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The Exterminators by Simon Oliver and Tony Moore (2006-2008)

November 5, 2010 Book Reviews
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The cover of the first volume of Simon Oliver and Tony Moore’s graphic novel series The Exterminators compares the publishing imprint Vertigo as the comic book version of television’s HBO. In that case, it’s easy to take this comparison even further and liken The Exterminators to Six Feet Under. Like Six Feet Under, The Exterminators takes an unlikely career path with a strong ick factor and uses it to look at issues of human relationships, conglomerate corporations versus independent business, life and death. However, everyone’s favourite undertaker family never had to battle an army of mutant cockroaches and a reincarnated Egyptian bug worshipper. I’m tempted to take this analogy further, but really there’s nowhere else to go with it. While Six Feet Under had the most perfect ending of any television show ever (in my completely biased and not often humble opinion), The Exterminators starts off strong but lacks momentum to bring it to a fully realized and effective ending.

The Exterminators: Volume One, Bug Brothers by Simon Oliver and Tony Moore (2006)Volume One: Bug Brothers (Simon Oliver & Tony Moore, 2006) introduces us to Henry James, a convicted criminal who, thanks to his step-father, has taken up the post-jail career of exterminator with Bug-Bee-Gone. Henry is learning the ropes of the vermin killing business with the very possibly deranged AJ. Exterminating is, and take this as a warning readers of a sensitive disposition, gruesomely portrayed. All the vermin are shown as vicious, drooling, diseased and the kill scenes are often full pages that bask in the glory of a successful kill. Only, these vermin aren’t completely innocent. The Bug-Bee-Gone researcher Saloth has discovered a new strain of cockroach that is not only resistant to the best roach poison, but fuelled by the very chemicals intended to kill it, mutated into something stronger and much more sinister than your average roach. The narrative in this first volume is set up so well, with every page come new possibilities and potentially intriguing side stories; such as the mysterious Saloth’s past connection to the Khmer Rouge, or Henry’s prison connection to the Aryan brotherhood, or Henry’s girlfriend Laura’s new job with Ocran – the makers of roach poison that doubles as a narcotic for humans brave enough to indulge Draxx, or the green scarab. All these little hints build anticipation for further volumes. The artwork is strangely beautiful, as though the world is being viewed through sunshine and a haze of pollution, lending it an almost otherworldly, though recognizable, murky hue.

The Exterminators: Volume Two, Insurgency by Simon Oliver, Tony Moore, Ande Parks and Chris Samnee (2007)Volume Two: Insurgency (Simon Oliver, Tony Moore, Ande Parks and Chris Samnee, 2007) continues with this narrative set up and builds on our knowledge of the characters. We’re introduced to a new love interest for Henry, Page – a literary hooker that works within the constraints of fulfilling sexual fantasies taken from literary works, proposed as a preferable option compared to the corporate career-minded Laura. An issue featuring complementary storylines that compare and contrast Page and Laura, after Laura and Henry have broken up, allows us to see the differences and similarities between them, but issues raised here are hugely contradicted by later storylines. Meanwhile, at Bug-Bee-Gone, the mutant cockroaches are infiltrating essential infrastructure and it is up to Kevin, Henry and Stretch to do the dirty work involved in clearing them out. The Exterminators really revels in the detritus of both humans and and plays on the base disgust we tend to have for bugs, rodents and vermin.

The Exterminators: Volume Three, Lies of Our Fathers by Simon Oliver, Tony Moore, Mike Hawthorne and John Lucas (2007)Volume Three: Lies of Our Fathers (Simon Oliver, Tony Moore, Mike Hawthorne and John Lucas, 2007) finally delves into Saloth’s back story as he fabricates his refugee past for a date. An encounter with a past comrade forces him to confront that past, and vows to never let it jeopardize his life’s work again. One of the most disturbing scenes in the series occurs in this volume, as a young boy who has just had his eyes operated on has consistent itching beneath his bandages. Just don’t expect there to be fully healed wounds and cheer beneath those bandages. Oh, and there’s another fantastically gross scene involving the resuscitation of a pet hamster. Despite some brilliantly disgusting moments, here is where the series really began to fall apart for me, as contradictions arise and problematic turns of events just aren’t as strong as those that preceeded them. Laura is set on a rape revenge path and viciously murders her boss – an image that contradicts completely with that we have of her crying to her mother and worrying about her career. And why is it that rape is used as a dramatic trope so often for female characters in graphic novels? It’s offensively reductive, and cheaply used as a convenient plot point. Though the plot twists are unpredictable and no character safe from death, it doesn’t feel like as cohesive, it seems directionless and as a reader, I lost trust in the storyline.

