Written and Illustrated by Anders Nilsen
Published by Pantheon
As a kid growing up in the 1960s, one of my earliest favorite superhero comics was Marvel’s The Mighty Thor.
Oddly enough, not so much the then-current Thor comics, which were all science fiction with a robot sidekick, pink aliens, a living planet, and The High Evolutionary.
No, what I tended to enjoy were the earlier issues of Thor and Journey into Mystery with the serialized Trial of the Gods, the Destroyer, and Hercules! The comic stoked a massive interest in myths, and not only Norse myths but all kinds of myths and legends.
The Odyssey became a favorite book, I ordered Beowulf from the Scholastic Book Club, and Jason and the Argonauts became one of my favorite movies!
Tongues, by Anders Nilsen, is a 366-page graphic novel originally published as individual issues over the past eight years.
It is…hard to describe. Online publicity simplifies it to say it’s a modern retelling of the myth of Prometheus but that really doesn’t even begin to describe this book.
Prometheus, for those of you not likewise inspired by Marvel’s God of Thunder, falls under the umbrella of Greek myths. The brother of Atlas, he was a Titan, who stole fire from the Gods of Mt. Olympus and introduced it to humankind. His punishment for such a despicable crime as trying to better humans was to be chained to a mountain where, every day, an eagle would come to tear out his entrails and eat his liver, which is where the Greeks felt all human emotion resided. The next day, the liver had been miraculously restored, only to have the eagle show up and tear it out for lunch yet again, endlessly repeating the pattern.
Tongues has that tale, in some depth, actually, but it is mainly background to several other slowly converging stories.
To give too much away, though, would tarnish your chance at enjoying it. Let’s just say that, along with the demigods and the eagle, there’s also a monkey, a chicken, an owl (who might actually be the chicken), terrorists, and a mysterious but determined young girl.
Visually, Tongues offers Nilsen’s unique take on cartooning.
Pale colors for characters and pages alike highlight his non-stop creative panel usage. The artist’s work is deceptively simple and yet if one looks deeper, impressively, subtly, deeper than expected. Some fascinating design work appears both on the pages and between the chapters. The characters themselves are archetypes, some based in science fiction, others in myth and fantasy, and the whole thing feels filtered through a ‘90s action movie at times. (My personal favorite characters are the unlikely team of Violence and Might.)
In the end, their story isn’t nearly as important as the way it’s told.
And how is it told?
It reads like a movie.
A lot of graphic novels have been referred to in reviews as “cinematic.” I’ve certainly used the term a number of times. Generally, it means that the overall pacing and layout of the story would work well pretty much “as is” on the big screen. This is, yes, another cinematic graphic novel. Having noted the ‘90s action film similarities, I have to say, also, that it is strongly reminiscent at times of the work of quirky or surrealist filmmakers such as Alex Cox or Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Tongues is not a fun book, nor a fun read, but it is a book to make you think, to reflect.
In the long run—and at nearly 400 pages it IS a long run—Tongues is ambitious, leisurely paced, profane, philosophical, symbolic, vulgar, artsy, pretentious, surreal, ugly, and oddly beautiful.
It’s just plain old good comics.
Booksteve recommends.
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