I found myself wondering whether one has to be miserable to be a writer. Comics is the only medium that can do this so effectively. The cost of her treatment drove her to work she hated, and we see bits of it woven through the panels that tell her story. It’s gorgeous and expressive and a pleasure to read, handling layers of imagination and romance and practicality. The art by Hannah Templer has a streamlined feel that matches the mid-century time period. It contrasts beautifully with the black-and-white of the life she doesn’t like, as well as giving a historical feel, the look of a faded photograph. The book is colored in monochrome, a burnt orange that makes browns and tans and the flare of a cigarette lighter, and, when Highsmith is thinking about the adventure comics she hates, a lurid orange. She writes Strangers on a Train, her first major novel. Then he makes a pass and she turns him down. She meets Stan Lee, and they get drunk debating writing and talent and whether comics are only for the illiterate. She goes to a psychoanalyst to try and cure her homosexuality, but even though she’ll sleep with a man as part of her attempt to be respectable, she won’t commit to marrying him. She writes comics but refuses to put her name on them, calling them “garbage”. Highsmith was a lesbian but despised herself for it. Yet this story of some of her life is easily one of the best graphic novels of the year. Which is funny, because much of the book shows us Ms.
Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith is an impressively good comic.
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