#9. The Eternal Smile, by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim

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#9.  The Eternal Smile, Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim
2009, First Second

 

The Eternal Smile is a collaborative anthology by comics artists Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim.  Before reading this, I had read Yang's American Born Chinese (which won the Eisner award in 2007, and which I recommend highly, albeit with a few reservations).  I hadn't previously read anything else by Kim; after reading The Eternal Smile, though, I went and added his earlier books to my reading list (Same Difference and Other Stories, which won the Eisner and the Harvey in 2004, and Good As Lily, which was published by Marvel's tween Minx imprint in 2007).

 

It's a little hard to know how to review this book, partly because what it really is is a compilation of three different stories which differ so widely in style and tone that it would be a stretch to call this a cohesive work.  You can make an argument, though (as did my brother, who also read this book) that they treat one or two of the same core themes, and that their collective comment on these themes is more complex than any of the pieces would be alone.

 

I can't really go into much thematic criticism without spoiler-ing the stories, so I'll confine myself to other aspects.
 

The first piece in the book, "Duncan's Kingdom," is set in a sword-and-sorcery world, with an absolutely awesome army of evil ninja frogs.*  The second, "Elias McFadden's Gran'pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile," is an incredibly eccentric, deeply strange take on Carl Barks' classic Scrooge McDuck stories, featuring Gran'pa Greenbax, a pathologically mercenary frog, complete with equivalents of Scrooge's nemeses, flunkies and nephews (here Huey, Dewey and Louie have been transformed into Molly and Polly, a pair of superficially adorable but ultimately alarming little frog girls.)  Finally, "Urgent Request" features Janet Oh, a peon in the dehumanizing office block that is CommTech, and her peculiar relationship with the Nigerian prince "Henry Alembu," who keeps contacting her via e-mail to ask for money.

 

I found "Duncan's Kingdom" to have some admirable stuff in it, but I really feel it fell down very disappointingly in its last few pages -- character crumbling to serve plot, and that sort of thing; it seems to betray a less mature vision than the beginning seemed to promise.  (I really do love those Chinese ninja frogs, though.)  

 

"Urgent Request," conversely, was my favorite of the pieces; like good literature -- at least, the kind I like best -- its scale is small, but the questions and themes it explores are of the deepest.  (Also, a really interesting graphic style: understated but effective grey-scales, intriguing and subtle exploration of panel spacing, and fabulous use of color.)  

 

Finally, "Gran'pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile" is... Man!  It is just so weird, I hardly know what to make of it.  It is... Disturbing?  Unbalancing?  Unfinished-feeling?  Somewhat uneven?  Nor perfect?  Has some terrible and powerful moments?  All of the above.  It is one weird-ass story.  It upsets me in some of the same ways that on occasion Philip K. Dick, Matt Groening (in "Life in Hell"), or David Lynch have done.  And I guess that's good, right?  I guess that's high praise.  

 

One last thing, since race/ethnicity/culture were on my mind as I read this (and, perhaps, fairly enough, since Yang's previous work was extremely interested in these issues and from what I gather it looks as though Kim's has been also.)  The first piece, "Duncan's Kingdom," is... well, the first thing I am tempted to say is that it doesn't raise issues of race or culture.  And yet of course it does, because a European fantasy-world setting is European, and white characters are white -- they aren't nothing, they aren't raceless and cultureless.  They are European and white.  So it would be more accurate to say this: the characters in "Duncan's Kingdom" are explicitly and/or implicitly white, and the setting is straight out of European high fantasy, with the exception of the kingdom of evil warrior frogs, who are styled after a Chinese or perhaps a Korean manner.  And I don't know what, if anything, to say about that.

 

"Gran'pa Greenbax" is mostly about anthropomorphic animals, so if there are any racial or ethnic issues they're not on the surface.  (There is some tweaking of the Scottish and other Celtic stereotypes that "Uncle Scrooge" employed, but it's pretty secondary to the other stuff that's going on.)  And "Urgent Request"... "Urgent Request" I find very interesting because the protagonist, Janet Oh, is, we can gather from her name, Asian (and presumably Korean).  Kim's drawing style doesn't make that obvious, though -- at least not to me -- so it's interesting because if we had not heard her name used, I would have read her as white.  (It's not that she makes an unlikely Asian woman: she's small and dark-haired.  It's just that, well, go me, I tend to read characters as white by default.  ... The drawing-style thing reminds me of another Asian-North American artist, Bryan Lee O'Malley (of Scott Pilgrim fame), about whom I have heard a number of readers say that you can't tell by just looking at his characters whether they're Asian or not; you need to figure it out from names and contextual clues.  In at least one case, this has apparently led to my reading a character as Asian who was actually white.  So... anyway, that's -- interesting?)  

 

I also think that "Urgent Request" does some very interesting stuff around a very difficult subject: that is, our fantasies of escape and exoticism, in which we project our desires onto places that actually also have real existences and inhabitants.  But the story manages to work out an interesting balance between the drives and hopes of imagination and the dignity due to reality.  I'm not sure the story meant to go "that deep," but it did anyway.  At least, so I think.  You should read it and tell me what you think.  

 

*Yes, I realize that ninjas are Japanese and that the stylings of Yang and Kim's evil frogs are much more Chinese.  I use the term "ninja" loosely, partly because I don't know a Chinese equivalent.  Also, it is a fantasy army of frogs.  If you have read the book and know a better term to apply to the sneaky frog warriors, I will be indebted to you.