The Exterminators: Volume Four, Crossfire and Collateral by Simon Oliver, Darick Robertson and Ty Templeton (2008)Volume Four: Crossfire and Collateral (Simon Oliver, Darick Robertson and Ty Templeton, 2008) features a really cool one issue story about Saloth and Stretch (the spiritual zen cowboy type who is also, if you’ll pardon a brief outburst of fangirlishness, really effing hot.) in a desert casino for a pest control convention, where more is revealed about Stretch’s shady past. This issue almost made me regain my faith in the story, but I’m thinking it was the combination of a story completely separate from the main narrative and artwork by Darick Robertson of Transmetropolitan fame that made me enjoy it so much. The rest of this volume focuses on a neighbourhood gang war over Draxx drug dealing, and the introduction of Draxx into black neighbourhoods by the Aryan brotherhood. This reads like an attempt to give The Exterminators more of a social slant, but I’m not entirely convinced. Too much of the dialogue and slang rely on painfully outdated stereotypes.

The Exterminators: Volume Five, Bug Brothers Forever by Simon Oliver, Tony Moore, John Lucas and Ty Templeton (2008)The final installment of the series, Volume Five: Bug Brothers Forever (Simon Oliver, Tony Moore, John Lucas and Ty Templeton, 2008), sees the epic showdown between bug and man that the series has been leading up to and … it’s disappointing. Again, some single story issues are entertainingly horrific, but the main narrative loses momentum as it draws to a close. The main issue is that the delineation between good and evil in The Exterminators is too convenient. The good guys – the Bug-Bee-Gones and associates – have their morally murky pasts and stories, but the bad guys are purely one dimensional. How can you create sympathy for a cockroach? It lacks the moral weight to make it truly engaging, and there never seems to be any doubt that the good guys are going to come out on top, albeit with significant losses. The final pages emphasize that this is just one battle won in a larger war of man against nature. More insight and exploration of the fascinating characters and less on the bug versus man battles would have made The Exterminators a triumph. As it is though, it’s a moderately entertaining graphic novel series that has hints of unfulfilled greatness.

E.W. Cole: Chasing the Rainbow by Lisa Lang (2007)

January 11, 2010 Book Reviews
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E.W. Cole: Chasing the Rainbow by Lisa Lang (2007)When I was younger my favourite books to borrow from the library, apart from the adventures of my hero, first love and ideal manboy Tintin, were the Cole’s Funny Picture Books. They were full of witticisms, puns, wordplay, visual gags, puzzles and they were deliciously odd. It never occurred to me that they were old-fashioned, at the time I had no idea that these books were first published in the late 1870s. If you ever glanced through a Cole’s, you may remember the illustration of the Whipping Machine for Flogging Naughty Boys. Sounds terribly politically incorrect, and probably would be treated as such now, but it made me laugh myself sick as a kid and stuck with me throughout childhood. Little did I know that the man behind such a cornerstone of my childhood nostalgia was such a varied and interesting figure of Melbourne’s history, and E.W. Cole: Chasing the Rainbow takes a look at the man behind the Funny Picture Books – Edward William Cole and his emporium of exotic treasures and Book Arcade in the heart of Melbourne in the late 19th century.

“Edward claimed to stock over a million books. His titles ranged from poetry to Marxism and sex education. For Edward, books were not just a business but a moral crusade. As one of his slogans proclaimed: ‘The happiness of mankind, the real salvation of the world, must come about by every person in existence being taught to read and induced to think.’

Lang’s biography is a short one, delivered in Arcade Publications‘ signature mini-book size, that takes us through Edward William Cole’s humble beginnings on the fraught goldfields of Victoria, to selling cordial to the goldhunters and even manning a late night meat pie stand until he settled on selling books from a cart on the street. He educated himself in the public libraries of Melbourne and wrote a book about world religions and religious tolerance, which was a difficult sell to publishers of the time. As his book cart grew to a full store at the busy Eastern Market, Cole took to unconventional promotional measures.

