(Love) Letters Page

Lawrence Marvit’s graphic novel was on sale at my local bookstore for NZ$15, marked down from NZ $90. That was mostly the main reason I bought it.

It was some of the best money I’ve ever spent.

Flicking through it in the store I got the gist of the plot: girl builds robot, robot comes to life, hijinks ensue. Here I was assuming it was a $15 plot, when I should have been reading the $90 part.

Jo, a female mechanic, feels cut off from the world - unwelcome in the garage because of her gender, unwelcome with other women for her occupation. Her father is the worst kind of authority figure (a verbally abusive drunk and a police officer to boot) and her mother is little more than a ghost floating uselessly in the background, serving only to take physical abuse from her husband. Jo has dreams of something more – she is an amateur astronomer, for one – but is surrounded by people that constantly tell her that she will never amount to anything better. One day Jo, frustrated by her life and her dreams of something more, builds a metal man from junk lying around the garage. And the metal man comes to life.

This is the only magical event of the story. Everything else follows from this one fantastic element to create a wonderful “fairytale” -albeit one set in a city rather than mystical forest. The events that follow – comic and tragic – are believable and given a sweet quality by the simple, almost cartoon-like art.

Please note that this is not “The Iron Giant”, though (another robot story I love). Characters drink too much, swear, have bad sex and do terrible things to each other. In many ways, it’s a more “real” world. More importantly, where Hogarth is a young boy who knows nothing much about the world, Jo is a 20-year-old woman who has been trained to see it in a certain way, and that gives her story much more resonance and depth than simply “a boy and his robot”.

As such this is a fairytale that zigs as often as it zags. In naming her metal companion “Galahad”, you would be forgiven for assuming that this metal man was going to be a heroic saviour – in fact, he is merely a catalyst for Jo. In teaching Galahad about the world Jo begins to question her place in it; and as he becomes able to express his views she learns to see herself in a new way. Whilst Galahad does, in the course of the story, come to her rescue, she defends and protects him in turn and – in the epilogue – ultimately saves herself.

As a heroine Jo is a wonderful character – flawed, pursuing dreams that she feels she should rather than for herself and human. She does make some mistakes; but overall she finds strength within to (literally and figuratively) fight her demons and make a stand. Her growth and development is the core of the story and her character development is compelling and believable

Galahad, too, is a wonderfully expressive, noble and innocent foil for Jo. Who would have thought a guy with a bucket for a head could be so expressive? His supernatural abilities never overpower the story (primarily, I think, due to the black-and-white palette) and after a while he is as much a part of the reality of the story to the reader as he is to Jo. In many ways, he provides the “heart” of the story (albeit a flower inside a car chassis).

The supporting characters at times draw near clichés, but no more so than the figures in any fairytale the hero (or heroine) must overcome on their quest. The father shows glimpses of what made him who he is; Prince Charming is never both and when Jo comes close to connecting with one of the girls that has ostracized her, her reasons for pulling away are all too believable. While they are predominantly there in service to Jo’s story, they are still given nuance and hints of deeper characterisation.

Sparks is ideally suited to its medium. While the story itself is lovely, the images convey much more than a written novel could. Similarly, the art immediately imbues the characters with a fairytale quality (the sequence where Jo dresses as a Princess for a fancy-dress party is a nice nod, even as the following “Prince Charming” sequence undercuts the genre) and the visual style imbues the more painful or horrible moments with an almost sweet pathos.

I won’t go on waxing lyrical or spoiling the plot – things happen, both good and bad; and the heroine is changed by the events that occur. Suffice to say, I found it lovely and highly recommend Sparks as a wonderful modern fairytale. If you see it for $15, buy it. If it’s only on sale for $90 – I’d say buy it then as well.