The Beatles are a cottage industry unto themselves; this is at least the fourth Beatles-related graphic novel to be printed or reprinted in the last few years, and it is the one with the largest scale. 25 different artists each illustrate a short tale about one aspect or another of the Beatles’ career, and each of those strips are accompanied by a prose essay that fleshes the story out. But, despite grand ambitions, the book feels rushed, lazy, and boring.
Written by Michels MabelCover by Christophe Billard
Illustrated by VariousThis volume explores the complete illustrated story of the Beatles from their formation, through the Beatlemania phenomenon, all the way through their breakup. Readers see how the band evolved and amplified the uproar of the sixties, became politically and socially active, and achieved a lasting impact unparalleled in pop music. Chapters combine text and comics for complete information presented in a fun way.
This book commits two grievous sins that are both extraordinarily easy to avoid, and yet, it walks right into them: it is full of incorrect facts and it is boring. For a biography of any sort to succeed, it needs to either tell a story that is interesting and fun to read or, at the very least, it needs to get the facts straight. Because of this book doing neither, it is hard to consider this anything other than a failure.
Let’s address the boring part first, as that is far more important. Very few bands have as many easy to define eras as the Beatles: Pre-Formation, the Quarrymen, Hamburg, Beatlemania, Creative Triumphs, Psychedelia, Splintering, Break Up. Within each of those, there are a myriad of stories that could be illustrated in ways that would help tell the story in ways that standard prose, or even audio/video interviews with members of the band couldn’t do.
But the stories chosen here are the same ones anyone who has ever cared about the Beatles have heard dozens of times. And then, they are told in relatively straightforward ways, without too much creative license, both in terms of art style and in terms of scripting. There are infinite ways to take the ‘classic’ Beatle stories and find new angles for them. But no opportunity to spin the same yarn is avoided, and very few of the stories introduce new or obscure details which would entice a more nuanced reading.
In fact, this is where the two faulty techniques intersect, because any nuanced reading pulls out factual errors that could have been easily researched.
Note: I am a Beatles superfan, so I know I’m reading this with a finer-toothed comb than many would, but that doesn’t negate the facts in the book. These are not mistakes of creative license, they are out and out errors.
For instance, during the Let It Be segment, George Harrison stumbles upon Billy Preston at a concert, and decides to bring him to the band’s next session. That happened, but with one huge caveat: Preston was already a friend of theirs for nearly 7 years at this point, as they had met in 1962 when on tour together. The story comes off as weird, when George just randomly decides to steal Ray Charles’s organ player for a session. When it’s their old pal Billy, the segment works much better.
There are also some weird artistic choices or errors in various strips, like giving the dark-haired Brian Epstein a shock of yellow blonde hair, or forgetting Paul McCartney’s left-handedness. Some like Efix’s ‘The Beginning of Beatlemania’ eschew sequential storytelling altogether, and just layer what appear to be nearly traced images with various filters to differentiate one image from another.
On occasion, the various characters are also played as faux-narrators, saying things that no human would actually say in these circumstances, but are expressing ideas that Michels Mabel feels are necessary. These moments come off as hokey and lazy.
There are also segments that seem rife for exploration, but are given almost no time. When Harrison and John Lennon are secretly dosed with LSD by their dentist (!), there’s only one real panel showing the trip. What could be a better opportunity to go buck-wild with an artistically unique sequence than this? But no, one panel. Laurent Houssin spends the rest of the strip with the Beatles in the studio or at photo shoots, drawing things in a really straightforward way, not at all indicating just how fast the world, musically, psychedelically, and spiritually, was moving for the band.
Continued belowOr what about when the Beatles played Shea Stadium, and couldn’t hear each other playing? That could be played in so many ways: for laughs, as the band themselves were in hysterics on stage. Or tell it as a sad story, of how a band that wanted to make music was denied that right, and instead was reduced to shaking their heads in the middle of a sea of screams? Or maybe, go absurdist: show what the boys were thinking about, instead of hitting those harmonies? Instead, it has them literally with thought bubbles saying “We can’t hear ourselves!” It just seems like a huge missed opportunity.
That’s not to say that all of the stories don’t work. Vox illustrates a Hamburg tale in almost Al Hirschfeld-style, allowing his cartooning to go beyond mere likenesses, and adds some really nice detail to the insanity that must’ve been playing 8 hours a night, 7 days a week. Anthony Audibert’s “Yesterday” is one of the more interestingly rendered strips, with McCartney given big, creepy eyes and exaggerated features that work to express the story beats instead of just look like the principles.
Some of the attempts to go outside of the standard, faux-New Yorker style a lot of these artists attempt, work better than others, but these stories rarely use the comics medium in any unique or particularly expressive way. Often times the caricatures look like cruel versions of the cheapo boardwalk and Times Square artists that sketch you in ten minutes and bring out all of your bad features.
Overall, this book lacks anything for the more than casual Beatles fan, in terms of knowledge or unique presentation, and it lacks anything for the casual Beatles fan that wants something other than a prose book. Even the prose sections aren’t exactly jumping off the page, and so the even the fun strips are bogged down by text on either side of them.
There are no shortage of Beatles-related graphic novels. Choose another one.
