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Rest assured, faithful readers - I'm always thinking about comics. This may be a movies/television/baked confections column (next time: Watchmen, the official cake! I bet you're mad you missed out on cake, Alan Moore!), but the chosen art form of this fine internet site is never far from my mind.
And when I think comics, I think Belgium. And when I think Belgium, I think the Grammys. And when I think the Grammys, I think Robert Ludlum. And while these thought processes may not have helped with my SAT scores or basic interactions with other people, they certainly have prepared me to talk about one of the most popular comics-based multimedia franchises around:
XIII.
Of course, ‘around' doesn't necessarily have to include ‘the United States,' although the damned franchise keeps trying. The most recent shot (in the dark or otherwise) has been
a two-part television miniseries that debuted February 8th on NBC, as obvious counterprogramming to CBS's yearly airing of the Grammy Awards; the show concluded the following Sunday, February 15th, promptly placing fourth among networks in Nielsen ratings for its first half-hour (roughly 2.5 million viewers behind Family Guy) and thereafter diving below a 1.0% rating for the 18-49 demographic. Er, maybe you remember the video game from 2003? Cel-shaded splendor? David Duchovny & Adam West, together at last?!
Ah, but
XIII has never had the easiest go around here, Despite its 12 million copies sold and its translations into a dozen languages, and its perfectly catchy espionage plot, seeing a nameless amnesiac with a "XIII" tattoo wake up to discover (1) that he's got amazing combat skills and (2) he quite recently assassinated the President of the United States of America, or so says the horde of people after him for various reasons. Can he clear his name? Also: what
is his name?
Complications soon arise, leading to 19 albums of exploits, 1984-2007, after which writer/co-creator Jean Van Hamme departed the series. English-language translations of the material, however, have yet to clear vol. 3, despite the efforts of Catalan Communications (under the title
Code XIII, 1989), Alias Comics (as an abortive pamphlet-format series, 2005) and Dabel Brothers Productions, in tandem with no less than Marvel Comics (a three-in-one trade paperback, 2007). The Dabel/Marvel deal has since broken off, so heaven only knows if more is yet to come.
But why so much trouble for an obviously popular comic? Well, an obvious answer is "it's Belgian," since Belgian comics rarely perform well at all in the US these days, and the current trend for foreign pop comics is almost entirely behind manga (itself slowing a bit), but let's set concerns of nationality and marketing aside for a minute. After all, a new paradigm is in place for this country, a spirit of optimism and global cooperation. Just today I leaned over to the girl in the ticket booth to hand over my highway toll and I winked "I
hope you have
change," and she immediately nodded in recognition of the zeitgeist, as well as my immense physical beauty.
So what
is XIII? What does it look like? How does it feel?
The artwork is by one William Vance (birth name: William van Cutsem), who's been active in European comics since the ‘60s.
XIII was initially serialized in the venerable (and still active) Belgian comics magazine
Spirou, founded in 1938.
Spirou was once the very embodiment of the "Marcinelle School" of Belgian comics art, which commonly favored lively, illusion-of-movement cartooning in contrast to its rival school of Hergé and the magazine
Tintin, known for the "ligne claire" (clear line) style and, eventually, a greater emphasis on realism. But this dichotomy was never quite valid; while the likes of André Franquin mastered the ultimate Marcinelle School style, the school's founder, Jijé (Joseph Gillain), wielded both clear lines and realist forms with ease, along with the North Star Hundred Crack Fist, which could cause an opponent's body to explode.
Vance too works in a rightly lush realist style, at times reminiscent of an especially stolid and composed mid-century American newspaper strip. This, of course, is a crucial hint - it's a rather old-fashioned visual style that appeals primarily to devotees of the form and historians of various stripes. Manga's success might be a victory for marketing -- albeit after decades of lingering, tangential presence -- but many of those digests for boys and girls really do have a particular means of delivering a story visually - quickly and with maximum aplomb.
