The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia is Social History in Black, White and Red
Art by Bryan Talbot
Writer: Mary M. Talbot
Artist: Bryan Talbot
Publisher: Dark Horse
Release Date: June 1, 2016
Over the last 12 months, a number of richly textured works have illuminated the more obscure corners of Paris’ history. Luc Sante’s nonfiction book The Other Paris explores the under-told lives of criminals, dissidents and the working class, while Alexander Chee’s novel The Queen of the Night tells a stylized story of a wildly popular opera singer in the second half of the 19th century. The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia falls into a similar category: it’s a biography of Louise Michel, a French anarchist known as “The Red Virgin,” and a look at radical thought in 19th-century Europe and America as a whole. And while that description might make it sound overly dry and potentially pedantic, the resulting graphic novel is anything but: this is visceral, often haunting, stuff.
This is the second collaboration between Mary M. Talbot and her husband, Bryan Talbot. The first, Dotter of her Father’s Eyes, told parallel stories of its author’s life and that of Lucia Joyce, daughter of literary icon James. Each creator has done plenty of noteworthy work on their own: Mary is an academic, while Bryan has written and drawn such works as Heart of Empire. The result here is a richly detailed work with plenty of cryptic bits of history waiting to be found. The last 20-odd pages of the book offer annotations and commentary; between this and Chester Brown’s Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, it’s a good year for enlightening and entertaining endnotes in historical comics.
Red Virgin Interior Art by Bryan Talbot