Blood of the Virgin

Starred review from December 1, 2022

Los Angeles in the early 1970s proves fertile ground to explore artistic ambition, the immigrant experience, generational trauma, and the cost of maintaining unbending principles in Harkham's (Everything Together: Collected Stories) magnum opus. The story concerns a married couple, Seymour and Ida. He was born in Iraq, she's the daughter of Holocaust survivors who resettled in New Zealand after World War II. He's an editor for one of the seediest B-movie production houses in town, but dreams of writing and directing his own films; she struggles to maintain a sense of her own identity while raising their newborn child mostly alone, as Seymour is too consumed with frustration at his lack of artistic fulfillment to worry about anyone else. When a producer decides to produce a heavily revised version of one of Seymour's scripts, he discovers that achieving a compromised version of his dream is just as difficult as maintaining a dream deferred. Unable to endure his tortured artist anxiety any longer, Ida returns to New Zealand--maybe for good, unless Seymour can get his act together. VERDICT A stunningly ambitious, emotionally complex work from an artist with a distinct perspective on the pursuit of artistic fulfillment.

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Starred review from January 30, 2023
L.A. Times Book Prize winner Harkham (Crickets) delivers an ambitious panoramic period piece set in the early-1970s Hollywood exploitation film milieu. Seymour, a 20-something Iraqi Jewish immigrant, works as an editor for Reverie, a production company specializing in cheap grindhouse flicks. He’s eager to direct his own script, and finally gets his shot with Blood of the Virgin after the original director is fired. Harkham spends a generous amount of the narrative detailing the grueling, often heartless day-to-day work of filmmaking, and in parallel, Seymour’s increasingly stressful home life. His smart, tart-tongued wife, Ida, is exhausted from caring for their infant son, resulting in misunderstandings, frustration, and Seymour’s increasingly wandering eye toward an actor in his film. (The ruthless studio head, Val, casually tells Seymour, “Don’t get so down, your marriage won’t last.”) Harkham vividly depicts the perils of ambition and heartbreak inherent in collaborative creative projects, while glimpses into Hollywood history cleverly link Seymour to historical figures who were sacrificed to an oppressive studio system. Pages are stacked with close panels and thin line drawings that capture choice moments from back lots to late nights. Harkham’s accomplished cartooning, nuanced characters, and sharp period detail keep this sprawling tale thrumming with energy and painful insights. Agent: Liz Parker, Verve Talent and Literary Agency.

May 15, 2023
In Los Angeles in the early 1970s, Seymour is an immigrant trying to make his mark in the movie business by editing films. With an unpredictable schedule, his wife Ida finds him undependable as a husband and father. When he finally gets the opportunity to make his own movie, Seymour deals with increasing conflicts at home while trying to balance out all of his responsibilities. The story as a whole is split up into smaller interconnected stories, and while most focus on Seymour, other characters, including Ida and her family in Auckland, are featured. The tone of the stories is different as well; one story is about a member of Ida's family who is a Holocaust survivor, though most of the others contain humor. The use of many small, linear panels is reminiscent of comic strips, though the illustration style is more detailed than those typically found in newspapers. Fans of slice-of-life narratives will enjoy the quick setting changes, and fans of character-driven works will sympathize with Seymour and Ida.

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Starred review from April 1, 2023
The monsters aren't just on screen in this lurid graphic novel from Harkham about a horror-film editor with dreams of directing, his dissatisfied wife, his manipulative boss, and his alcoholic and occasionally violent colleagues. Seymour loves horror movies and came to Hollywood to make them. In 1971, he mostly works as an editor at a small studio, but one day his boss wants to buy a script that Seymour has been shopping around. Despite his initial hesitation that the script isn't right for the film his boss wants to make to satisfy an investor, Seymour seizes the opportunity. His commitment to his work causes tension with his wife, Ida, who regularly berates him for neglecting household responsibilities but tolerates the all-night, drug-fueled debaucheries Seymour attends at his boss's mansion. Though Ida repeatedly rebuffs Seymour's amorous advances, while he's away she pleasures herself on the couch while their baby wails from another room. When the shoot of Seymour's script faces logistical pressures, the studio gives Seymour an even bigger opportunity (enough rope to hang himself with?), and Ida takes their son on an open-ended visit to her family in New Zealand, where she spends time with childhood friends, including an old flame. Harkham weaves a psychologically complex tale, balancing the bad behavior of Hollywood with an intriguingly pragmatic look at the moviemaking process. Seymour's passion for film and his conflicted conscience keep us reasonably sympathetic to him as he self-destructs, perhaps mostly because of his desire for Ida even as his stresses and urges don't exactly keep him committed to her. Harkham's text delivers punchy banter and sly sound effects, while his exceptionally expressive art is equal parts comic strip and cinema. A finely crafted look at the complexities and grotesqueries of Hollywood and the human heart.

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