(courtesy Penguin Books Australia)
Fascinating though it may be for past events junkies like this reviewer, history doesn’t come alive for everyone.
It’s a real pity because not only is delving into the annals of history brilliantly interesting but it ensures, as the adage reminds us, that we are familiar with its dark moments and destructive pitfalls to know what to avoid and to most definitely not repeat it.
So, when someone like Michael Avon Oeming writes and illustrates a graphic novel like William of Newbury, which is, some brilliantly realised magicality aside, rooted firmly in very well documented events, we should all rejoice because here history comes vivaciously and immersively alive.
William, who was a real person as Oeming explains at the end of the graphic novel, known as William of Newburgh – this was changed to the lesser-known “Newbury” in this version of the story because, in the author’s words, “it’s much cuter” – was a 12th century monk and England’s first historian (The History of English Affairs) who loved during a turbulent period of civil war known as the Anarchy.
Not only did he recount actual events from the period when Empress Matilda and King Stephen duked it out across England’s green and pleasant land for control of the kingdom, but he also document stories of demons and the undead with the same veracity used for more historical events.
As Oeming observes, treating the events of the civil war and more supernatural events with equal narrative weight was part of William’s “medieval worldview”, and thus fascinated the author decided to adapt four of his stories with some additional characters and storytelling elements.
The result is a fantastically readable and enthralling graphic novel which not only familiarises you with the period where journeying from town to town was fraught with all kinds of menace and danger, but takes you into a realm filled with magical realism where ordinary events came filled with supernatural portent and thus required suitably supernatural solutions which usually involved God being summoned to put the Devil and his monstrous minions back into their damned and fiery place.
(courtesy Dark Horse Books)
Key to the enjoyment of William of Newbury is how wonderfully well Oeming brings the eponymous character to life.
William is a delightful contradiction; not only is he represented, like all the characters in the story as an anthropomorphic animal, but the slayer of demons and the undead is also quite relatabley human – yes, he’s a raccoon in form but Oeming says he and every other character is a human in every other way that matters – being afraid, as his unusual companion observes, of “dogs, people, weird sounds, bugs …”
It’s a joy reading about a hero who is damn good at what he does, even if the powers that be want him to cease and desist – apparently taking on demons and the undead, while powerfully necessary, means you’re focusing on evil not good; it seems that if you worship God, the Devil will meekly leave souls alone which, yeah, does not happen in William’s far more lived experience – but who is also prone to fallibilities and failings.
There’s not a lot of humour in William of Newbury but it is there and it comes largely from the willingness of Oeming to let William being gloriously and ordinarily human even as she slays evil in all kinds of visually arresting forms.
Filled with bountiful imagination and rich historical detail, William of Newbury is brought to life so actively and vividly that all the battles feel real and lived-in as do the more introspective moments.
The artwork is eye-catching, a feisty use of colour and form that brings the events of history, real and supernaturally augmented alive, and fuels a story which isn’t short on gripping moments and ruch character interaction.
William of Newbury is worth a read even if you’re not much of a history fiend because it explores just not the history of things but what lay behind them and why people did the things they did, and why knowing that actually matters because when that’s the way you evaluate events, you are armed to see not just what’s happening but why and that’s powerful information to have at your disposal indeed.
William of Newbury is published by Dark Horse Books.