Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography | 
 enlarge | Author: Chester Brown
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $8.98
You Save: $15.97 (64%)
New (3) Used (15) Collectible (1) from $8.98
Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 543316
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Hardcover Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 260
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 1896597637
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5971
EAN: 9781896597638
ASIN: 1896597637
Publication Date: January 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Martyr or Madman? The Passionate Rebel History Can't Close The Book On.
Is this the future of comics? Respectably penning the dowdy pages of history? Don't be fooled. This is one of the hippest comics going and will be a controversial must-have in 2003. Legendary cartoonist Chester Brown reveals in the dusty closet of Canadian history there are some skeletons that won't stop rattling. To some Louis Riel was one of the founding fathers of a nation but to others he was a murderer who nearly tore a country apart. A man so charismatic he was elected to government twice while in exile with a prize on his head--but so impassioned his dramatic behavior cast serious doubts on his sanity. Riel took on the army, the government, the Queen, and even the Church in the name of freedom. Will Riel's visionary democracy ever be enough to defend him from the verdict of history?
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 An admirable but mixed accomplishment May 27, 2008
The story of Louis Riel is both fascinating and important on several counts. He was a martyred champion of the Metis, western Canadian descendants of French trappers/settlers and native Americans who were scorned by the eastern Anglo-Canadian establishment. He was a founder of the province of Manitoba. He was a leader in two uprisings--the Red River Rebellion (1869-70) and the Northwest Rebellion (1885) in which French-speaking and marginalized Great Plains Canadians sought to assert their rights. Riel's story is also important because it's a case study in the close relationship between charismatic leadership and madness: Riel was institutionalized at one point in his life as a "megalomaniac." He appears to have had a messiah complex, and experienced hallucinatory delusions on more than one occasion. Finally, his story is important because it speaks to the corrupt entanglement of big money and politics. Riel was finally crushed through the collaboration of the hard-drinking post-Confederation prime minister John MacDonald and the entrepreneurs heavily invested in the Canadian Pacific Railway. At the outbreak of the Northwest Rebellion, the coast-to-coast CPR was nearly bankrupt and in dire need of governmental bailout. MacDonald refused to negotiate with Riel and the rebellious Metis, knowing that if he used the CPR to transport troops to quash the rebellion, he would be able to defend federal subsidy of the failing railroad.
Chester Brown breaks ground in this "graphic history" by showing that the graphic genre is rich enough for historical narrative. In doing so, his Louis Riel is on a par with Joe Sacco's graphic historical narratives about Bosnia and Palestine and Howard Zinn's et. al. recent and excellent A People's History of American Empire. This is a new and promising field for the graphic artist.
But for all its good points, Brown's book ultimately strikes me as falling short. It's good on history (the endnotes and bibliography are excellent), but short on drama--so much so that I grew bored and restless several times. Brown is a good chronicler of events, but weaving the history into an engaging story eludes him. Nor are things helped by the fact that his book is needlessly long, especially the trial sequence in the final chapter. The point, presumably, is to build tension rather than tedium. Finally, Brown's flat style, which he claims is inspired by the early Orphan Annie scripts, becomes jarring and frustrating after awhile. Brown has a tendency to draw his figures with huge hands and pinheads, and he uniformly over-accentuates MacDonald's real-life oversized nose, reducing him to a cartoonish caricature. It's difficult to see what the point of such obvious disproportionality is.
All in all, then, Chester Brown's Louis Riel is an admirable but not quite successful graphic history. But he's still to be commended for his efforts, and the book is still well worth reading.
 History as a graphic novel January 2, 2008
My older daughter knows that I am an omnivorous reader, and often read the most unusual books. She found this book in a little shop in California, and sent it to me for Christmas. Now, I've never really read a graphic novel before (unless you consider "The Gunslinger Born" one), but found the idea of using that form to retell episodes of history intriguing. After reading this work (and it only took very few hours), I have great admiration for the author/artist, who captured an unknown (at least to most Americans) episode of Canadian history, and made it come alive through his drawings. This is a tale of political greed and corruption, and a brave stand for fairness on the part of a group of people in the Western "wilderness" of Canada between 1869 & 1885. Even though you know how the story is going to end, you'r so caught up in the book that you hope it will finish differently. I sincerely hope that this wonderful author graces the reading world with more works of this type; we need them!
Masterpiece December 9, 2007
This strange and unsettling masterpiece works as a great companion piece when it's read together with Alan Moore's Jack the Ripper epic "From Hell". Both Graphic Novels are about the 1900 century, and about the thin line between genius and insanity, and the thin line between fiction and history. Highly recommended.
Excellent Metis political history November 7, 2007
I was pleased to see this book appear. Though not Metis, ethnically, I have connections to individuals who are, through fiddle music. So I have heard bits and pieces of the Louis Riel myth, orally, in writing, and "on the ground" at museums in Canada. This book pulls it all together, dramatically and accessably. No doubt there are some disputable positions taken, as even today this is an emotionally charged piece of history. This does not detract from the overall value of the piece. Those seeking further viewpoints may google various events and places raised in the book for more scholarship.
Chester Brown triumphs again... September 19, 2007
As with his earlier work "Yummy Fur" and his take on the Gospels, Chester Brown doesn't shy away from exploring the darker aspects of human behavior in Louis Riel. With this work Chester hews closely to historical record, following the ultimately tragic life of Riel from his early days at the Red River settlement, his fight for independence and finally, his death at the hands of an imperial Canadian government.
Chester also shows a deft hand as an artist, using a black and white minimalism throughout.
|
|
|
![[your site name here]](http://www.bestcomicbook.com/img/banner10b.jpg)