Bob Marley in Comics!

Gr 9 Up–The latest installment in NBM’s line of graphic biographies visualizes singer Bob Marley’s journey from the ghettos of Kingston to international superstardom. Each of this French translation’s 19 graphic sequences features artwork from a different creator, clarified and embellished by interstitial chunks of narrative. Every section captures one of Marley’s many facets: artistic perfectionist, perfidious husband, idiosyncratic mystic, soccer fanatic, adoring father, political revolutionary, and, obviously, musical icon. Readers learn how his inimitable amalgam of American pop and R&B and Afro-Jamaican ska, rocksteady, and reggae brought a radical pan-African vision of peace, freedom, and unity to a global audience. Unfortunately, this initially compelling concept quickly loses its balance and devolves into a battle between exceptional artwork and ungainly writing. From cover copy to lettering, the text suffers from awkward phrasing, clumsy pacing, small but significant factual errors, and needless redundancies. Several segments contain eyebrow-raising images that veer closer to caricature than cartoon; the section “explaining” Rastafari, for instance, manages to further muddy the subject while indulging in some rather outmoded stereotypes. The palettes, influences, and talents of artists including Clément Baloup, Gil, Olivier Desvaux, Ammo, and Tanguy Pietri, however, save the book from the reject pile.