You don’t have to like comics to appreciate this comic, the proof with this homage to an American myth coupled with an ode to the imagination, as extravagant as it is captivating. We want more and we wait for the rest!
© 2023 Tota / Gallimard
1938, New York. Under the influence of the Great Depression, union struggles intensified, while in Europe, the rise of Nazism posed the threat of war. Diana Morgan arrives from her native Kansas to escape poverty. For her, New York is the city of all possibilities, and it is not because she is penniless that she is going to give up on her dream: to become a successful writer. In the meantime, the beginnings are chaotic, and the young woman must find the means to survive. To do this, she will have to strive to meet the right people and demonstrate sagacity, because if New York is an Eldorado, it is also an unforgiving jungle…
The first part of this romantic epic, which imaginatively recounts the birth of superheroes, is an excellent surprise. The Magnificent Illusion happily immerses us in this New York of the 1930s through this young woman who comes from rural Kansas. She is determined to realize her dreams as a writer inspired by her father’s “pulps” that she read in secret. Diana Morgan, who chooses to call herself Roberta Miller, in reference to one of her favorite writers, will thus try to make her mark in a world which is completely foreign to her and which she had idealized too much. When you’re nothing in the Big Apple, you have to be ready to make any sacrifices to earn your living, including becoming a dancer in a disreputable cabaret! But fortunately, the chance encounters led him to become a comic book writer, after having volunteered in a communist newspaper, which also allowed him to learn about politics.
Alessandro TotaItalian author already noticed with his first comic strip, Land of welcome, gives us here a very lively scenario, interweaving romance and political context (that of the class struggle in the USA in the 1930s) in a balanced way. In a delightful mise en abyme, this comic puts us in the shoes of authors experimenting with the birth of comics and superheroes aimed at seducing the teenage audience, while illustrated detective stories are losing momentum. The characters are very well portrayed, with their paradoxes and their cracks, and that is also the mark of a good story. We appreciate the way Diane Morgan evolves, in the process of constructing her identity. Appearing somewhat dull upon her arrival in New York, the hardships and her “encounter” with communism will transform her. Becoming more combative to achieve what she believes to be her destiny as a writer and screenwriter, she chooses to accept, within the limits of what American society at the time allowed, her attraction to the fairer sex.
As for the graphics, it is like the scenario: swirling. With its “artisanal” side, the clear line ofAlessandro Tota vibrates with a refreshing fantasy, playing to the fullest on this extravagance and this typically American sense of spectacle, with this candor specific to superheroes redressing wrongs. Thanks to these new kind of demigods, the New World invented a modern mythology while Europe prepared to sink again into the chaos and darkness of war. While mixing fictional and historical elements, the author has a field day exposing the New York frenzy on a full page, symbolized among other things by the flashy neon lights of Broadway which tried to make people forget the Great Depression to the rhythm of the Charleston . The whole thing appears like a sort of dreamlike collage mixing glamour, cabaret, police violence, crimes, bondage and science fiction, etc. It explodes in every direction, it’s teeming with imagination, and you never really know what to expect. In short, the reader is immersed with delight in the creative effervescence of the Big Apple, a joyful atmosphere certainly but fraught with threats at the end of the 1930s.
Thus, the title of the work sums up its content quite well. The Magnificent Illusion tells how the dreams of artists take shape and can sometimes shape reality, here in this case how the superhuman creatures from the imagination of Diana Morgan aka Roberta Miller (Dogman, Infarcta and Ghost Writer) play the role of engines in the fulfillment of his desires. This personal work, not really calibrated as a “gondola head”, is however in no way elitist and remains fluid and exciting in its narration. Like these candies that sting the tongue and explode in the mouth, the object will appeal to all audiences, young and old, looking for originality.
Laurent Proudhon
The Magnificent Illusion, book 1: New York, 1938
Screenplay & design: Alessandro Tota
Publisher: Gallimard BD
248 pages – €29.90 (Digital book: €20.99)
Publication: October 11, 2023
The Magnificent Illusion, book 1: New York, 1938 — Excerpt:
© 2023 Tota / Gallimard © 2023 Tota / Gallimard
2023-12-19 07:20:46
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