Goya: The Terrible Sublime: A Graphic Novel
The work of artist Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) runs the gamut from sedate portraits of the Spanish royal family to pornographic nudes to phantasmagoric horrors executed as life-sized murals on the walls of his home. It is this last type of work, Goya’s darker paintings, which is the focus of this graphic novel. After an illness which leaves him severely hearing-impaired, Goya experiences a variety of dreadful visions: are they symptoms of madness, or are they real? Actual historical figures, such as the Duchess of Alba, feature heavily in this tale of an artist who may be mad, or may simply be one of the few who can see into a dark otherworld that exists alongside our own.
This graphic novel, like some of Goya’s work, is grotesque and surreal – Fran Galán’s illustrations play off of Goya’s paintings (specifically El Aquellare, “Witches’ Sabbath”) in a sumptuous composition and color palette that offers a Rococo sort of horror singularly appropriate to the subject matter. The story itself is likewise engaging in its ability to unsettle. Unfortunately, this is marred by multiple misspellings and typographical errors in the text, along with anachronistic dialogue and idiosyncratic bolding, which interferes with the flow, since in more than one instance, it conveys emphasis in nonsensical ways. All things considered, this graphic novel is certainly worth a read, but members of the publisher’s copyediting and quality control departments deserve a stern lecture and some points off during annual review.
