Real Change News | Is it spam? Or a golden opportunity?

July 15, 2009
Vol: 16 No: 32

Arts & Entertainment

Is it spam? Or a golden opportunity?

by: Olivia Conner , Contributing Writer

The Eternal Smile By Gene Luen Yang & Derek Kirk Kim, First Second, Hardback, 2009, 170 pages, $16.95.

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What would you do if you were to receive a plea online from a prince in Africa claiming that his family needs a place to deposit millions of dollars for safekeeping and all you need to do is give him your bank account number and PIN? More than likely, you would grumble and put his email in your spam folder or you might string him along and give him a false number, chuckling to yourself while you report him to the authorities.

A short story titled “Urgent Request,” among three in the graphic novel “The Eternal Smile,” presents this situation to a young, pathetic character named Janet. Described as “insignificant” by her boss after she asks for a new position, Janet receives an email from an alleged Prince Alembu of Nigeria and uses the appeal as a mental escape from her drab life at Commtech. Actually, escapism is the thread that ties all three stories together in this novella and in each story the reader is introduced to a new character who, like Janet, is faced with a situation that is not what it may seem to be.

“The Eternal Smile” is a book that is hard to ignore on the bookshelf: the bright yellow jacket adorned with a white, Cheshire cat smile with sunbeams emanating from it, is eye-catching to say the least. Additionally, the authors (although fairly new), are striking too. Derek Kirk Kim is a promising artist who has won both Eisner and Harvey awards for his work, “Same Difference and Other Stories,” that debuted online in serial form before publication in 2004. Gene Luen Yang is a math teacher in California who gained literary attention with his publication “American Born Chinese,” now printed in 10 languages.

It is not easy to understand right away who in the duo is the writer and who the illustrator, but after careful inspection the truth is revealed on the back flap: Kim illustrated all three stories, manipulating his style dramatically, away from the bright cartoon-like characters of the first two yarns (which resemble the Japanese manga style), to reveal a softer style in the third. The difference is so dramatic that one may be fooled into thinking that a new artist drew it. Yang, meanwhile, served as author, carefully constructing three stories that are dramatically different yet similar in pedagogy. The tales all have simple messages, yet they twist and turn within the realm of fantasy and surrealism, giving the whole book a dream-like feel.

The first story is about a young knight who wants to win the hand of a gorgeous princess, but to do this he must succeed in slaying the samurai frog king who has killed the princess’ father. Unfortunately a bottle of Snappy cola keeps getting in the way: “Snappy Cola—Snappy Cola can bring about the destruction of all that is.” Confused yet? Well, the reader is confused by this and many other things until a monk named Brother Patchwork reveals the plot twist at an opportune time.

The second story, like the first and third, begins one way and ends up another, but it is intelligent and unique too. The reader is introduced to Gran’pa Greenback, who is reminiscent of Scrooge McDuck of “Duck Tales” in his excessive desire to have a pool of money large enough to swim in. Greenback will do anything for money and Yang plays with the idea that some people will stop at nothing to exploit others and, in contrast, there are some who will always remain to be exploited.

Although Gran’pa Greenback seems successful with his subservient sidekick, his smarmy granddaughters, and a trillion million dollars, a mysterious smile that appears in the sky causes a few problems that may be impossible to unravel. His sidekick surmises that the smile could be “the sm-smile of existence it-itself” but Greenback has a pivotal realization that the reader will not be prepared for.

Overall this book is laden with a combination of illusory fantasy and metaphysical journeys. Yang states on his website that “the educational potential of the comics medium has been largely ignored by the educational establishment” and one can see that this is his way of rebelling. Fortunately he and Kim succeed in creating a positive piece of literature that straddles two mediums: one that is for visual and mental entertainment and one that digs a hole in the mind of the reader and plants important ideas. So next time you get an email from someone resembling Prince Alembu from Nigeria, take a hint from Janet and let your imagination be your guide. You never know, you might learn something about yourself.

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