Graphic novel review: '13: The Astonishing Lives of the Neuromantics'

13: The Astonishing Lives of the Neuromantics

Written and illustrated by Yves Navant.
Published by Northwest Press
You can buy it here.

Yves Navant is a gay man telling a story with a gay slant on things. Not because it's a stylistic choice, so much as it's in his nature. And me, a straight man, stepping into and reading his fantastic manic-detailed story I am given much to marvel at. Most importantly, the themes of alienation and paranoia resonate with a familiar tone. There is more here that's familiar than foreign.

13 is the 13th child born in a family with just him and his mother. His siblings are all lost, and he's gambling on the chance that he can maybe sell his arms and get prosthetic arms to obtain status and money to help his mother.

After he gets his golden arms he meets a strange priest in a church, goes to a junkyard and gets attacked by armored men. He meets a young red head man (his love interest) and goes off with him in a white Trans-Am to his poor family. Later 13 gets into a space shuttle and flies off to a spaceport and meets with his fully grown cloned twin, who's turned into a genderless female-type with a gold mask. Whew!

What's interesting here, and this is the power of comics happening, is that as you read through Yves' story you become acquainted with his wishes fears and hopes reflected in his manic detail. Stuff that a straight man takes for granted like a simple kissing scene becomes a provocative taboo bound no-man's land here. Far from cramping the story, it reinforces for me the sense that as a straight person I can read and enjoy material that, if mirrored in a gay context becomes stilted and distorted, forever aware of cultural judgement and appraisal. I really get a sense of the minefield that most non-straight society navigates through every day, with our 'straight' advertisement and culture showing a life that doesn't include them.

Yves Navant is a gutsy artist who isn't afraid of opening you the reader up to a world filled with his obsessions and fascinations. I'm even fooled for a few pages here and there until I see a male figure with a bulging crotch and go 'Oh yeah. It's from a gay perspective.' And yet how little I would take in a straight comic with the obligatory bubble breasted female, almost regarding that as standard fare...

I wish there were more comics like this. Or rather, I wish there were more comics that reflect the difference and strangeness that's inherent in us all. To step outside our comfort zone of super hero or 'Star Wars'-y sci fi romps and embrace the weirdness.

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