Comic Book Brain | Madeleine Smith by Rick Geary

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November 22, 2006

REVIEW
RICK GEARY:
THE CASE OF MADELEINE SMITH
NBM COMICSLIT 2006

Subtitled: A True Account of the Respectable Young Glasgow Lady Brought to Trial for the Murder by Poison of Her Secret Paramour.
Written and Illustrated by Rick Geary
80 pages; Hardback

Rick Geary

What seems a straightforward recounting of a murder by poison from Victorian-era Scotland is also a challenge to one's reasoning ability. A superficial reading of the tale creates a vastly different impression versus following the steady progression of "clues" that Geary provides through this carefully detailed graphic novelette of 80 or so pages. It seems like a cliché, that through prejudice and class privilege a female poisoner escaped penalty for an obvious crime, and went on to live a mysterious and convoluted life that included radical politics and strange behaviors. But there is much more to the tale, and Geary does not do the reader's work by emphasizing what they need to notice in order to fill in the whole picture - instead the simple task of comparing dates and (perhaps even more importantly) paying attention to each step makes for a much more complicated picture of a romance that began unhealthily (considering the mores and traditions of the eon in which it occurred) and then proceeded steadily toward disaster.

The pace and tone of the book is intelligent and measured - - Geary nudges this short volume along without trying to sensationalize any particular element. He narrates succinctly and thoroughly, and is an equal partner with the artwork. Geary provides a great deal of entertainment and fun for the eyes, with minor characters of the book appearing at the sides of panels with tilted heads and quizzical expressions, as if they too are puzzled by the strange workings of both this society and this particular murder case. However, Geary doesn't treat the stars of his story in the same fashion. Though he appears at first jaunty and equipped with the expression of a proper gentleman's ripe disinterest, Emile L'Anglier soon becomes the miserable and increasingly sickly secret suitor to the upper-class Madeleine Smith, who, for the most part, is given a flat mask of impenetrable thought. A few panels that come from the pages of Madeleine's private letters to L'Anglier are as close as we get to seeing the powerful emotional nature of this lady.

Geary has drawn a number of maps and diagrams to help the reader put together the entire panorama of the case - - and also to breathe life into a distant country and time by using the peculiar power of the comic book medium to depict a physical world to the reader. The streets are cobble-stoned and the houses and their furnishings are depicted effectively, giving a feeling that serves the story well. The book is too short to function as a treatise on the distant age it is from (1857 Scotland); but within the limitation of 80 pages and the chief concern of the mechanics of a murder case, the society is given something of a hearing. Beyond that, Geary also allows the point that class prejudice cuts both ways to make a minor point that is important to understanding one of the possible truths about this case.

Geary's line work is beautifully done. He finds a hundred uses for simple horizontal lines, whether for creating shadow in facial features, or to make textures of clothing real. Vertical lines create the tall walls and high ceilings of Victorian architecture. Though Geary doesn't stint on filling in his panels, the details are never too dense to crowd out what the reader needs to see to follow the story along. Reminiscent of woodblock cutting, Geary's line work undulates on the page and gives the otherwise dour black and white images a kind of cheerful life of their own. Using distortion, caricature and many juxtapositions of expression on the faces of Geary's broad cast of characters, what might otherwise have a been a bleak story is instead a rather gentle poke at a time that seems claustrophobic and obsessive compared to our "modern age," and yet the underlying situation of two lovers who cannot resolve their situation because of each other is as timeless as Adam and Eve.

Amazon.com sells the book here for approximately $5.65

NBM Publishing has a page on this book, and Geary's other Victorian Murder Mysteries volumes in this series here.

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