What I Like - Comics: Madame Xanadu
Madame Xanadu, by Matt Wagner, Amy Reeder Hadley, and Richard Friend.Vertigo, 240 pages, softcover, $12.99.
This “graphic novel” collects the first 10 issues of a Vertigo comic book series about an enchantress. Written by veteran Matt Wagner and illustrated by astonishing newcomer Amy Reeder Hadley, Madame X continues Vertigo’s tradition of publishing fine, innovative comics that tell complex and compelling stories.
Madame Xanadu is the nymph sorceress Nimue of Arthurian legend, Merlin’s lover and ultimate betrayer. She has been a citizen of the “DC Universe” for decades, a tarot reading magic-wielder who has narrated spooky stories or played small roles in superhero epics. Wagner has used the character here much as Alan Moore used Swamp Thing and Neil Gaiman used Sandman, to make the familiar trappings of DC comics the stage for a grander fantasy, while dealing with big human issues like love and responsibility.
Each of the five chapters in Madame X is set in a different historical place – ancient Britain, Kublai Khan’s palace, Revolutionary France, London in 1888, and New York on the brink of World War II. Wagner’s use of historical detail is meticulous and enhances each story without overwhelming it. In each era, as Madame X travels toward the future one day at a time, she encounters a being (the Phantom Stranger, another relatively obscure DC comic book character) who seems to transcend time and whose fate and hers entwine in various ways, sometimes with tragic outcomes that are for “the greater good.”
My only complaint about Wagner’s story is that it relies so heavily on an assumed knowledge of its readers’ familiarity with almost 50 years of comic book continuity that an audience that might love this book would never understand it. Like its best contemporaries (Brubaker’s comics for Marvel, Grant Morrison’s for DC), Madame X is a comic book primarily for comic book fans, which is a shame in some ways. Much as I love comics, too many of the best of them suffer from the weight of their “universes.” The success of a comic book like The Watchmen, both commercially and as a work of creative art, owes much to its freedom from the bonds of convention, expectation, and familiarity.
On the graphic side, I had never seen Amy Reeder Hadley's art before this volume and I am now officially her fan. Although her style is uniquely her own, one can see elements in it of manga, classic American comics, and fine art illustration. Her layouts are beautiful and innovative and lovingly depict the locales of each story with a line and shadow suitable to the place and tone. She has truly extraordinary talent and I can’t wait to see her next project.
A Follow-up (see original post here):
The Unwritten, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. Monthly series from Vertigo.
This excellent series is three issues old now and continues to be the most entertaining comic I buy. Issue #3 is of special interest to connoisseurs of horror for a scene set in the Villa Deodati, the house where the Frankenstein monster was conceived, featuring a symposium of assembled horror writers. Each of the writers represents a different type of horror and their debate is sharp, satirical, and funny. The Unwritten, more than any comic I can remember reading, even Gaiman’s Sandman, examines the very nature of storytelling in a smart, engaging way that manages to be both light and profound. No small feat.
Posted by Angela Caperton at 7/18/2009 3:37 PM 
Categories: What I Like, Graphic Novels, Comics
Tags: What I Like Graphic Novels Vertigo Comics DC
Categories: What I Like, Graphic Novels, Comics
Tags: What I Like Graphic Novels Vertigo Comics DC
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