Magical Realism, Tough Issues, and the Graphic Novel Form

In this brief essay, I would like to share about two books that have recently been published that struck my interest. I love how, in the middle of a perfectly mundane narrative that initially feels like a typical text, creative authors and artists interject unexpected characters and moments to take the story to new places.

One example of this is the graphic novel, Lizard in a Zoot Suit, written and illustrated by Marco Finnegan (Graphic Universe, 2020). The book is set to be released May 5 in the United States and features a canary yellow motif that carries through its panels. The story is set in the early 1940s and brings the sense of place to the read, in part by the way characters are depicted, but also in part by the way language takes shape around ethnicity. This includes what the author calls “animosity toward Mexican Americans,” (p. 137). In the midst of this racial tension, a character enters the scene who serves as a kind of help or guide.

Of course, given the title of the graphic novel, that character happens to be a lizard, who is often drawn in a zoot suit. The fanciful addition to the story helps the author take on a critical topic and do so in way that is illustrative and unexpected.

Working in a similar yet different fashion, artist and author David Jesus Vignolli has recently published the book New World (Archaia, 2019). The color scheme of this book begins in a style that almost resembles parchment and alludes to a historic time period and realistic figures. When a character encounters the new world, we see it blazing in green in his eyes in a series of panels that close in like camera frames.

By the time we reach the next page, the colors of this new world have exploded in a rich spread and soon enough we realize that, though the themes of captivity and imperialism are present in the book, the inclusion of elements like a giant parrot which the characters can ride on lends a fanciful sense to the text.

Ironically, both of these books take on issues of tension and racial oppression, and do so in a way that invites elements that open the reader up to the central message of depicting a history of ill treatment of groups of people. What is accomplished with the inclusion of magical realism does not, at least for me, deaden that message, but rather seems to say:

See what a world this is? See how people have treated one another, and continue to treat one another? This world is different, but it is also our own.

It’s a message that I appreciate in this visual medium, and it is both textually and ethically compelling.