It is often hard for a comic that draws its material from real events to succeed in an industry that favors super heroes, grown men in tights and mythical battles, but fortunately it is also far from impossible. Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, combining ingeniously the dramatic life story of a young girl in Iran with political remarks, smart humor and an astonishing innocence that comes out of any page, never ceases to amaze the reader and make him wish there was more.
Marjane was born in Tehran, Iran and witnessed the huge changes that altered her country in her lifetime, such as the fall of the Shah, the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. She lives in a progressive family while around her fanatics ruled, fundamentalists roamed and every day was harder than the previous, and everything she saw she judged with her unique way as a child. The first book of Persepolis describes those years and her experiences in Iran while the second one continues from her 14th year when she left to Vienna, Austria. Later she moved back to Iran to attend college where she met her first husband, she divorced and moved out again, this time in Strasbourg, France. She currently lives in Paris where she writes and draws children books, and of course Persepolis which is her most esteemed work until now.
Persepolis is charming in a profound way, it may speak of things ugly, evil and traumatic but it does it in an innocent way that leaves the reader with a bitter smile of not understanding but at least empathy. Marjane learns how her world works (make no mistake, your world has little in common with hers), speaks with political refugees, reads, speaks with God, wonders if the veil is right or wrong, dreams, falls in love, hates, makes mistakes and mostly acts like any other person would in her position. Astonishingly beautiful from the first page to the last Persepolis is a comic that might change your perspective in some matters.
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Frank Miller is one of the most influential comic creators ever, but who could expect that he would also change the way we conceive film making! After Robocop 2, 3 and 4, Elektra and the magnificent Sin City the latest adaptation of his work for the big screen is 300, a story based on the real facts of the battle of Thermopylae (Hot Gates) in the unique way only comics and cinema could present it. The book was published in 1998 as a limited 5-issue series (the issues were titled Honor, Duty, Glory, Combat and Victory) and later as a hardcover book and received many awards, including three Eisner. This may not be an exact replica of the original story like Sin City (there is a secondary story in Sparta that did not exist in the book) but if you are a fan of 300 as Frank Miller visualized it you won’t be disappointed.
This is the story of King Leonidas of Sparta and his 300 best soldiers, in 480 BC they stood between the Persian king Xerxes and the rest of Greece in a narrow passage and made their last stand for more than 3 days against an army so vast the world had never before witnessed. It is the story of the Spartans, a civilization specialized in every aspect of the art of war, their harsh ways and difficult lives, their ethics and code of honor, and ultimately it is a story of love and duty and how every man decides to express those.
The film was made entirely in blue and green screen sets for the settings to appear as comic-like as possible, the actors (in most cases) were tremendous in their roles and although there were parts were the Spartans were not laconic at all and the features of an action film threat to spoil the atmosphere, the overall outcome was an epic movie capable of offering 2 hours of fun and even more of pure awe. If Sin City 2 is that good, heck maybe they should make an academy award for comic creators!
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