The Farewell Song of Marcel Labrume

It feels too obvious to describe The Farewell Song of Marcel Labrume as being a bit old fashioned. It is a period drama, and one that draws on genre tropes well established at the time of its production rather than any serious history. Also, this probably wouldn’t be a strong enough critique for some contemporary readers. Released just two years after Edward Said’s Orientalism, it would appear that Attilio Micheluzzi did not get the memo. Middle Eastern locations act as mysterious and exotic backdrops for European and American intrigue. I find it hard to believe that this wasn’t a nostalgic call-back even in 1980. 

This book, touted by Fantagraphics as “the first 21st century English language translation of [the] Italian master”, features two stories. The first, which is simply titled after the core protagonist, is a noir-ish, espionage action-thriller based in Beirut. The second, "In Search of Lost Time: As He Told It To Me’" (the allusion to high literature is unearned), is a wartime action caper. 

The first story is set in Beirut in 1940. The titular protagonist/anti-hero is a Frenchman of uncertain origin and loyalties. He’s clearly on the scale of Nazi collaboration, but he also helps the book's principal Jewish character. In conversation he expresses a desire to see the Allies defeat the French, and doesn’t make qualms about European power struggles impacting the Middle East, but he’s also quick to beat up the locals and complain about “Arab terrorism.” The Battle of Algiers this is not.

The second story finds Labrume waking up in an Axis army hospital tent after fighting on the Allied side in the Battle of Bir Hakeim. Wrapping himself up in bandages, he makes a getaway, performs grand theft auto and steals a lorry, only to find it is carrying Australian women POWs.

We’re introduced to Labrume in the first person past tense. He’s hard-boiled: listens to vulgar French pop songs; hides in the shadows and spends his evenings gambling; applies teleological reasoning to his reflections; has enough “guardian angels” so that the local police don’t bother him. The dialogue and writing is snappy and vernacular – applause to translator Jamie Richards for keeping the prose crisp and urgent. The arrangements within the panels feel dramatic and theatrical. The atmosphere is superb – the shadows and background cast of characters and objects create a real sense of place. You can nearly smell the humidity or touch the dusty heat. These traits are not surprising given that Micheluzzi was a big fan of the darker edges of Hollywood cinema.

Micheluzzi himself seems to have been quite distinct from the Bond-esque elements he dreamt up in Labrume. He did, however, live a life that is indicative of the tumultuousness of the 20th century. Born in Istria at a time when Italy was still a colonial power, when the peninsula became part of Yugoslavia his family moved to Naples, where he became an architect. He gained employment in various African countries, and was about to become hired by the Libyan royal household before Gaddafi’s coup d'état led to the expulsion of Italians by the Libyan Revolutionary Command Council in 1970. Returning to Naples, he was unable to continue working as an architect due to not being a card-carrying socialist (while he was conservative, as far as I can tell he never held any party’s card). Combining his childhood passion for fumetti and his skills in draughtsmanship, he transitioned to becoming a comics artist.

He apparently always spent a huge amount of time researching before starting his comics. This, alongside his personal experiences, may explain why his comic world feels so fleshy and real. It doesn’t really explain why there are so many clichés. This is not a comic that deconstructs anything. It is firmly rooted in the popular imagination of the era it depicts and the media that came out of the immediate post-war period. As storytelling, and as WWII historical fiction, it is very efficient but not overly original. It is more interesting understood as part of a moment when comics were becoming more overtly adult, and an instance of comics being more cinematic. 

Micheluzzi came to comics late in life but was constantly producing work. The introduction of Labrume was preceded by one of his other most famous creations, Petra Chèrie, a female WWI pilot who fights against the Germans. Both of these characters represent a moment in his career when he was most interested in historically-rooted fiction. Not long after he would, much to his dismay, dip his toes into genre comics for the American market. Micheluzzi himself won awards at Angoulême and Lucca, and there is an award named after the man himself at Comicon Napoli. In a 2012 interview about her father, Agnese Micheluzzi paints a picture of a prolific workaholic. She also outlines the authors who influenced him: “Milton Caniff, whom he adored, Muñoz and Sampayo, Toppi with whom he had a particular relationship of admiration, Battaglia and Pratt obviously, and Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon…”

The Beirut that Micheluzzi portrays isn’t a million miles away from Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca. Dancers entertain Europeans and North and South Americans dignitaries in the bars of glamorous hotels. French and German military and politicians oscilliate between collaboration and competition, both between each other and within themselves. Games of Axis cat and resistance mouse play out; here, that trope is represented by Montefiore Abraham Spirakowski, a Jewish Polish philosopher who has made an escape route via Turkey and is on his way to Jerusalem. There is also a femme fatale, the “almost Hollywood” Carole Gibson, who is also involved in Spirakowski's plan to reach Palestine.

Micheluzzi does political intrigue and overfed political and military figures well enough. Everyone is where they are for personal gain. They let various forms of loyalty inform their decisions when it suits them. In what proves to be one of the book’s biggest shortcomings, Marcel himself is not a particularly interesting protagonist. He’s meant to be complicated and broody, but in fact he is quite simple minded and mostly available to the highest bidder, or whatever glamorous woman he can pester into a relationship. Micheluzzi attempts to complicate his characterization in the second story, wherein Labrume’s consciousness speaks both to him and the reader in captions. This technique never seems to be used for much and doesn’t even survive the whole chapter.

For an artist who had experience with meat and potatoes boys’ own comics, and was clearly well acquainted with the clear storytelling of golden age Hollywood, it is peculiar that here Micheluzzi seems to have got derailed by narrative tricks and secondary stories that are more distracting than additive. This is the case in the first story, when one never quite gets a handle on the character who ends up being the primary baddie. Micheluzzi also sometimes seems allergic to portraying action. Moments of potential drama are skipped over – when Labrume and the Australians are stopped by German officers, there’s nothing between the Germans telling the passengers to halt and the women having managed to tie their hands together. Instead we jump straight to some dialogue which makes Labrume even more unlikable.

The often fantastic draughtsmanship notwithstanding, Labrume too often feels like a series of tropes trapped in amber. There is nerdy historical detail here – references to particular battles, names of aircraft, etc. – but it doesn't really feel like historical fiction, more like a sometimes engaging period drama.

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