Review by Graham Johnstone
Lorenzo Mattotti was acclaimed for his 1986 graphic novel Fires. Groundbreaking in its time, decades later there’s little to compare, except the Italian maestro’s handful of other graphic novels.
Murmur, drawn a few years later, is equally dazzling. Created before comics were coloured with Photoshop, it appears to be achieved with coloured pencil and oil pastels. Colour in comics is still rarely liberated from black outlines, but Mattotti comes close, a few ink lines survive, but at least keep focus on the key figures. Mattotti draws directly on early modern painting: the writhing energy of Expressionism and the bold colours of Fauvism. Yet he’s no mere imitator, drawing inspiration across styles to suit each image, with the result seamlessly his own. Landscapes undulate, and life-forms writhe in Art Nouveau curves. Figures are distorted by the elements, or become monumental sculptures amongst inter-war architecture. An image as mundane as someone cleaning a kitchen is dazzling. Moods range from gothic storm-scape to beach idyll, with palettes to match. These pages could be hung in galleries amongst the masterpieces of 20th Century modernism.
A cover quote describes Mattotti as “the best comic-book artist…”, but it would be more credible to call him “the best artist in comics”, as his storytelling has some glitches. Panels sometimes fail to introduce elements important in the next, like an approaching figure, or a cutting falling out a book, necessitating awkward explanations in the text.
Mattotti is no mere illustrator of others’ visions, but he draws on writers. Fires riffed on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Murmur is Mattotti’s second collaboration with Jerry Kramsky, after Labyrinthes, (as yet, unpublished in English). This duo went on to create the masterpiece Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but how good is this early effort?
There’s no information on how the pair collaborated, but it reads as if Kramsky wrote the text for drawn pages. If that recalls Stan Lee’s ‘Marvel Method’, the results could not be more different. Unlike Lee’s nimble join-the-dots, Kramsky’s narration feels an intrusive bolt-on. His leaden prose includes redundant description, clichés, and general verbiage like, “thought was no more than an ethereal form of substance”. Long sentences, split over several lines in narrow captions, further hinder readability. The narration even includes dialogue, which would have been better in word balloons. Statements are awkwardly matched with images, and often disagree, for example referring to “turbulent” waters, when they’re drawn glassy still. Perhaps Kramsky, awed by Mattotti’s art, was trying too hard to prove his worth, but the result reads as if written in a late-night, frenzied burst, and never revisited in the light of day.
The book opens with a young man, nicknamed Murmur, wandering through Mattotti landscapes. He encounters some odd characters, starting with playful brothers Hans and Fritz (nodding to an early newspaper strip), then a wizened fisherman casting spells to summon the self-explanatory Stagfish. A beguiling beauty in red – is the unlikely wife of the fisherman. Murmur lingers, unwelcome, in a remote mansion (pictured) occupied by the couple. A backstory slowly emerges of Murmur injured in a toxic accident. He’s traumatised, so triggering his return to the, still near-abandoned location, seeking closure. This pays off in an oblique but satisfying ending, though the intrusive narration makes the journey to that point a painful one.
Any Mattotti book is well worth having for the art. This 1993 Murmur offers larger pages, but a 2017 reprint combining Fires & Murmur may be a better option. For Mattotti and Kramsky at their best, hunt down Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
