Victory Parade is an intense graphic novel by an intense cartoonist. Leela Corman’s comics have a somber tone spiked with a dark humor, going back to the very beginning with the short-form works Queen’s Day (self-published, 1999) and Subway Series (Alternative Comics, 2002). Her first full-length graphic novel, Unterzakhn (Schocken Books, 2012), drew a massive landscape of troubled and tortured souls. And now, with Victory Parade, Corman appears to have found just the right intermingling of comics and painting; this has always seemed to be a goal of hers, to find a way to merge the two art mediums. And within those parameters, she’s let loose a work of art to exorcise countless demons.
What do I mean by an intense graphic novel? And for that matter, an intense cartoonist? Victory Parade is primarily set in Brooklyn in 1943, with a depiction of the Allied liberation of Buchenwald toward the end. The book centers around a community of Jewish women, all coping in some way with the collective trauma of World War II. All able-bodied men are supposed to be away fighting the war, so it is a veritable women’s world - there is only a sprinkling of men left over, mostly undesirable and marginal. This is a story about suffering: the soldiers away at war; the loved ones back on the home front; all the humanity that was swept up into concentration camps, never to be heard from again. In the span of only four pages, a monotonous, nearly unbearable existence is crisply evoked: harsh city life, female welders working in a naval yard, withdrawn characters surviving one day to the next. But relief is found. Rose, a riveter, meets with her lover, George. Her husband is away at war and Rose finds just enough comfort from another man: a war veteran with an amputated leg and a deeply melancholic disposition.
A few more pages in and a tempo takes hold. Rose has a young daughter, Eleanor, who retains a lively and whimsical outlook. There’s also a mysterious older girl, Ruth, a Jewish Polish orphan by way of Germany that Rose has taken in. Ruth is moody and follows her own path. It is Ruth’s journey that provides the book’s backbone, the vehicle to yell out frustration. Ruth, after several false starts and violent outbursts, finds her calling—or at least the best she thinks she’ll find—in the improbable world of women’s pro wrestling. But even with the showbiz razzle-dazzle, wrestling can be an all too real and bloody sport, especially the way Ruth fights. Humor manifests from the moment that Meyer Birnbaum, a promoter, first spots Ruth as a raw talent, but Ruth’s relentless need for retribution steadily chips away at any levity. It is like seeing a burning ember ascending and descending, always at the risk of completely flickering out. One of the most haunting moments I’ve ever come across in comics is when Ruth grabs hold of her opponent and whispers, “I hate the sound of my own heart beating.”
Corman and I had a conversation recently; it was a warm-hearted and generous talk. But Corman doesn’t mince words. At one point I asked her about Victory Parade in relation to her previous graphic novel and one to follow, creating a proposed triptych. Was there a plan to bring all three together? Corman’s first response was, “Art doesn’t work that way.” I kindly took issue with that, since I’ve been an artist my whole life and I most certainly know how art works. Artists don’t plan the same way as architects do, but there is planning involved; ultimately, it’s a combination of planning and process. And you can’t help but plan when you’re working with a publisher. Corman’s most recent books have been published by Schocken, once a division of the grand old publisher Knopf, and now an imprint of Penguin Random House, which was once two separate publishers; thank goodness that imprints still exist, as they foster art for the sake of art and other just causes.
Later in our chat, Corman elaborated on the nature of process: “The best thing about creating art in any medium is that you’re creating mysteries for yourself. You create more questions than answers in your work.” This was made resoundingly clear when I asked Corman about the parallels between the new book and Unterzakhn. Both books include a war vet with an amputated leg who is involved in an extramarital affair with one of the lead characters. Corman chalked that up to a happy coincidence, one of those welcome mysteries. Victory Parade is pulsating with mystery and live-wire energy.
One of Corman’s favorite artists is the firebrand Lydia Lunch. To me, that outlook goes to the heart of what is going on in this book: an uncompromising, even confrontational point of view. You can take your cues from any number of influences; for an ambitious artist, the more the merrier. On the comics front, Los Bros Hernandez are at the top of the list for Corman. When I pressed her on the character of Meyer Birnbaum, who miraculously appears in both books without having aged much in the span of 30 years, Corman laughed. She told me that Birnbaum wrote himself into the graphic novel, then added that the character is a tip of the hat to the magical Love and Rockets character Gorgo. If you had to pick just one comics influence, Los Bros would surely fit the bill for mystery and intensity.
