Review by Diego Guerra

Rosa Luxemburg was an exceptional woman. Born Polish into a Jewish family, she spent her entire career in Germany, where she became a paradigm of left wing ideology. Political rally speeches and newspaper articles truly moved the masses in the early 20th century, and Luxemburg excelled at both. She founded newspapers, wrote countless essays, and created the Spartacus movement.

As a champion of socialism, Luxemburg maintained a critical stance toward Lenin and the Russian revolution, fearing its evolution into a harsh dictatorship, which eventually happened. She also opposed Germany’s involvement in World War I, earning her numerous enemies and ultimately facing a fate as a martyr. She was also an emancipated woman, far ahead of her time. She married Gustav Lübeck to obtain German citizenship, but never lived with him. Instead, she had passionate romances, first with Leo Jogiches and later with Kostja Zetkin. Her loves were marked by persecution, exile, and imprisonment, but none of this prevented her from being a passionate woman in every respect.

Little of this is portrayed in Red Rosa by Kate Evans, and what is, is poorly told in a very poorly written and poorly executed graphic novel. The aim seems to be to present a biography of this important figure as a kind of children’s story, oversimplifying and distorting Luxemburg’s complex life. Red Rosa is told with absolute condescension, providing no analysis and instead constructing a kind of poorly written pamphlet. Besides that, the drawings are mediocre. A naive graphic style tries to hide a lack of illustrative talent. Even the lettering is poorly designed. It is truly a very bad graphic novel.

In recent years, authors like Peter Bagge and the Talbot couple have focused on writing and illustrating graphic novels about important women. They have produced so many that this sub-genre has almost become a genre in itself, at risk of becoming formulaic or losing its impact. However, these books are well-written and well-drawn. While reading Red Rosa, one can’t help but wish that Bagge or the Talbots had been the ones to craft the graphic novel about Rosa Luxemburg, instead.