE)
