“James Brown: Black and Proud”

The “Godfather of Soul” and “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business” gets the graphic novel biography treatment, but it doesn’t feel like the full story.

Cover by Xavier Fauthoux

Written and Illustrated by Xavier Fauthoux
Lettered by Frank Cvetkovic

Born in the South during the height of segregation, James Brown went on to become a global sensation, using his immeasurable talent to grasp what he believed was the American Dream. Join the charismatic, hard-working, and sometimes tyrannical bandleader on a journey down the roads of America with a group of talented musicians spreading the sound of funk and soul throughout the country. Told against the backdrop of a changing America during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, this is the story of a man and his band that would go on to revolutionize the world of pop music.

You may know James Brown mainly for his music.  Or you may know him for his complicated personal life.  Or for his social activism. Or even for the controversy that surrounded him upon his death. Whatever comes to mind when you first think of him, they’re only parts of the story of a complex man, determined and motivated by the poverty of his childhood to reach heights fantastical.

That childhood is the one aspect of this graphic novel that Fauthoux does well, making it a worthwhile read.  The rest of it, sadly, is rather forgettable, due to omission and lackluster story construction – – and that’s rather disappointing for this American music legend.

“James Brown: Black and Proud” covers the detail of the first forty years of Mr. Brown’s life, from his birth in 1933 to his performance at the Zaire 74 concert (the companion concert to the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman), told in the structure of a loose flashback with first and third person points of view. The goal with highlighting this particular time period in Brown’s life, rather than his entire life, is to place him in the context of the American civil rights movement – – just like the “March” trilogy. Those connections to context are loose in many places, presenting Brown’s life and career as part of the events of that particular year, rather than him having influence on them or vice versa. There are moments where the two do intersect, and the connection is made. Martin Luther King’s assassination provides inspiration for “Say it Loud – – I’m Black and I’m Proud” and several other singles after that.  But that is really the only moment where the story of James Brown meets that backdrop of the civil rights movement.

What I did enjoy most about this work is the aforementioned look at the early years of James Brown.  Here, you can see Fauthoux has done careful research, taking time to dive into the poverty and abandonment young James had: his formative years in a Georgia brothel, the influence of the church on his musical career, personal experiences with racism that nearly killed him. The story here is more first person perspective than third person perspective, and that’s where it shines: explaining how the world of James Brown’s youth made his signature adulthood work ethic, warts and all. If this graphic novel had stopped there (somewhere around 1965-1966), I would have been satisfied.  The continuation from the mid-1960s through to 1974 had a script that looked as if it scanned Brown’s Wikipedia page and just picked the highlights.

There’s also a sense of reverence of subject throughout the work, perhaps too much. Fauthoux glosses over Brown’s personal life, only touching briefly on his extramarital affairs and multiple marriages.  I can certainly understand and respect wanting to look past James Brown the Tabloid Fixture and look at James Brown the Musician. No doubt the man should be remembered for his revolutionary music style and social justice work. But, leaving out those tabloid moments does not present a full life picture and leads to historical inaccuracy. For example, the reason that Bootsy Collins was fired from the J.B.’s (James Brown’s band in the late 1960s and early 1970s) was not because he “didn’t work hard enough – – he’d rather have fun and pick up girls” as this graphic novel states. It was drug use. Perhaps this is why the story stops so abruptly in 1974, before Brown’s career decline, drugs, and jail time, and it’s truly a disservice.

Fauthoux opts for a flat cartoon aesthetic to his work, with richly detailed settings and shadow as a means of providing texture. Coupled with panel choices, the book reads like a storyboard to a film. This isn’t a surprise when you consider that he won a James Brown music video challenge in 2012.  In accepting that prize, he stated that “James Brown was a force of nature, a gift from heaven. He invented funk, but it was a symbol of freedom and success for millions of Black Americans fighting for their civic rights, who saw him as a source of hope and pride.”  Those beliefs come across deftly here. He matches color to time period beautifully, moving from the sepia tones of Brown’s Depression era childhood to warmer tones that set the benchmark for the 1970s in the latter half of the book.  The middle portion, chronicling Brown’s rise in the 1950s and early 1960s, is devoid of most color – – a fitting choice for a man still trying to find his musical identity. Another section, focusing on a Bronx block party where Brown’s son Teddy finds himself in trouble with the law, is flat, heavy in ink and shadow without being too heavy in tone, very similar to the Hernandez brothers’ “Love and Rockets.” It juxtaposes carefree youthful idealism with the realities of the era, the latter brought home with the use of one color in this sequence: red, symbolizing blood and violence.  An artist that knows cinema composition is a great kind of artist to have on any sort of visual sequential storytelling.

This book does not waste its white space. Each page within its five chapters, outside of introductory pages to those chapters, has plenty of text and art.  While there’s certainly more text than one may be used to or expect in a graphic novel, it doesn’t feel crowded on the page.  That’s testament to the skill of letterer Frank Cvetkovic. He knows how to organize a page so that the reader’s eye knows where and when to take in story elements, without leaving the reader rushed or overwhelmed.  No doubt this graphic novel needs more of a balance between script and art, and that’s due to scripting issues I discussed earlier.  If we can’t adjust that balance, we can adjust how that balance is proportioned on each page, and Cvetkovic does that well.

If Fauthoux had ceded his scripting to someone else, and just focused on his artwork, “James Brown: Black and Proud” would have seized on its full potential.  What we are left with is a superbly drawn work that suffers in scripting aspects, leaving this picture of Soul Brother No. 1 quite unfinished.