On the fine art front, Corman owes much to the New Objectivity movement of the 1920s, which followed on the heels of German Expressionism and focused itself on the aftermath of World War I: the desolation and disconnection. In fact, Corman pays tribute to one of the leading artists of that movement, Otto Dix, with an interpretation of his landmark painting "The Skat Players" (1920). I was even more intrigued by Corman’s channeling—consciously or unconsciously—Dix's foot imagery, first glimpsed in "The Trench" (1923), with macabre bullet-ridden legs pointing skyward. Corman runs this motif through Victory Parade, with numerous scenes depicting severed limbs or dancing disembodied legs, or an entire “victory garden” of sprouting feet. Corman says that she didn't deliberately intend to evoke "The Trench" or the more fully realized portfolio The War (1923-24), but it made its way gloriously into the book. Such images strike me as very powerful given the symbolic charge of the human foot, echoing primal sensuality and vulnerability, both intimate and Other at the same time - coupled with the connection to Dix.
I think Corman does an admirable job of marrying comics with painting in an effortless way; a natural occurrence due in part to her genuine and passionate connection to both. In approaching the comics medium as a fine artist, Corman is very open to process and very committed to uncompromising integrity; it’s a “hands-on” approach. I see it on every page as each has the look and feel of a separate art piece. Corman has also employed color in this book; she told me that when she chose to add watercolor, “the portal of life and death opened.” All the lettering is hand-drawn. Everything is touched by the artist’s hand, and soul. All the elements that Corman needs to make her work are in place, and the result is gut-wrenching and fully satisfying.
As much as I’ve said about the visual dynamics of this work, let me emphasize that Corman gives an equal amount of care and creative zeal to the writing. As often as I’ve read this book, I still get a kick out of studying pages at random and considering the broader context that brought them into existence. For instance, just one of many memorable scenes depicting communication between the living and the dead depicts young Ruth, back in Berlin, tossing a stone in the river, only to have it snatched up by a hand that suddenly emerges from the water. At the very bottom of the final panel, a small word balloon says, “Thank you.” Soon after, Ruth is dragged under by the hand, which is attached to a nude dead woman who emphatically instructs Ruth on how to kill her oppressor: “Cut the eyes right out of his skull.” And, just to make sure she got the message, the ghoul punches Ruth in the stomach, nearly killing her. Talk about intense.
As I stated earlier, all of Corman’s comics involve suffering - or, at the very least, have a melancholic tinge to them, usually lifted up by sporadic bits of dark humor when you least expect it. When I spoke to her I mentioned the absurd, surreal aspect to her work, as you'd find in Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead, She replied, “Are We Having Fun Yet? was the first underground comic I ever read, when I was 15 years old. That brand of absurdity went to my gut and my intellect at the same time. The dark humor you’re picking up on is very cultural. It’s Polish Jewish humor, specifically Ashkenazi. My Polish Jewish culture is very scrappy. It is absolutely pitch black humor in the worst of situations. That humor is one of the best qualities of the Ashkenazi as a people. Generationally speaking, I came of age in the early ‘90s. The art that was of the highest value was very confrontational: comics, music and film. Lydia Lunch was ubiquitous in the subculture up until recently. I love very intense music, film and visual art, and that’s what I set out to make.” For the most part, Corman’s comics are about women navigating their way out of despair. I see that going back to her earliest work, as she frames moments in a young woman’s life, unsure of herself yet knowing she must hold true to what she believes. That dynamic continues in Corman's longform works: women fighting to create something out of nothing until it becomes something.
The way art works, whatever the medium, is by slow and steady progress. There will be flashes of quick advancement, but it’s mostly a methodical process. What is remarkable is that Leela Corman has navigated this process in her new book within two mediums. She has managed to achieve the high level of ambiguity that is the goal of any artist using the tools of painting and comics. When you look at a great painting or comic and marvel over its complexity and mystery, you are looking at the result of layers upon layers of the artist’s problem-solving. You are looking at various style and content choices. You are looking at a way of life, a certain attitude and belief system. Like the pursuit of great writing, the artist seeks to ultimately fit all the pieces together to a theme. Ultimately, what is happening in Victory Parade is a story of collective trauma as best personified by Ruth, who is in great pain and is struggling with how to cope. In her case, a release of her pain has her inflicting pain on others and herself. The true artists, those who strive to create something profound, will take a lonely path, and march to a peculiar beat led by a drummer that only they can hear. Leela Corman has taken that path and created something profound.
