Elkin:
Lilley:
Elkin: Say what you will about Pro Wrestling or Sports Entertainment or whatever you want to call it, at its
best it is high form American Theatre spinning tales that reach into our collective unconscious, telling us our stories again and again, bearing witness to the passions of the imagination, serving beauty in its brio, mining our fears, transcending our aspirations while thudding on the the canvas wearing short shorts. At times, Pro Wrestling can equal Shakespearean heights of pathos, Homeric moments of heroics, and Dali-like surrealist absurdity. It is soap-opera. It is high brow done low brow. It is story-telling. It is myth making. And it has captured the imagination of fans in ever-growing number throughout the world.
I am one of those fans.
Apparently so are a number of comic book fans and creators. Someday we will all band together and create a small army whose sole mission is to put crooked politicians in the camel clutch. Anyway, one of those comic book creator fans is Box Brown. Wrestling has been part of his comic milieu for years now, and his fandom has culminated in his book, Andre the Giant: Life and Legend, the focus of this review.
Now, the normal first step in a review of this sort is to talk about who Andre the Giant was and why he is worthy of a graphic biography. But this is the age of the internet , so I'll let you do all the searching you want. Also, it's Andre the fucking Giant, and if you don't know who he was you have been living under some sort of polystyrene enclosure with your fingers plugged into your ears humming the hits of 1953 in a nasally baritone.
So let's talk Andre the Giant: Life and Legend.
As Brown says in his introduction, “I took some unavoidable liberties – and used some artistic license– in the storytelling of this book.” Andre the Giant: Life and Legend is as much about the choices Box Brown makes as it is a narrative of the life of Andre. Choices such as what is the narrative focus, how to frame the story, what to leave in, what to leave out, perspective, line-work, shading, all of these stand as testament to Brown the artist, not Brown the biographer.
There's a certain ironic genius to starting a biography of Andre the Giant with a 2010 interview with Hulk Hogan, one that ends with “Most people don't understand the big picture.” Then follow this to a flashback to Andre's childhood challenges and the day he got a ride to school with playwright Samuel Beckett. It's about setting a tone through choices and demonstrating artistic intent through that act.
This is a big book about a big man. As an artist, Brown is trying to both humanize and mythologize his subject at the same time. I guess my question to you, Lilley, is, does he succeed?
