Clerical Errors

I would love to kick off this blog by talking about something I am very passionate about, and have been for years since I was fifteen years old:

Graphic novels.

The actual difference of what makes something a graphic novel or simply a comic book is debatable. To a lot of people, there isn’t a difference. They speak through a word bubble? Enjoy your comic book. Now don’t get me wrong, I love comic books to a major degree, but there is a line between what is a graphic novel and what is a comic book, even if it is thin and relatively fuzzy.

My own definition of what sets them apart is subjective. To me the difference is obvious; comic books tell a story told through serialized issues, whereas a graphic novel tells a story in one cohesive volume not requiring the context of previous issues to make sense. Now understand this is my opinion, my own understanding of what sets the two apart, and I’m willing to budge on this opinion in the future. But as of the time I am writing this post, this is my definition.

Now moving on to my purpose in writing today, I wanted to discuss the first honest-to-goodness graphic novel I have ever read that I maintain as one among my many favorites so many years after I first read it:

The Nobody by Jeff Lemire.

Without going too much into spoilers for those of you who might be interested in picking it up, The Nobody follows sixteen-year-old Vickie, a bored resident of the town of Large Mouth who finds herself intrigued by the town’s newest resident, a drifter going by the name of John Griffen, seemingly bandaged from head to toe. Griffen claims to have taught Chemistry at a University before his “accident.” However, the more Vickie pries the more irritable Griffen becomes, though he does not intend any ill will. As the other residents of Large Mouth grow accustomed to Griffen, Vickie befriends him as the reader discovers that Griffen is in fact invisible beneath his bandaging. Not only this, but the serum that turned him invisible tolls his mind with fits of madness of irritability, which he combats with the use of pills. However, when Griffen is spotted disposing of something in the lake, paired by the sudden disappearance of a member of the town, it does not take long for the town of Large Mouth to come to the conclusion that Griffen may have had something to do with this missing person.

I grew up watching the old Universal monster movies with my mom, and one of my favorites for cold winter days was always The Invisible Man starring Claude Rains. The moment I saw The Nobody on the shelves I knew I had to read it, and after that I had to get my hands on the original novella by H.G. Welles. While The Nobody spoke to the part of me that was still that kid in a quilt watching as Dr. Jack Griffin of the film sat in front of a mirror and unbandaged his invisible face and planned his domination of the world, something else spoke to me when I watched John Griffen of the graphic novel stand in front of the bathroom mirror to be greeted by the face of a loved one, and to see as he dove into the lake after her reflection a little later on.

While both the novella and the film cast the Invisible Man as a villain driven mad by the serum and his own conquest for power, The Nobody casts Griffen as a man in mourning, one who wishes only to fix his mistakes before he gives into the madness of the serum. While I loved the film and the novella, the Griffin I was introduced to was for a lack of a better word hollow (eat your heart out Hollow Man). We are told that Jack Griffin may have been a good man before his invisibility, but afterwards all we see is the terror he inflicts as he giggles at the madness, both his own and that which he inflicted. Griffin is a villain through and through, he wreaks havoc and it’s fun. But it’s in The Nobody that we see a depth of feeling we didn’t see in the original story, a man with regrets who is fighting back the insanity and megalomania that comes with being invisible. The Nobody‘s John Griffen has a depth of feeling that spoke to the part of me that wanted to talk about something not so paper-thin as “I can rule the world!” but rather something as complex as the fear of losing one’s mind and descending into madness while trying to protect the only friend one has.

I’m more than happy to keep going, and maybe if requested I will do a more spoiler-heavy spotlight, but otherwise that finishes off my spoiler-free rant about The Nobody, one of my favorite graphic novels I have ever read. I highly encourage you to pick it up if you’re as into Invisible Man stories as I am. While it’s a short read, it has stayed with me for almost nine years after I first read it, and I’m happy to share that with you.

If you have anything you’d like to hear me rant about, feel free to comment down below.

Until then, take care!