Nevsky: A Hero of the People is something of a weird bird, and it’s a weird bird for several reasons. For one, it’s hard to say whether it even belongs in a column about non-fiction comics – but if it’s not non-fiction, it’s also difficult to determine what else it could be.
Ostensibly, this is the story of Alexander Nevsky, the 13th century Russian prince whose army held Mongolian and Teutonic invaders at bay and helped to preserve the culture and religion of Eastern Europe as we know it today. Later canonized, Alexander Nevsky became a folk hero, and has recently been voted the greatest Russian of all time.
But it’s also an adaptation of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 historical film Alexander Nevsky – a film that, like all films produced under Stalin, had to serve in some measure as propaganda. In this case, Nevsky’s story was framed as anti-Nazi propaganda, although Stalin wound up sitting on the film when he signed a non-aggression truce with Germany. It was only released when the Germans invaded Russia, and then it became a widely-recognized success. Making use of Eisenstein’s famed montage techniques, and distinguished by a musical score from Sergei Prokofiev, the film is still studied today – both as propaganda, and as an accomplished piece of cinema.
With a script by Ben McCool (Choker, Memoir), and art by Mario Guevara (Solomon Kane), this adaptation is produced in partnership with Mosfilm, the production company behind the original film. That said, it’s not exactly a direct screen-to-page adaptation of the work. It strips the plot down, focusing on the battle scenes, while the choice of medium entails that most of Eisenstein’s montage technique does not come through. Nevsky reads more like a high-energy, action-packed riff off of Eisenstein’s film; a big, mythic interpretation of a historical tale, and an indirect tribute to the filmmaker as well as Nevsky himself.
Viewed in this light – as a historical comic that doesn’t necessarily require additional context in order to be appreciated – Nevsky is a very solid piece of work. The plot moves swiftly, jumping from location to location as McCool’s script traces Nevky’s conflict and negotiations with Mongolia’s Golden Horde and then moves on to the epic battle with the German invading forces. Nevsky himself is a human and thoroughly flawed leader, while the two warrior women – and powerful political forces – of Eisenstein’s film come across as intriguing characters in their own right. The climactic battle on an unstable frozen lake is appropriately stretched out and emphasized as Guevara’s art comes to the forefront, setting down a thoroughly bloody and suspenseful final chapter.
The main strengths of Mario Guevara’s art are the expressive camera angles and layouts; they keep things energetic and Eisensteinian without being overly derivative. The sheer sense of scale that comes across in the battle scenes, meanwhile, makes these the book’s chief selling point. And while the character work is a little inconsistent, it’s still engaging, fleshing out the political dynamics of McCool’s script and setting down some nuanced and imperfect human beings. The movement of the characters is always tangible, while the clothes and armour are all spot-on, and nicely differentiated from character to character.
Unfortunately, the colouring work here (done by David Baron, with assists from Allen Passalaqua and Peter Pantazis) doesn’t quite mesh with Guevara’s art. Guevara’s fine lines are often muddied up and aggressively smoothed-down, resulting in panels that look blurry or unfinished. The colour selection in itself is quite impressive, rich and dramatic and saturated, but given that the story takes place in snowy landscapes – and, of course, that the original film was in black and white – it would be interesting to see what this comic would have looked like without colour. Some pencils from Guevara included at the back of the book are certainly intriguing in that respect.
Nevsky is framed by an appreciable amount of supplementary material detailing the circumstances behind the creation of Eisenstein’s film, with introductions by Howard Chaykin and Robert Gottlieb and concluding notes from Steve Saffel and historian Naum Kleiman. These features do overlap one another in terms of material covered, but are quite interesting in their own right, and more than anything else give this book heft as an educational tool. These notes would likely appeal to those with an interest in propaganda or Russian film, while the attention to detail in the comic itself will probably satisfy those will an especial interest in the time period and Nevsky as a historical figure.
Overall, Nevsky is a satisfying if somewhat difficult-to-categorize read, and it has broad appeal both as a historical narrative and as something of an experiment in adapting a classic film into a comic. It probably succeeds more on the former account than the latter, but the kineticism on display here should win Eisenstein some new fans as well.
Nevsky: A Hero of the People is currently available in hardcover from IDW Publishing.
