Word: cartoonable
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Such an ad might be penned to describe a collection of "documentary comic books," the first of which went on sale this week in U.S. college and trade bookstores. Already selling briskly in Europe and Latin America, the cheeky seriocomics treat great thinkers with snappy drawings and humorous cartoon panels, presumably to appeal to the generation and others intimidated by reading the originals. "We're combining the popular Donald Duck form with serious intellectual thought," argues Pantheon Books' Tom Engelhardt, U.S. editor of the series' first title, the 158-page Marx for Beginners...
...Marx Brothers?"one character asks early on). The book dances quickly through a field as woolly as the history of philosophy prior to Marx. For example, France's René Descartes "introduces us to a mechanistic concept of the world," observes a whimsical bird in one cartoon panel, adding: "Later, we'll see what this is and whether it's edible." In a playful hand-lettered preface, del Rio says that a "reason for trying to take on Charlie was my wish to understand him-an ambition which I haven't satisfied." He repeats that note...
Though the fare is heavy and perceptive compared with conventional comics, the cartoon paneling cannot, of course, do justice to the complexity of Marxist thought. Del Rio's treatment of the theory of surplus value is little more than a shouting match between a cartoon worker who wants more wages and a Daddy Warbucks entrepreneur who seeks investment return. Worse, del Rio occasionally slips into heated leftist polemic and embarrassing overpraise of his hero. At one point, he credits Marx singlehanded with now making possible "what was impossible for 20 centuries: freedom from the exploitation...
Last weekend at Carpenter Center the devil spit the universe out of his mouth and laughed. A sign of recognition went up from the audience: Ah, another origin-of-the-universe cartoon." It was an Italian movie, FantaBiblical, good news for post-Sputnik man, the fallen Catholic's Chariot of the Gods, the ten commandments as the fallout of a mid-space collision. Nothing is sacred; everything is permitted...
...left to serious movies; it has no place in films that are basically in the Boys' Own Adventure tradition, which even little kids understand are intended to glorify the heroic ideal. In such entertainments, the background events should be as undisturbingly abstract as that of a Road Runner cartoon. - Richard Schickel