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Friday, May 25, 2007
Graphic novel history of Nat Turner's slave revolt
Kyle Baker's two-volume history of Nat Turner, an African slave who led a bloody revolt in the American south, is gripping, heart-wrenching, and glorious. I first encountered Baker's work in his uproariously funny Why I Hate Saturn and I pegged him immediately as a deliriously funny, raunchy comic creator that I wanted to follow for the rest of my life.
But the Nat Turner books are nothing like Why I Hate Saturn and many of his other books -- they've every bit as brilliant, but without a shred of whimsy. Instead, these expressively illustrated black-and-white pages, with almost no text (what text there is is lifted from Turner's confession before he went to his execution) are as savage a tale of the slave-trade as you could hope to find.
Great artists are often incredibly versatile and Baker is no exception. These books will haunt me.
Link to book 1,
Link to book 2,
Link to Kyle Baker's pages for the Nat Turner collections
See also: Kyle "Why I Hate Saturn" Baker's new collection
posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:50:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments
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