Comic windows to the past: A new set of graphic novel biographies is out today

Comics are obviously entertaining, but we tend to forget the medium’s educational function. I’m not talking about a staid, stiff relaying of information like in a textbook, though. With pared down, to-the-point copy and impactful visuals, these illustrated works have the potential to make the complex more digestible, memorable and, in turn, help people learn a lot. Especially about the past.

Two recent examples? 2021 release Dracula: Son of the Dragon aided me in finally making sense of the knotty chain of events and continually shifting alliances that shaped the legend of real-life hero-villain Vlad the Impaler in 15th Century Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? delved into the motivations of the notorious Midwestern grave robber and murderer without forcing readers to page through a hefty true crime tome.

As of today, 28 March, five more illustrated historical fiction biographies are available to shed led on famous figures from yesteryear. A partnership between Amazon’s Comixology Originals and Italian publisher Becco Giallo means that graphic novels centred on Mary Shelley, Socrates, Nikola Tesla, Vincent Van Gogh, and Virginia Woolf are available in English for the first time, conveniently in digital format.

Upfront, it’s important to note that none of these graphic novels can be considered a comprehensive look at their subject’s life. However, they’re a fantastic starting point for anyone interested in these titans of literature, philosophy, science and art. Each book is between 130 and 160 pages long, and features its own visual and narrative style, with each coming from a different creative team out of Italy. Lucy Lenzi has handled all translations from the original Italian to English.

My personal favourite of the titles is Vincent Van Gogh: Sadness Will Last Forever, written by Francesco Barilli, with art by Sakka (aka Roberta Sacchi). Featuring a suitably scrawly and jagged expressionist style, the graphic novel explores the life events that led to the Dutch painter’s most famous works. What’s most enjoyable about the book is that it refuses to treat Van Gogh as a one-note lunatic, explicitly dispelling the more sensationalist myths about him. Instead, while the narrative takes the form of a conversation between the artist and his madness, it presents someone mentally anguished but at all times relatable. Here, Van Gogh is a man tormented by his ultra-sensitive perception of the world, but nonetheless committed to living his own truth; while a loving, if very worried, family tried to support him. Sadness Will Last Forever is striking on multiple levels, and it’s a book I would happily have on my shelf as a physical edition if the opportunity ever arose.

Virginia Woolf, written and drawn by Liuba Gabriele, does something similar, zeroing in on how Woolf’s passionate relationship with contemporary Vita Sackville-West inspired the writer to create some of her most celebrated works. The flipside was that Sackville-West’s retreat from Woolf’s life brought back painful memories of Woolf’s greatest losses earlier in life, which was to send her into a depressive spiral that coincided with the despairing mood of WWII. I wasn’t exactly sold on the coloured pencil art style used in Virginia Woolf, but the graphic novel is powerful, full of poetic exchanges, and it’s the only one of this Becco Giallo-Comixology Originals series to feature LGBTQ+ content.

Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream by Alessandro Di Virgilio and Manuela Santoni, features a raw and lyrical brushwork aesthetic that calls to mind the work of Kate Beaton. Predominantly black and white, with splashes of red to represent dangerous passion, violence and horror (the book even includes some Yellowjackets-esque symbolic moments with young women), The Eternal Dream chronicles Shelley’s tragedy-filled life, and the struggles that would lead to her writing Frankenstein, AKA The Modern Prometheus. Of all the historical biographies, this one feels the most threadbare, but then it had A LOT to cover. Shelley, her parents, her husband, and the couple’s inner circle (including Lord Byron), were 19^th Century rockstars, defying convention and courting scandal at every step of their mostly short, if highly notable, lives.

The other two illustrated biographies from Becco Giallo are more aloof from their central figures. It’s something you may expect from a tale about philosopher Socrates but it’s a missed opportunity when it comes to the visionary inventor Nikola Tesla. Instead of depicting Tesla’s professional frustrations and rivalries (especially with Thomas Edison) from his perspective, writer Sergio Rossi and artist Giovanni Scarduelli have couched Tesla’s tale in a present day race to collect evidence by a scientist and a documentary filmmaker. While his accomplishments – and more dubious ideas – are spotlighted, Tesla remains an enigma to the reader; the bullseye on a dartboard of conspiracy theories.

Returning to Socrates, in their full-colour graphic novel, Francesco Barilli and Alessandro Ranghiasci centre their story on the trial of the brilliant philosopher. It’s heady stuff, to be expected, as Socrates unpacks his beliefs as part of his famous defense, and flashes back to previous doctrine discussions. That said, it’s also emotionally hard-hitting, delivering a sympathetic depiction of Socrates, while stirring up feelings of injustice, seeing that such a principled figure was sentenced to death simply for opinions that made powerful Athenian citizens feel ethically and morally lacking. It’s a situation that doesn’t seem to have changed over 2,400 years later. Socrates’s effect is elevated by art that has a traditional clean and coherent Continental comics feel. There’s stunning attention to detail in capturing the agora of 399 BCE Athens, and Ranghiasci also memorably replicates the look of red-figure Attic pottery when recounting tales from Greek mythology.

All of these graphic novel biographies are available for purchase from today (with a full Digital List price of USD 6.86). Meanwhile, people with Comixology Unlimited, Kindle Unlimited or Prime Reading memberships can immediately read them for free as part of their subscription.