[AGL] Jaxon's graphic novel Lost Cause

[Michael Eisenstadt]

book report by Michael Eisenstadt

there is a picture of Jaxon in the back of the book. so handsome like a 
movie star.

the book was published in 1998.

it consists of 7 related stories: Longhorns in the Brush, The Fallen Banner, 
A gathering of the Clan, The Taylor Party, Military Rule, The State Police, 
Law and Order.

Jaxon explains in the introduction that the stories are written/drawn from 
"the point of view" of the characters. As he says, he did the same thing in 
a graphic novel of Quannah Parker an Indian, written/drawn from the indian's 
point of view. And also in a graphic novel about a Mexican written/drawing 
from the Mexican's point of view. (Note to self: get aholt of these 2 
graphic novels).

As a theory of historiography, this is an interesting variation. Historians 
generally represent events as they believe them to have happened and with 
maximum objectivity. The historian as fly on the wall, so to speak.

So the events in the 7 stories (from just before the Civil War to the end of 
Reconstruction) are represented as they seemed to white Texans. 
Unfortunately the heroes of the stories are as unsympathetic a bunch as can 
be imagined with no redeeming qualities other than being easier to look at 
in the drawings than the pictures of "Northern" negroes and local ex-slaves. 
The latter are drawn as Negro haters would have seen them, with exaggerated 
negroid features. To a man they are all thieves, murderous and uppity. As 
Jaxon explains in the intro, the white Texans are his ancestors, he was 
actually distantly related to one of the feuding families.

The level of violence in each page I have never seen the like of: multiple 
hangings, individual shootings, and when there are no corpses for a few 
panels, we see very angry white men threatening to kill other very angry 
white men. These soon seque into drawings of more hangings and shootings. If 
this were a review to be published/printed, I would have had to count up the 
number of drawings of rows of hanged men, shootings and corpses (in 2 cases 
mutilated: a dead Indian tied to a dead cow he had tried to steal and a 
negro eviscerated and filled with stones and thrown in the river in a sack 
so he wouldn't float) in 131 pages, lest it seem that I was exaggerating. 
Drawing as a therapy is not unheard of, R.Crumb has done whole stories on 
how this is done.

The End

I need to find Ventura's review of it in the Chronicle. Some will remember 
that Jaxon posted a series of rejoinders to Ventura's review to AGL, at that 
time, complaining about the Chronicle and Louis Black's iniquities.