Perdita Durango

I was going to give this a single star but I decided that was too harsh. A friend of mine was getting rid of this so I took it. In theory I like graphic novels, in theory I'd especially like one in a series designed by Art Spiegeleman. That doesn't work for me here, though. In great crime fiction, the dialog is vivid not only b/c of its content but b/c of its phrasing, its dialect. But, here, in graphic novel form, the dialog just seems reduced to Reader's Digest Condensed Book oversimplicity. The intensity of the content, despite the skills of the graphic rendering, don't convince me or involve me. Instead, for me, it all seems forced - it's believeable, but I don't suspend disbelief.

There's hardly a review of the absolutely stunning graphic adaptation Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli did of Paul Auster's City of Glass that doesn't mention that it was originally commissioned as part of the "Neon Lit" series of graphic novels, which was intended to adapt contemporary crime/mystery fiction into graphic format. Upon a recent rereading of City of Glass, it occurred to me that I'd never even heard the title of another work in that series, so I went and looked it up.

Well, there was only one other, and it's this. Perdita Durango was originally a novel by Barry Gifford, second of his Sailor & Lula series; Bob Callahan scripted a comics adaptation of it that was drawn by Scott Gillis. Perdita Durango isn't terrible in any show more way, shape, or form, but coming on the heels of City of Glass, it's not remotely in the same league. The story doesn't do anything near as interesting with word/image interplay, it's simply a somewhat over-narrated tale of a journey across America by two criminals. I don't know how long the original piece was, but this feels overly compressed; they've crossed America before they've even left.

Perdita Durango is dark, twisted, and occasionally funny, but perhaps its failing-- the thing that stopped me from ever really engaging with it-- is that you finish it without understanding Perdita. And not in a oh-isn't-she-such-an-enigma way, but in a we-have-nothing-interesting-to-go-on-not-even-an-interesting-lack-of-knowledge way. I have only the barest hint of who she is and what she does. Good prose-to-comics adaptations are capable of much; unfortunately, Perdita Durango does not achieve it. show less