Customer Reviews

Moving Pictures

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"Moving Pictures"
by Kathryn & Stuart Immonen
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NOTE: mild spoilers below
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Great graphic novel - I liked this a lot. It's a subtle, understated story about a Canadian woman who stays behind in occupied France during the early months of World War Two to keep working at her job as a low-ranking museum curator in charge of relatively unimportant, obscure pieces that are housed alongside the works of the great masters. This narrative is intercut with scenes of her methodical but not uncivilized interrogation by a Nazi functionary who is keeping tabs on the French museums and trying to make sure that the art classics that Germany covets are not smuggled away by the Resistance. The script and pacing of this book are marvelous: the contours of the plot and the character motivations are wonderfully unclear and suspense is mixed with a delicious sense of surreality as the horrors of WWII are eclipsed by the tiny lives of a handful of people who still cherish creativity even in the face of total war. A thoughtful, quiet and surprising story that demonstrates the best that the highbrow side of the comicbook world has to offer. (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain book reviews)

The Nazi's are moving in on France, and museum curator Ila Gardner is trying to help move works of art to safety. She is asked in that won't-take-no-for-an-answer way to meet with a Nazi agent, who starts by asking her about some of the museum's pieces but seems to be after something else.

The art by Suart Immomen is deceptively simple. The characters are sylized and rendered in stark black-and-white in direct contrast to the subtly and amazingly well cross-hatched representations of the works of art.

Unlike most World War II stories in any genre, the tone of this story is understated. These aren't soldiers, these are people caught up in the tension of a situation they don't want to be in but have absolutely no way to escape.

Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, both seperately and together, have done a lot of mainstream comics work, including Superman, the X-Men, and the Hulk. But seeing them tackle this kind of story is a real treat.