Madinkbeard - Derik Badman

Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story by Frederik Peeters (2001). Translated by Anjali Singh. Houghton Mifflin, 2008. 192p, $18.95.

The comics that get the most attention in the wider press seem to be those with the most socio-political relevance, those that deal with certain “issues” (think Maus, think Persepolis). Houghton Mifflin’s hit from 2006, Fun Home, was not only a fine literary autobiographical comic, but it dealt with a topic that has a certain contemporary relevance. This year, they publish Blue Pills by the Swiss comic artist Frederik Peeters. Once again, an autobiographical comic that has that “issue” style relevance. I don’t mean that in a necessarily pejorative way. It is just something I noticed. Blue Pills is an AIDS narrative, yet, surprisingly, it seems lacking all the plot points that one would expect of what might be called the generic AIDS narrative. The book is odd in that way, unfortunately it’s not the stellar work I was expecting from all the praise it’s gotten (from it’s original French publication).

The opening scene starts out with a series of abstract images that look like microscopic organisms–from the inside of a body–and morph into planetary bodies and then a sun. Fred (here used to refer to the character) is upset that a doctor said he and Cati (the female protagonist, we later learn) are a “discordant” couple. Fred doesn’t think they are “incongruent”. She smiles and says she loves him. They look out from their balcony as the sun shines down. This seven page opening is a sort of microcosm of the whole book: early bewilderment as one gets situated, a brief bit of tension and then life continues on with a smile.

The idea of the couple as being discordant doesn’t rise again. My second read through the book I looked for some way to connect this prologue to the rest of the book. I expect such an out of place beginning (it clearly does not fit in with the beginning of the narrative timeline, nor does it easily fit in with the end) to offer some relevance to the narrative, some kind of set-up for a later event or theme. It doesn’t and this is not the only structural aspect of the narrative that seems half thought through.

Dates at the end of the different chapters (one month at a time) suggest Peeters was serializing the story, or at least creating it as individual chapters rather than as a whole. The narrative is not chronologically straightforward, though it is not particularly complicated. Twice in the chapters Peeters uses a technique where he jumps back and forth in time from a long “present” scene and a series of scenes from the “past”. These scenes show that the narrative is being manipulated, it is not a diary or journal, yet the purpose of these narrative movements are opaque. The prolepsis (flashforward) and analepsis (flashback) of the plot highlights the constructed-ness of the book. It is a retrospective look at the events rather than a diaristic accounting. With this sort of autobiography, one comes to expect more introspection, perspective on events, feelings, people. You can see this in the work of Chester Brown or the aforementioned Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Peeters narrative reads more like the of the moment diary strips of Jeffrey Brown or James Kolchalka. I feel a certain disconnect between the narrative structure and the lack of depth. Peeters seems to excise so much that little emotion is left.

The world disappears when Fred and Cati finally connect.

The whole book is narrated by Fred/Peeters, and, as such, is focused through his perception. He tells about his first few meetings with Cati, over the course of a few years, how they would run into each other. Then one New Year’s eve they start talking and a relationship begins. She is divorced and has a little boy. They date and then the day comes that she tells him that she is HIV positive. What follows is almost banal. Peeters has no trouble dealing with this news (or very little). They visit a doctor after a broken condom scares them. Peeters and the boy get along with only a little tension. The relationship seems lacking in any strife. He hesitates about telling his parents and discusses it with Cati, but we never see any resolution to the matter. He discusses condoms with a friend. The broken condom scare is the height of tension. One would expect the HIV to be their biggest problem, yet it exists in the abstract. We see no sickness or death. Even the blue pills of the title only appear in one or two scenes involving the boy. Peeters downplays the issue, at least as much as one can when that is also the focus (and point) of the book. This is not melodrama, but it is also not much drama at all. The virus becomes part of the everyday, it sinks into the stream of banality. This is a strange stance for such a book, for such a story. The ending has the three of them headed off for vacation, everything seems fine. The narrative doesn’t really go anywhere. There is no resolution, not even much of a stopping point, just a continuation. In this way Peeters destroys the teleology of the AIDS narrative as it is generally considered (death).

