Tags
book review, crime, criminal, Ed Brubaker, graphic novel, Sean Phillips, Spider-man, Superman, watchmen, where the body was
2023’s Where the Body Was is an excellent standalone graphic novel from writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips, whose Criminal series I consider to be one of the great masterpieces of both the comic-book form and the crime-fiction genre. Where the Body Was explores the tragic events that took place in a single suburb in the Spring of 1984 from multiple first-person and third-person points of view, a narrative approach that is a bit like assembling pieces of a puzzle and which adds an extra depth of humanization to the characters as each of them gets a chance to give their personal perspective.
Brubaker has obviously seen Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon and taken its lessons to heart. Each first-person narrator is unreliable—though sometimes this is true because they do not have all the facts rather than, as in Kurosawa’s film, they are deliberately lying to make themselves look better. But Where the Body Was is, like the Criminal series, just as concerned with the lies people tell themselves as it is with constructing a plot based on the lies people tell each other.
Lies and deception are a major theme of Where the Body Was. Almost every character pretends to be something they are not, from the cheating wife and her affair partner to the kid dashing about in roller skates and a mask trying to be the local superhero—a striking contrast of the innocent pretend games of children to the potentially deadly pretend games of adults.
Almost every character lies to another about something but also to themselves, such as the young man who lies to the police about not knowing where his drug-addicted teenage love interest is, but also deludes himself that she could ever be faithful to him and have some kind of normal relationship.
The story also deals with love and lust and the crazy things we do for both of them, and a theme of nostalgia for our younger years. One of my favorite things about this story is that although it is set in the 1980s and allows its characters to feel nostalgia for those days, it never feels like it’s pandering to an aging audience by pretending the 1980s were some wonderful, magical, childhood utopia. I was a teenager in the 1980s, and they weren’t that great, so I find it insulting when recent books and films try to appeal to my personal nostalgia by referencing old pop songs and fashion trends. Beyond my fond memories of my high-school friends, I simply have no nostalgia for those days and can’t for the life of me fathom why anyone would—unless we’re talking about hardcore punk like Minor Threat, the early days of the Rollins Band, and the earliest albums by Fugazi, Mudhoney, Jane’s Addiction, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, and Nirvana.
The other exception to my lack of nostalgia is the fact that many of my all-time favorite comic-book series were created in the mid-80s, and Where the Body Was pays homage to comics in many ways. The wannabe superhero girl keeps a journal that, from its very first handwritten and ragged-edged captions, evokes Rorschach’s journal from The Watchmen, and Brubaker drives the point home (perhaps a bit too forcefully) with a chapter titled Who Watches the Watchmen. Anyone who has read the print version of Watchmen remembers the perfume scent Nostalgia, and how it relates to a theme of longing for earlier, simpler, more innocent days.
Two other comic books make notable appearances in this story, and both of them add subtle emphasis to the main themes of lies and nostalgia. The first is the cover of The Amazing Spider-man #127 from 1973, a Gerry Conway and Ross Andru story that is almost as old as I am, and the first issue of a two-part story that deals with a murder mystery involving layers of lies, deception, and people who are not who they appear to be.
I have no doubt that Brubaker and Phillips put some thought into choosing this particular silver-age issue to represent their themes in two panels of their story where it is not even commented on.
The other comic-book cover clearly depicted in a single panel is Superman #400, with “Anniversary” blazoned across the top. This comic was published with a cover date of October 1984, so it would have been on the shelves and racks in stores a couple of months before then, and it well-suits the aftermath of the main events of Where the Body Was. The issue focuses on events set in the far future, long after Superman is gone, and it is a collection of stories that offer various answers to the question, “Once Superman is gone, how will people remember him?”
As such, it is a perfect complement to the theme of nostalgia, especially since it appears near the end of Brubaker’s story when several characters break the fourth wall to express their feelings about the events of 1984 from a future perspective. But this issue also deals with lies and deception, from a snake-oil peddler who pretends to have been rescued by Superman in outer space and his grandson who pretends to be a random kid to help Grampa make more sales, to many other characters who cosplay as Superman, lie to their families about Superman, or try to uncover Superman’s “secret identity” based on old broadcasts of the TV show starring George Reeves.
I absolutely loved Where the Body Was, and the way it subverts murder-mystery tropes by not revealing until very late in the story who it was that actually died—an approach that engages you in guessing what the heck is happening until about ¾ of the way through the story, and keeps you guessing about how it happened until the very last pages. But the creative team’s choices about what vintage comics to include in the narrative was the icing on the cake.
My only negative criticism of the work would be that the points of view were handled a bit haphazardly, with the first-person narrators switching from past to present-tense at whiplash speed, and the omniscient third-person narrator seeming to arrive at random points to pick up the slack. There’s even a single panel where the third-person narrator speaks directly to a character, which I found jarring because it happened only one time and wasn’t consistent with the rest of the style.
I love multiple points of view in fiction, but I prefer when they follow some logical structure such as having only one narrator per scene or chapter. Where the Body Was plays fast and loose with POV, but I still found it remarkably easy to follow and loved the way the multiple narrators all worked together to create a multi-layered, deeply personal, and compelling description of the events.
This story also includes physical violence, drug use, explicit language, and the most graphically drawn sex scenes I have ever seen from Brubaker and Phillips—which, I might add, are awesome. Just don’t buy it for your toddlers, for fuck’s sake. This is a story created by adults for adults, for those of us who lived through crazy times years ago and now look back on them with a confusing mix of fondness and regret, and who love a crime drama that pushes the boundaries of how you can tell a story.
Collectors Guide:
–Where the Body Was: in hardback or ebook formats.
–The Amazing Spider-man #127 and #128.
–Superman #400.
–The Watchmen: original series, a recent reprint collection, or ebook format.