You Should Know Better

Comic Books for Thinkers

It seems most musicians these days are backwards.  Instead of allowing heartbreak to color their lyrics, their sorrow is gleaned from the rocky seas of success. This is the story of where true soul music began, pulled from a place of despair, and woven into the truly sublime.

Bluesman is set in late 1920’s Arkansas.  Avery “Ironwood” Malcott and Lem Taylor lug their coffin (guitar case) through the bayou playing music in trade for food and a place to rest their hats.  In a time that judges people’s innocence by the color of their skin, their best defense is Lem’s Bible quotes, putting a little charity into mistrustful hearts. Though Lem carries the words of the Lord on his lips, their talents draw them to devil places, “jukes” with every sort of evil packed between their walls. Music met with shotguns, liquor with lynchings, and women with switchblades, blurring the line between the wrath of God and the wrath of men.

Rob Vollmar & Pablo G. Callejo’s work speaks with authority.  Electric dialects (”I been sleeping in trains for a month of Sundays”) and and scratchboard art, cutting stark expressions.  The panels are peppered with research, excerpts from articles like Ira Deldoff’s “America’s Troubadors: Blues Musicians of the Deep South 1900-Present.” So organic in its execution, you can almost see the characters move.

Bluesman encompasses musicality of words, the whittled down life of faith, and the pockets of life that are so dizzyingly wondrous that it makes all the trials in between worth it. In the end, you can’t help but see how horrific events can create music so beautiful.

Recommended to: musicians, the saved, and the damned

-CMH

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Rez Sick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.