Customer Reviews

Baraka And Black Magic In Morocco

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Okay, the first thing that should be noted about Baraka and Black Magic is that it is not an official publication of the Moroccan Tourist Board and it will never win an award for its depiction of Moroccan culture. This is the first book from Alternative Comics in which I have been disappointed. This book is far inferior to the more accomplished "Carnet de Voyage" by Craig Thompson which happens to cover some of the same Moroccan territory. While both books are diaristic, Black Magic seems more like a mish-mash of episodes on a bad vacation than a true travelogue that covers many excursions and experiences. Smith's experience of Morocco seems to have been a fairly miserable one with his constant derision of the people coupled with the fact that he seemed perpetually stoned. I read a preview of a couple of pages prior to purchasing the book, so it's hard for me to say I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting into by purchasing this book, but the relatively poor drawing and thinness of the tale left me a bit cold. Black Magic is not a bad book, it's just not a great one.

This is not a scholarly book, nor even a sensationalized potboiler in the tradition of Hans Holzer, Jess Stearn, or the fictional Sidney Redlitch. It's a comic book...and even "Dennis the Menace Visits Mexico", a twenty-five-cent Super-Giant published around 1960, showed a better understanding and explication of a country and its culture and
history, and had better art besides.