The media frenzy that Cole stirred up to promote his newly opened bookstore is ingenious and indicative of a highly media-savvy entrepreneur. In 1873, Cole put a column in the daily newspaper announcing the “Discovery of a Race of Human Beings with Tails” and that more would be revealed in Monday’s paper. Needless to say, Monday’s newspaper sold out. In the following week, Cole listed other traits of the people of the so-called Elocwe (read it backwards for a hint) and incited great anticipation about further revelations. On Saturday of the same week, the final episode was published:

“It invited all tailless inhabitants of Melbourne to go to Cole’s Cheap Book Store at the Eastern Market, where they would find for sale a great variety of TALES.”

Okay, I know you probably just rolled your eyes and it does seem a little quaint now, but it was clever. Viral marketing existed as early as 1873! It proved to be a great success. People turned up in droves to his book stall. Later, Cole was forced to move and bought out the arcade which would go on to become his famous Book Arcade, painting the façade white and emblazoned with the trademark rainbow.

Cole encouraged customers to sit down and read for as long as they wished (bliss!), as well as expanding the bookstore to an eclectic mix of a lending library, a tea salon, and selling “perfume, musical instruments, confectionery, and ornaments.” Including a room of monkeys. Monkeys! Eventually, his store expanded so much that it took up a whole city block. Cole’s Book Arcade was an amalgam of his varied interests. Cole’s Funny Picture Books were released in 1879 – a sort of scrapbook of things Cole had found and written – and were a publishing sensation, as literature aimed at children was sparse and the Funny Picture Books were relatively cheap.

Not only was Cole an impressive businessman, publisher and bookseller, but he was an inspired intellectual with a Utopian vision. He shunned the rampant racism evident in Australia, he wrote extensively against the White Australia policy and he advocated literacy and education for all. Cole’s is not a sensational biography, well, perhaps apart from the monkeys and his pet marmoset, but Lang shows us an eccentric man with strong ideals and business acumen who was a pioneer of his time.

* * *

I do love compiling a brief list of links related to the Melbourne history books I’ve been reading, and E.W. Cole doesn’t escape this.

Virgin: The Untouched History by Hanne Blank (2007)

November 27, 2009 Book Reviews
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Virgin: The Untouched History by Hanne Blank (2007)Virginity is an aspect of human sexuality that is not usually given the same critical attention as others, it is largely accepted as a state of being which just exists. In Virgin: The Untouched History Hanne Blank challenges our perceptions and assumptions about virginity and uncovers a rich and varied social-cultural history and shifting medical perspectives.

The first section of the book is titled Virginology – a look at the medical and scientific side of virginity, both now and in the past, and in particular the specifics of the contentious hymen issue. Here Blank also touches on what virginity has symbolized – the supposed pure, untouched state of heavenly, magical virtue – and the significance and purpose of these representations. The lengths that some women took to “prove” their virginity is often horrifying, but the circumstances which force them to have to prove it even more so.

The value we place on virginity is precisely that, placed upon it, and not intrinsic either to human beings or to virginity itself.

While this first section is incredibly interesting, the second section of the book – Virgin Culture – is so well written and captivating, ripe with information and insight into virginity’s place in society and culture over time.  Blank does talk mainly about female virginity because it has been loaded with much more meaning than male virginity. Blank posits that female virginity was desired in a marriage to ensure the paternity of the children produced by the marriage. Female virginity then played a socioeconomic role, a valued commodity within the patriarchal marriage market. Historically, our understanding of virginity has moved from one related to socioeconomics and kinship to one of experience, identity and personal autonomy.

This section also discusses the virginal saints and the place of virginity in Christianity and the Bible, Elizabeth I the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth Báthory and the blood of virgins. There have been numerous fascinating examples of virginity throughout history, and Blank manages to cover a wide variety of them here. Looking at contemporary views of virginity she discusses government involvement in creating a moral agenda in schools through the promotion of abstinence programs.

The Centers for Disease Control, the federal medical research organization responsible for addressing infectious and chronic diseases, had until 2002 been conducting research into “Programs That Work,” sex-education curricula that had been proven through empirical review to effectively reduce risky sexual behaviors. Of the five they identified as effective, none were abstinence centered. Since 2002, however, the CDC has discontinued this research program and the program’s findings have been removed from public view at the CDC’s web site. Other CDC statements praising contraception in a public-health context have also mysteriously vanished from the CDC’s online offerings, leaving, instead, statements of presidential and other official support of abstinence programs. It seems reasonable to surmise that high-ranking opposition to anything other than the official virginity-until-marriage agenda has created something of a chilling effect on the CDC’s ability to conduct and present scientific research on reproductive health issues.

One issue I do have, and I have this problem with all so called popular non-fiction works, is the lack of adequate recognition of references and sources. I understand that it is a space issue – but the selected biography cannot even begin to touch on all the resources that Blank must have used.

