It seems counterintuitive that Persepolis 2, a comic book originally published in France and written by someone born in the Axis of Evil, could win mainstream popularity and conspicuous Barnes and Noble displays. Yet Marjane Satrapi’s sequel to Persepolis, a memoir of her childhood in Iran, has become one of the few graphic novels released this year that has been taken seriously by critics. Though Satrapi’s masterpiece is credited as an important document of the Iranian Islamic revolution, it’s also a significant contribution to the comic book medium.
The original Persepolis captures the modern history of Iran through an autobiographical account of the author’s childhood. The young Satrapi faces a series of challenges-a God who looks suspiciously like Karl Marx, bourgeois intellectual parents, fundamentalism’s effect on education-by constantly engaging her family and her nation’s past.
With the historical groundwork laid in the first book, Persepolis 2 is free to focus on Satrapi’s life and transnational identity as it’s subjected to European and Persian influence. Since the story of Iran is detailed in the first book, Satrapi’s second installation picks up exactly where the first left off. Satrapi’s parents send her to Austria to grow up away from the oppressive Islamic regime. Her experience is that of a typical adolescent, but her outsider status and memory of a conflicted Iran create a distinctive perspective. She makes friends with a group of nihilistic punks, falls in love with a no-good Austrian, has an existential crisis that leads to a period of homelessness and then finally decides to return to Iran.
This transition is rough. Europe systematically broke down Satrapi’s Iranian traditionalism and cut her off from the experience of the Iran-Iraq war. Oppression is a powerful thing, and Satrapi demonstrates exactly how and why a woman concerned with the arrangement of her veil is less likely to think about political rights. Persepolis 2 manages to show how public perception of Iran is different from the daily lives of Iranians.
Towards the end of Persepolis 2 Satrapi reflects on her return to Iran: “The more time passed the more I became conscious of the contrast between the official representation of my country and the real life of the people, the one that went on behind the walls.”
Verbal and visual narratives can have disjunctive styles, but a creator who’s mastered both can fuse the two elements into a distinct and emotional portrait. Though the term “graphic novel” is enough to put off large segments of the population, Satrapi’s artistic talent is perfectly suited to sequential art. Persepolis 2 does more than just recount Satrapi’s story by leaving you with an emotional sense of her experience and voice. The clarity that characterizes Satrapi’s words is perfectly matched by the economy of her drawings. Her cartoonish figure compositions are more complex than they seem and give Satrapi masterful control over the production of her personal history.
Non-superhero comics in America have been dominated by creators like R. Crumb and Harvey Pekar, and modern counterparts like Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware. They’re all male and notably weird. Though their styles transgress mainstream America, the result is at best depressing, and at worst creepy. Satrapi’s work not only documents a female experience, but also her style and perspective create a kind of refreshing optimism.
