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Comic Book Review: The Red Diary and the Re(a)d Diary
Written by: Teddy Kristiansen & Steven T Seagle
Illustrated by: Teddy Kristiansen
Published by: Image Comics
Makes me want to tour a museum
Can only be accomplished in comics
The Red Diary/The Re(a)d Diary is two stories with the same art told in two different ways. If you are a Costco shopper, then you just need to know 2 in 1.
There are two stories presented in flipped backs. One is of an art academic who is studying a heroin addicted artists who forges a painting, and escapes the rich, urban art world of Paris to the demonic trenches of World War I to escape an art collector. In the end he has to come to terms. If you flip the book, you are presented with the same artwork, but a different story is told in the letterer’s boxes and balloons, and the accompanying panels take on new meaning.
The second story presents a man who reinvents himself to escape the past. He was an artist who sheds his artistic ways in a stark change by fighting in the earthworks for World War I. He assumes an identity of a fallen comrade, and creates a new life as a writer.
The story of how the comic (you could say it is a graphic novel) was made is just as interesting. Teddy Kristiansen, and Danish national, had illustrated and written the first story in French. Steven Seagle wanted to work with Kristiansen, but circumstances prevented their collaboration. Steven attempted to translate the pages, but as anyone who puts a phrase through Google Translate would know, nothing made sense. Seagle decided to write his own story based on the illustrations. The result is a double comic presenting the same artwork, but two different stories.
Only in comics could this be possible. Sure, you could narrate a movie differently and take a different meaning from the visuals, but comics continue to transcend the human ability to stay a separated species, and with the same 22 pages, you could interpret Kristiensen’s art with a wildly different result. The water colors and lines are abstract in nature with pronounced features, leaving detail obscure, and meanings open to interpretation.
Of course you should. My experience with this book was alike my first 3D movie, or first drag race. A new experience that I will not soon forget. When someone takes a comfortable genre, and turns it upside-down for me. Hell, Kristiensen’s story and character narrative have actually ignited a desire to tour an art museum just to apply the various observations his character has.
Like all first time thrill rides, the repeat value on this is a bit stark. Afterall, if you are a calculating creature, you would have the perception that you are buying the same pages twice. However, this is a book for comic collectors. The “same visuals” presented in the book have different meaning from one another, and a true collector would merely seem them as two different stories. I would also keep this in my library as a demonstration of what the medium and form are capable of, and as an example of what comics can teach us.