Since the narrative is focused through Fred, Cati is only seen through his eyes. Her feelings are only understood through his interpretation of them. She barely exists as a personality. A more cliched story would zero in on her and the sickness. How did she get it? We never learn. How does she feel? We don’t really know. He gives hints that she “sometimes confused herself with the virus,” but that line is one caption with an metaphoric image of her all balled up surrounded by a scribbled black field. The story isn’t really about her, even, and perhaps I’m wrong to even take it into consideration. The story is about his anxieties and coming to terms with the virus, the world, their relationship? It’s hard to say. I feel like the struggle, the problem, was erased from the middle.

The story is told with narration of events and feelings in between scenes. A number of longer scenes consist of long conversations between two characters. Reading these scenes, one quickly realizes that there is little need to pay attention to the images. Peeters is filling the panels to pace out the dialogue but doing little to involve the images. Long dialogues are a real problem for comics and really not what they tend to do best without some type of formal invention, which Peeters does not use. Similarly, I get the feeling a lot of the “present” scenes, such as a long one of Fred in a cafe writing the narration we are reading, serves more as a way to accompany the narration with images than for any particular narrative or thematic use.

The images are mostly those of the “real” (diegetic) narrative world, though Peeters occasionally employs metaphoric or symbolic imagery: such as a series of images with a judge looming over the couple and “condemning” them “to the condom,” or the white rhinoceros that appears in the doctor’s office when the doctor pronounces Fred’s chance of catching AIDS is as likely as running into a white rhinoceros on the street. At the end of the book, one long scene has Fred engaged in a dialogue with a mammoth in a kind of day dream psychoanalysis of pseudo-philosophy. This scene offers too much too late in a confused manner that left me wanting more “show” and less “tell.” A major element of the dialogue is Fred’s “anger” at the world, an anger that we never see in the preceding 150 pages. I’m also confused by the mammoth itself, a symbol that lacks significance, particularly when Peeters already has an adequate animal symbol in the white rhinoceros.

Peeters drawing is loose, a sketchy yet representational cartooning that allows for moments of real expressive flourish. I really like his style with its thick blacks, loose panel borders, big eyes, occasional extreme close-ups, and harsh croppings. His layouts stick to variations of the six panel grid with long panels used to slow pacing or widen the framing. In one scene he alternates between a panel of Fred and then two panels of something else (a few of the tv in the hospital room where the scene takes place). Over the course of 10 panels, we see 4 panels of Fred each one closing in on his face from a head and shoulders image to a close-up. The rhythm in that scene slowly builds up until we hit the close-up at the end of the page. Then turning the page, a large panel of Cati’s hand ready to place a pill in the boy’s mouth as the narration discusses the inevitability of his death. This is one of the few scenes in the back that really works to bring out a certain emotion in relation to illness and medication, and Peeters handles it skillfully and subtly through the use of composition, layout, and the panel breakdowns. It hints at something better that for the most part this book doesn’t reach.

At times, while reading certain panels or combinations of panels, I would see other hints of a better work waiting to appear, little things that add to the reading experience:

While drunk, Fred’s narration temporarily becomes a half word balloon cropped off the panel (I’m not even sure what the text at the top of the panel is), but it’s a small, rare moment where image expresses something of Fred’s subjective experience.

The world abstracts and drops away, during one of Fred and Cati’s early brief meetings.

The two panels here have a very similar composition. Notice how similar the waitress’s torso is to Fred’s head above it.

An extreme close-up of a lamp across two panels nicely separates the two, making for a strange but visually interesting composition.

Unfortunately, these moments are few, and in the end, while there are parts of this book I appreciate, on the whole, I found it too disjointed, perhaps trying to get a little too much weight from its topic without putting in any work to make the reader feel anything. I’ll be curious to see what others think of it, and if the “issue” overcomes the other problems to become a widely read comic.