She Shared a Life in Black and White: Remembering Marjane Satrapi

There was a time in the popular imagination when, if you mentioned comics, people would think of the newsprint hijinks of the Katzenjammer Kids or the effortless four-color calisthenics of Clark Kent’s alter ego or the appalling wordplay of Bazooka Joe, wrapped around an equally appalling brick of bubblegum-flavored chalk. Even the more sophisticated artistry of the underground comix movement in the 1960s didn’t entirely distinguish itself from comics’ association with juvenilia; artists like R. Crumb still appropriated trappings of kids’ comics like talking animals, and the overall tone was often one of sophomoric brattiness. And subsequent leaps forward for the format like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns still continued to wrap their adult themes in the familiar tropes of costumed crimefighters.

In the late twentieth century, a couple of groundbreaking masterpieces, both of them autobiographical in conception and global in their visions, broadened the capacities of the graphic novel form forever. One was Art Spiegelman’s Maus; the other was Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.

Satrapi, whose death at the age of 56 was just announced this week, was an Iranian-French artist who used the sequential art form to introduce readers worldwide to the quotidian concerns of everyday Iranians living through the turbulent upheaval of the Iranian revolution, with particular attention to the impact on women of government-imposed oppression and religious extremism. Focalized through the experiences of 10-year-old Marji, Persepolis alternates between observant coming-of-age details and the wrenching horrors of war.

Part of Persepolis‘ impact derives from its distinctive visuals: Satrapi lays out Marji’s experiences in starkly expressionist black-and-white panels, the characters’ masklike faces set against inky black patches as they navigate both interpersonal complexities and global politics with wide-eyed resilience. The monochromatic chiaroscuro is reminiscent of woodcuts’ blockiness, lending the storytelling a highly stylized quality that echoes the unsubtle absolutism of the oppressive powers brutalizing these characters’ lives.

Satrapi died too young but she achieved much, directing live-action movies with actors like Ryan Reynolds and Rosamund Pike as well as turning some of her books into animated films. Add those accomplishments to that whole thing where she helped to completely revolutionize a literary format for a new audience and, y’know, that’s a lot of things to check off a to-do list.