Something like
XIII frankly looks its age, and lacks the most obvious traits of Marvel's biggest homegrown pop comics -- exploitation of an irreplaceable shared-universe continuity -- while lacking any familiar names to engender curiosity. I'm sure it made it into a lot of Direct Market stores, but I just don't think it had many striking characteristics that could have stood apart from everything else. And while it's fine to have a small audience, let's not forget that
XIII was a bona fied
megahit elsewhere.
I suspect it's a different megahit that got the television miniseries (a Franco-Canadian co-production initially aired on the Canal+ pay channel in France) onto US network television, though. Writer Van Hamme has been open about the strong inspiration of Robert Ludlam's 1980 prose novel
The Bourne Identity on his premise - indeed, the "washed up on a shore with amnesia" premise of the comic's first album is nearly identical to the Ludlam novel's. And since a certain popular theatrical film series was begun in 2002, well... can't blame everyone for taking a shot.
The
XIII miniseries doesn't compare at all to the Bourne films -- remember, those are movies often credited, deservingly or not, with supercharging the very manner in which action scenes are presented -- nor does it even carry the addictive suspense charge of a television project like
24. It's somewhat lackadaisically paced, with star Stephen Dorff (of Blade) spending a considerable amount of the runtime furrowing his brow at expositing co-stars, although the assorted action bits are pretty crisply done. Most of the humor of the comic is gone, along with all of the sex; we instead get numerous unconvincing moments of political intrigue -- including a few gaffes as to the mechanics of the US political system -- and an increasingly strained plot, the sort of thing that preserves Our Hero's internet savvy in all instances save for those that would prevent people from tracking him, and eventually reveals one of the villainous masterminds via XIII observing the guy's face while a henchman converses with him on a helpful video screen.
Then again, the
XIII comic (or at least what we've got in English) was never air-tight in terms of plotting nor particular whip-cracking in its pace; Van Hamme tended to lean a little heavily on XIII suddenly recalling something or walking into rooms at dramatic moments, and the megaplot had a way of cooling down while individual albums launched into their own discreet storylines. The miniseries covers the first five volumes of the comic, so it's hard to tell exactly how faithful it is, although the first hour is actually a pretty sleek updating of the first album to contemporary times, Italian actress Caterina Murino's wholly gratuitous quasi-love interest character aside. I guess there's also Val Kilmer (requisite name value!) as special ops arch-fiend The Mongoose - what was once a sinister little old man cackling over his machinations is now supposed to be a twin-pistols badass, although the faintly pained Kilmer looks like he's prepared for every scene by rushing up and down several flights of stairs then banging his knee off of something heavy.
What was more interesting to me was the distinct paranoia of the update. The assassinated president is now America's first woman to hold the office, and a Democrat who plans to scale back troop presence in Iraq. Sure, maybe writers Philippe Lyon & David Wolkove simply thought Hillary Clinton would win, but there's a particular horror to the conspiracy that stokes a lot of fears I know
I heard surrounding Barack Obama's election, a lot of murmured notions of established forces digging in, a lot of miscellaneous fear. And yes - and underlying suspicion that America's two major political parties are more or less the same, and indeed united in preventing substantive change from coming to town, or so they hope.
But it's a touristy thing too, very much a lot of folks from an outside culture looking in. That's maybe how the television
XIII is closest to the comics; they're both set in America, and they both play up the dirty tricks of agents and locals alike for the pleasure of Belgium (or France, or Canada). The ‘80s big city cops and roughneck small town workers have been transformed into ruthless politicians and a torturous military, though - there's no loyalty in America that can't be tarnished with extreme methods and vile threats. No wonder XIII leaves the country at the end, grimacing manfully at the very thought of coming back for further adventures!
Who knows if they'll ever get made, although our English-speaking televisions are already farther along than our English-language comics. Maybe this country's a little too crazy for XIII to handle; maybe he'd
like to stick to the acclaim of Europe, metafictionally speaking. Hell, if this place wasn't the finest environment for a comic of that type, at least the comic always seemed to recognize how odd it was the place it was going.
Joe McCulloch is the fist behind Jog - The Blog. He posts to The Savage Critics, and prints with The Comics Journal, Comics Comics and Bookforum. Via fists.
The Watchman is ©2008 Joe McCulloch.
