I mean it as a compliment when I say that Sammy Harkham’s Blood of the Virgin is a very nerdy kind of comic; if you’re a fan of cartoonists such as Joe Matt or Seth, and their intense feeling for lonely, hapless men, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here. Like some of their work, superficially it’s a nostalgic beast, one set mostly in the Los Angeles film industry. It’s 1971, the year of Dirty Harry, Diamonds Are Forever and The French Connection, though you’d never know it: in Harkham’s universe, the Hollywood sign is far, far away. But there’s a lot going on here besides. Its hero, Seymour, is a 27-year-old movie editor at an exploitation film company who also happens to be a Jewish Iraqi immigrant. If the book is about one man’s struggle to become an artist in a city that cares nothing for losers, it’s also about the Jewish experience in the period when thousands of Holocaust survivors were still around to tell their stories. It is, in other words, as much about inherited guilt as it is about rank ambition.
Seymour, self-absorbed and chaotic, spends his days in the dark, splicing together the terrible B-movies churned out by his toad-like boss, Val. His days are long, and at the end of them, he goes home to a small baby, his first child, who’s apt to let neither one of his parents get any sleep. In the small rented house he shares with his wife, tension is sky-high, and not only because of Junior. Ida feels neglected by her husband, and as an Ashkenazi (her family’s roots are Hungarian), she ’s treated like an alien by Seymour’s relatives. Half the time, they refuse even to believe she is Jewish. While the couple dote on their son – “Put him between two slices of bread and eat him all up!” says Ida, when Seymour admits he could squeeze him half to death – they kvetch constantly, and eventually, Ida disappears to New Zealand to be with her silent, damaged parents.
But perhaps it’s as well she’s away. Seymour is about to plunge head-first into a prolonged state of crisis. First, Val buys one of his scripts, Blood of the Virgin. Then he fires the movie’s director, at which point Seymour gets the chance to replace him. What follows is in some ways predictable: a tale of too-small budgets, wooden actors and constant interference from above (naturally, Harkham gives us a preview of part of the film in full colour, one of several stories within his story). What’s less predictable is Seymour’s response to it all. Is all this what he has longed for? Sometimes, he wonders.
If Harkham’s portrayal of LA’s seedy, grindhouse scene is pitch-perfect – here are the parties and the valet parking, the cheapskate shortcuts and the abuse – it’s his Sephardic protagonist we see the more clearly: an outsider whose roots ground him and ensure he is the eternal stranger. Already praised by the great Art Spiegelman (Maus), this singular book has taken 14 years to complete – it appeared first in instalments, in Harkham’s own comic book series, Crickets – and it’s not hard to see why. With its flashbacks both to the Holocaust and to pre-Saddam Iraq, its scope is panoramic, even as its narrative is mostly (almost obsessively) focused on a world that is not only seamy, but also intensely parochial. I don’t know if Blood of the Virgin is, as some are saying, a masterpiece; it is a massive book in every way, and I’m still settling it in my mind. But it does feel to me like a classic in the making: a book to be reread, and talked about, late into the night.
Blood of the Virgin by Sammy Harkham is published by Pantheon Graphic Library (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
