A faction onto itself

For the last decade or so, sequential art — cartoons, graphic novels, even illustrated reportage — has been at the eye of many political storms, and we’re talking not just about caricatures of Prophet Mohammad here.

Joe Sacco has been relentless in his indictment of America’s domestic and foreign policies, as well as Israel’s handling of the Gaza situation. Guy DeLisle has slyly cultivated an exterior of self-deprecating humour, one that softens the blows he lands in his darkly comic travelogues from places like Shenzhen, Jerusalem and Pyongyang. Alison Bechdel has been whisked away from bookshelves, banned from college syllabi and awarded a MacArthur ‘genius grant’. In India, graphic novels like Delhi Calm and the explosive Kashmir tome Munnu have grabbed the bull by the horns. Clearly, these are exciting times if you are a comics creator unafraid to make a political statement.

Into this charged atmosphere steps Democracy , a recent graphic novel about Athens circa 500 BC that investigates the beginning of parliamentary democracy. Despite its rather self-conscious posturing as a piece of faction (fact plus fiction), that accelerating literary genre, Democracy is a richly rewarding experience.

The book was conceptualised by Alecos Papadatos. Papadatos co-wrote the story with writer and researcher Abraham Kawa, who also wrote the final script. Papadatos also illustrated the book while the colouring was done by Annie DiDonna. Papadatos and DiDonna had previously teamed up for the 2008 book Logicomix , cited as one of the classic graphic novels of recent times.

The Athens of Democracy is a place that has grown complacent in its idea of civilisation. The citizens are extremely wary of dictatorship, but have yet to realise how tyranny can also work behind the shadows, using faith as a conduit.

At the beginning of the book, we are introduced to Leander (from the ancient Greek myth of Leander and Hero) and Thersippus, two friends and brothers-in-arms who are marching to meet the Persians in battle. One day, Thersippus has a nightmare about the goddess Athena leading the Greeks into battle: not as herself, but as her monstrous Gorgon persona, filled with an insatiable blood-lust. After Leander calms Thersippus down, he tells his friend about his personal connection with Athena and how these visions became a part of his life.

The crux of the story is the fall of the Athenian ‘tyrants’: a word that began with a very different connotation from what we are used to now. In the name of consensus, tyrants would manipulate councilmen, and bribe them with just about anything under the sun. By doing this, they were contributing to the formation of an oligarchy with democratic pretensions. The tyrants Hippias and Hipparchus are drawn beautifully by Papadatos. They play the classic ‘good-cop, bad-cop’ routine to perfection. Hipparchus seduces while Hippias uses lethal force whenever necessary. Leander’s father Promachus, a good man, falls prey to the machinations of their petty politics. The scene where he is assassinated is drawn in an intense, cinematic style.

DiDonna employs the woodcut colouring style to bring out the horror of the moment: the colours, etched out from a black background, are reminiscent of American woodcut maestro Lynd Ward’s numerous illustrations for children’s books in the 1930s.

With most period projects like Democracy , one of the things that creators typically aspire to is to prove a point about contemporary times. This foreshadowing is particularly strong here. In Hippias, Hipparchus and their army of Scythian mercenaries, we see the beginnings of modern-day Machiavellian politics. Through Hero, the pragmatic prophet-in-training, we see the point that Mahatma Gandhi was making when he said: “Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.” By the end of the book, the reader is at that optimal juncture of wisdom tinged with a profound sadness: the kind of melancholy that comes with realising that we are all doomed to repeat our mistakes ad nauseam.

The book ends with a series of smart historical notes about the characters. Importantly, these notes reveal all the places where the creators have embellished fact with fiction: this demarcation is not entirely necessary, according to this writer, but it is welcome all the same.

It’s interesting that the acknowledgement section includes a heartfelt shout-out for the film Network , made famous by its protagonist Howard Beale’s “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it any more” rant. Perhaps that is the parting note that Papadatos and Kawa intended for the conscientious reader: that in the face of a decadent polity, Howard Beale is the ideal citizen.

All of us ought to be mad as hell at what we have allowed democracy to become.

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