Comic Reviews: Boxers & Saints

Boxers

In the late 1890’s China was a weak country.  European nations moved in and began to carve up the country among themselves similar to how they did in Africa and South America.  And with these nations came Christian Missionaries who felt they were doing the right thing by converting the native Chinese and eliminating their culture in favor of a more European kind of culture.  This did not sit well with a growing number of young Chinese men who started forming small groups and these small groups joined together to form The Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist (or commonly known as Boxers), a group dedicated to driving out the “foreign devils” and more importantly protecting Chinese culture.  The group believes that by following a ritual they gain the powers of the Chinese Gods in their war against the “invaders”.

The book Boxers follow a character called Little Bao from a small village who kind of falls backwards into leading a group of Boxers whose ultimate goal is to march on the capital city of Peking to drive out the “foreign devils” from their strongholds and cleanse China once and for all.

 

 

If you have seen Apocalypse Now you know that the further up the river Benjamin Willard journeys to find Colonel Kurtz the more he loses his humanity until madness threatens to take him.  In a similar way the closer Little Bao gets to Peking the more of his humanity is lost.  He begins his journey as a humble peasant who starts out killing only to protect other Chinese from marauding foreigners, to ordering the killing of a few Christians on a train, and then ordering the slaughter of everyone in a church to ultimately ordering the burning of the great library of Peking to gain access to the Western section of the city.  In doing so he has destroyed most of the written history of his country and in doing so has in a way destroyed that which he had hoped to save.  

The internal conflict within Boa between staying true to his principles and the growing feeling that perhaps those same principles are what is keeping him from doing what he feels he has to is the core of this book and the writer/artist Gene Luen Yang deftly combines carefully chosen words and powerful images and I feel that the reader cannot help but sympathizes with Bao.  This is remarkable since this book is published and will undoubtedly be read by a largely white, Western audience and the fact that I could not help but cheer on Bao is testament to the skill Yang has with his craft.

Unfortunately the book has a few problems that bothered me.  Yang felt the need to craft on a lot of supernatural elements that I felt detracted from the story.  Apparently Bao learns the ritual to harness the powers of the Gods through a mystical teacher and that was not really needed.  The representation of each of the warriors as a God was interesting but I am still not sure why Yang felt it necessary to give a supernatural source to this.  The other thing I was disappointed in was the scope.  In the fight scenes when Yang should have given himself license to cut lose and open up his art and show the scope of the battles he chooses to still keep it intimate and ultimately I think this goes to cheapen the smaller scenes since there is no real balance.  If you are going to attempt an epic story parts of it need to be, well, epic.

So, it always comes down to should you spend your time and money on this and I think the answer is yes.  Yang is a masterful story-teller no matter if the subject matter is grand in scope of personal.  And speaking of personal stories…..  

Saints

Much like Boxers; Saints follows the life of a single individual during the Boxer Rebellion.  The Chinese culture Four-Girl grows up in is harsh; involving beatings for not knowing her place and in fact is worth so little she is not even given a proper name.  The hopelessness of her situation is so that when she is introduced to Christianity we understand how she can grab on to it not only as a way to save her soul, but to salvage her life as well.   

Throughout the book Four-Girl sees a vision of a young lady who she learns from her teachers is Joan of Arc.  At periods in her life that mirror the trials that Joan went through Four-Girl is visited by Joan and provided guidence and reassurance that her life is on the right track. Unfortunately Four-Girl is ignorant of French history and so does not see that if she is not careful her life could end horribly the same as Joan’s.

Much like Clint Eastwood did with Flags of our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima; Saints is not really a sequel to Boxers but is instead a companion piece that gives us the point of view from the other side of the Boxer Rebellion.  One of the most interesting things of this book is that the author chose to release both volumes at the same time.  It doesn’t matter which one you read first as Bao makes an appearance in Saints and Four-Girl makes an appearance in Boxers so the two stories intertwine very well.  You do not need to read the other for each one to make complete sense but I recommend that you purchase both and read them back to back.  If you want to know the real final fate of Bao you must read Saints and only by reading Boxers will you ever know if Four-Girl becomes a champion to the Christian Chinese she so desperately wants to protect.  I will not spoil the endings except to say they are some of the msot powerful images I have seen in comics form and while sad are ultimately inevitable.

Taken as individual experiences both books are well-researched, thoughtful works but taken together these two books make for a single powerful experience that I feel in some way the author has been working towards his entire life.  The only question I am left with is what he could possibly do to top this.