“Good Person Trouble”

Come question the essential nature of goodness with Noëlle Kröger in a comic that is a play, about goodness that is painful, and selfishness that is self-affirming. I promise your head will only hurt a little bit by the end.

Cover by Noëlle Kröger

Written, Illustrated, Colored, and Lettered by Noëlle Kröger
Translated by Natalye Childress

Sebastian, the tobacconist, stands trial for the disappearance of his cousin Teresa, but all is not what it seems in this courtroom drama. How can anyone be good when the pressures of society push down on them? Bertolt Brecht meets Judith Butler in this debut graphic novel.

What’s most striking about “Good Person Trouble” is its deliberate play-like presentation. I don’t mean that it’s drawn as if it were a theater production – static view, prop settings – but that it is a presentation of a play in comic form. The bones are that of the stage, with sharp and performative dialog rendered with the cadence of a well-rehearsed dramatist, while the sinews and muscle and skin are of the illustrated arts.

Noëlle Kröger’s art is not pretty nor is it particularly expressive in the way one expects a comic to be. It is restrained and wobbly, shaded with rough watercolor splotches, full of scenery that is evoked more than presented, the seams of the crafter visible in all aspects. Often the perspective will warp and characters or buildings or objects will distend, elongate or condense, depending on the mood that needs expressing. A perfect fit for the story as it is, like the dialog, of the theater in feel, if not completely in appearance.

One of the great joys of the theater is its malleability: each performance unique, each run an interpretation. The same is true of the medium one encounters it within. To watch a good play is magical and immediate, full of sights, sounds, and presence. To read the script contains its own joy, a lyrical experience unlike any other, time and tone and scope controlled by the readers and their mind. Comics are the perfect middle of these two, able to visualize and dramatize the page, creating room for change on the part of the adapter, while retaining the control and imagination of the reader.

If I haven’t said yet, “Good Person Trouble” is an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s “Der gute Mensch von Sezuan” aka “The Good Person of Szechwan” by way of Judth Butler’s “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.” Hence the Jeopardy Before and After-esque title. Placed into the quintessential comics form, a “funny animal” comic, and transposed out of the exoticized orientalist setting of the original, “Good Person Trouble” is an engrossing and challenging work that becomes far more accessible than its two Ur-works via this transformation.

I should probably summarize the comic’s setup before going much farther. The story is framed as a court trial, with the residents of the town bringing Sebastian, the tobacconist, to trial for supposedly killing the titular “good person,” his cousin, Teresa. Unbeknownst to them, and us until a quarter of the way through, the two are actually one. The main thrust of the comic is structured as a series of statements held together with the court proceedings, first from the various townsfolks’ perspective and then from Teresa/Sebastian’s, recontextualizing the thin, speculative, and voyeuristic statements of the townsfolk.

As Sebastian, he is able to do the things he cannot do as Teresa. Unbound from the box of “good person,” he can prioritize himself and set boundaries with the townsfolk who abuse her trust, generosity, and time. Kröger comments, too, on the constant policing of goodness by society and the arbitrariness of the bounds of said goodness. Why is it good to be walked all over by others but bad to assert oneself? Why is it OK to expect from the good everything and why does one “no” constitute a turn to badness?

Kröger then uses Butler’s framework of gender & sex as a construct to reinterpret the Sebastian/Teresa dynamic and marry the questions of goodness and gender together. Why does society deem it “good” to police others’ genders and sexuality and relationships? How do labels of “woman” and “man” hem people in, as it does the Airwoman who cannot escape what it says on her passport? What kinds of trauma are inflicted upon those not living up to the assumptions of a group because of the labels stuck to them?

Kröger posits through “Good Person Trouble” that no one is ever one thing. There cannot be a “good person” because one cannot be that every second of every day. Some are more good more of the time, just as Teresa is more Sebastian around the Airwoman and in the shop. It wears on them to have to live up to the singular idea placed upon them by others.

They are performances – gender, sex, goodness – and performance is tiring.

“Good Person Trouble” ends somewhat tragically, with Sebastian being denied by the gods aka the judges, Teresa’s labels reinforced and hemmed in. She calls for help, surrounded by a sea of townsfolks clawing at her, now that the “good person” has returned, told by the Judges aka the Gods to “just be good and all will be fine,” rejecting her need for Sebastian, allowing only little leeway. Swap out the Brechtian reading for the Butlerian, and that sentence becomes more galling.

And yet, while I read it as a tragedy, others may read this as an affirmation of goodness, of it’s mutability and an assuaging of Teresa’s guilt at using Sebastian as an escape rather than as another piece of herself. She thinks she failed to be a good person, even though that isn’t true – “I couldn’t be both good to myself and to others at the same time. Condemn me,” she says, “All I did wrong was to help my neighbors, love my beloved, and save myself from want. Oh Gods, I, poor human, was too small for your great plans.” Her cries are because she does not see herself as whole yet, only thinking goodness is one thing when it is more. Hence the epilogue’s charge to determine for yourselves what a good person is.

Before I start falling down a never ending literary and philosophical rabbit hole, let’s bring this review to a close.

The beauty of Kröger’s “Good Person Trouble” is in construction as a parable, a reflection, and a dissection of our societal impulses, pushing on what were once thought stable monoliths to reveal them as unstable and fragmentary and then exploring the wobble and cracks within them. It offers no clear cut answers or even clear cut questions yet it is never without a clarity of purpose, holding its mirror up and pointing out the funhouse nature of its reflection. At times tender, at times sharp, and always insightful, this is a work that demands to be read and read with care.

Dear reader, you’ll find the answer. I trust.