front page  ·  comicbook reviews  ·  interviews  ·  comics  ·  merchandise  ·  contact us  ·  newsfeed: rss xml

Loveless #6 Review posted: 15 April 2006 Writer: Brian Azzerello Artist: Danijel Zezelj Colors: Patricia Mulvihill Publisher: DC Comics/Vertigo  5.00 out of 5 Stars Reviewed by Matt Rawson

Loveless is building up to be one of my favorite series. Not only is it an honest, uncompromising tale of post-Civil War America, but it’s a damn fine western yarn as well. Most people believe the sole reason behind the Civil War was slavery, when in fact that was just one element of the War between the states and in Loveless we are treated with a wider version of that history.

Atticus Mann is a freed slave whose demeanor and characterization speak volumes about how his life in chains has hardened him.

The Civil War wasn’t about freedom, as many romantics claim, but about land and money. Slavery sustained the majority of the southern economy and the north saw the abolition of slavery as a means to ruin that economy. To think that the north was a haven for African-Americans during this period is simply naive; racism and slavery, we must understand, are two different beasts. To discriminate based on race, one must first acknowledge that the target is of the same species, and base one’s opinion on an element of self-superiority. To a slave owner, the slaves were property and sub-human, so the admission that he was superior to his slaves would seem as ridiculous to him as saying that he was superior to his tea kettle.

Slavery was absolutely and unforgivably monstrous, but to wave freedom in a man’s face and then force that man to assume a role of social degradation is not much better. It was a beginning, yes, that lead to great strides towards equality, but in the time following the Civil War the north did not see African-Americans as equals, a truth illustrated in Loveless that sets it apart from other western tales of this turbulent era. There were those of both the north and the south that hated slavery because it was an atrocity and wished it to end based on a moral standing, but the majority of the white population simply saw it as the current way of life.

Now we come to the primary criticism that Loveless has garnered, and that is the abundant use of a certain ‘N’ word. I do not see how a proper and truthful account of post-Civil War times could be told if this abhorrent word were omitted. Censorship is a bane on art, on history, and on every human expression since the dawn of the spoken word. Censorship is the true vulgarity, and by succumbing to it we pretend certain things that should always be remembered and learned from never existed and thus increase the chances of it happening again. To do so would encourage the notion that all the soldiers of the Union were abolitionist heroes and that the plight of any minority ends the moment a brave, shining white man stands up and says in a glorious voice from on high, “All men are created equal!”

In Loveless #6, we follow Atticus Mann, a freed slave who joined the Union Army. His demeanor and characterization speak volumes about how his life in chains has hardened him. It taught him, as he states, “Iron. If you ain’t holdin’ it, yer wearin’ it,” and that freedom, like anything else, can be a solely personal and, at times, murderous pursuit. The themes explored in Loveless are much the same as those explored in Victor Frankl’s Man's Search For Meaning, in which Frankl chronicles his own experiences of Auschwitz and sheds light on the ruthlessness awakened in men struggling for survival.

The bold, moody artwork of Danijel Zezelj is beautiful and fitting for this stand-alone vignette and I hope to see his return in future issues. However, Marcel Frusin’s artwork in the first five issues fits the bill as well and I will certainly not discount his offerings to the series as anything but wonderful. Both artists have an obvious mastery of minimalist design and boil out all useless excess, something of which the Michael Turners of the world would do well to take note.

Loveless is a fantastically written and beautifully illustrated series. While it has received its share of criticism, I disagree with most of it, and feel that Loveless is a good example of a genre that is underrepresented in most every medium: entertaining, thought-provoking, and (most importantly) truthful historical fiction.

 

[Read the previous review]

[Read the next review]