Read This: Solomon’s Thieves & Prince of Persia

Although I’m not nearly as widely read in the genre as I would like to be, I’m a fan of the European graphic novel tradition known as bande dessinée, which Clive James has described as “an upmarket comic book,” which is an okay definition as far as it goes—I would specify that it’s a long-form narrative told in comics form and, generally speaking, outside of the superhero tradition. Rather than a series of comic book issues packaged together as “chapters” of a larger story, a BD commonly comprises a single, large-scale narrative, but that isn’t to say serialization never occurs—or, more to the point since I’m talking about Solomon’s Thieves, that stories can’t extend over several volumes.

Solomon’s Thieves is the first volume of a trilogy, written by Jordan Mechner and illustrated by the husband-and-wife team of Alex Puvilland and LeUyen Pham, which uses the 14th-century persecution of the Knights Templar, and the legends surrounding their lost treasure, as the springboard for a classic adventure yarn. There’s no occult conspiracy here; the long-standing rumors about the Templars are touched upon, but in a context that underscores the political intrigues within the French court that led to the order’s suppression. Although it’s somewhat frustrating that this volume, being only the first third of a larger story, is almost entirely set-up, it does an effective job of setting up the major characters and hinting at the dynamics that will unfold in future installments—and, in the meantime, there’s plenty of action: fight scenes like the one above, wild chases through the streets of Paris, and a pull-out-the-stops battle just before the cliffhanger ending. The artwork does a fine job of telling the story without calling attention to itself, equally effective in conversation and action scenes.

Pham and Puvilland also did the artwork for Prince of Persia, to which Mechner is connected by virtue of having created the original videogame and, years later, developing the story for the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time movie—his role here, as described in an essay following the story, seems a lot like being an executive producer to the script written by A.B. Sina. The graphic novel’s story has little in common with any previous Prince of Persia iterations, but acknowledges the pattern by telling two distinct stories, set centuries apart, of a Persian kingdom in jeopardy.

At first, the ways in which the two narrative tracks play off each other can be a bit confusing, even without the deliberate ambiguities designed to suggest mythic resonances, and I found myself wishing on occasion that they’d pick one half and get fully into it. The second half of the novel becomes more cohesive, though, and while I’m still not as satisfied by this fantasy/adventure as I was by the historical adventure of Solomon’s Thieves, I can still see that the Mechner/Pham/Puvilland team has a lot going for it—and I’m looking forward to more from them once the Solomon trilogy is complete.

2 August 2010 | read this |