Apart from this minor, probably pedantic, objection, Virgin: The Untouched History remains a well researched, deeply compelling and insightful look at how our attitudes toward human sexuality change over time and how these changes represent wider transformations in society at large.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf (2007)

November 6, 2009 Book Reviews
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Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf

Proust and the Squid is an interesting look at the history of literacy and the evolution of the written word, and how the brain has evolved and adapted in order to learn how to read. Using multiple disciplines – psychology, history, linguistics and neuroscience to name a few – Maryanne Wolf takes us through what has happened over human history and how reading ability develops over a lifetime.

The first section on the development of writing and reading through history was fascinating, well-informed and researched and written in an engaging, always easy to understand style. Socrates was concerned about how knowledge defined by the written word would impact the tradition of orally learned knowledge; but he was also concerned with the ways in which the written word would prevent the ability to engage in dialogue in order to critically approach information. Wolf makes some interesting points about how the historical apprehension about the move from oral to literate culture mirrors that of our change from a literate to a multi-literate culture, or whatever you want to call the information overload nature of the world we exist in at the moment. The manner in which we receive and process information is changing rapidly again, and so what ways will the brain have to adapt in order to make sense of this world? How will it lead to further changes in the brain?

I believe that reading, in its original essence, [is] that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.
- Marcel Proust

The second section on reading development in young children is equally fascinating, bringing insight into just how complex an act it is, amazing that so many of us have managed to do it!, it gave me fresh appreciation of the act of reading itself. The third section on dyslexia is Wolf’s prime area of study and you can tell it is something she is knowledgeable about, and her writing here is passionate, but it lacked the immediate interest of the first two parts of the book.

Overall, Wolf has produced a book in which the writing is engaging, insightful and informative. It will make readers consider the act/art of reading and give a new admiration and understanding of the pleasures that reading offers.

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (2007)

September 23, 2009 Book Reviews
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Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

I generally avoid teen literature/young adult literature, most of the time I don’t find it particularly engaging, relevant or intellectually stimulating. A friend and I both read and loved Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist last summer. (And then we also went and saw the movie at the Moonlight Cinema – botanical gardens, twilight skies, comfy beanbags and a picnic, that was a really great night.) Nick and Norah was effective because it captured that anxious adolescent romantic energy, without any unnecessary moralizing or simplifying. So when it comes to the teen literature genre, I am willing to make an exception for Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s collaborative efforts.

This time, they tackle the messy, often complicated, notion of friendship and love. Naomi and Ely have lived in the same building since they were young, they have grown up together, shared everything. Their friendship begins to collapse when Ely breaches the “No Kiss List” and kisses Naomi’s boyfriend. The story is told, unlike Nick and Norah which was told entirely by the titular characters, from the perspective of a number of different characters, all involved in the aftermath of the broken friendship.

“I knew for the first time that when you say a couple is splitting up, it’s not just the relationship that’s splitting. In some way, everyone involved gets split up, too. Each of my moms was splitting. Each of Naomi’s parents was splitting. Naomi was splitting. I was splitting. And the reaction to that—my reaction to that—was to hold on as strong as possible. To try to hold things together. Because to let go would be the end of everything. To let go would be a murder of what once was.” (Ely)

Where the novel succeeds is in understanding the delicacy and colossal importance of friendship in the lives of young adults. The relationships between all of the main characters feel, for the most part, true to life. The multi-narrator technique allows us to see how each individual sees things, the disparity with how other characters interpret events, and how this leads to conflict. Particularly touching, out of all the narrative strands, is Bruce the Second’s coming to terms with and confronting his sexuality. This issue is dealt with a supreme sensitivity and never feels overwrought.

“It is not easy. Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.” (Ely)

At times it is difficult to understand or empathize with Naomi’s frustration with Ely, her reasoning isn’t clear. She has feelings for Ely despite knowing he is gay, but can’t manage to grasp that their life together is never going to be anything more than friendship. Although she is clearly confused and hurt by Ely’s actions, her actions seem to be driven by an unyielding tenacity to her impossible idea of how things should be. Her emotional and personal revelations are inadequate in comparison to the changes that the other characters are going through. Her burgeoning relationship with the young doorman Gabriel at times feels a little forced, just so that she can have her happy ending.

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List displays an awareness of the heightened emotional response in situations of confrontation and conflict in friendships, and there is real compassion for the struggles of the characters, even when some lack complexity and urgency.