Art of Darkness

Several years ago Aaron Nelson wandered into a bookstore and experienced an epiphany.

There, Nelson saw the space where his own book would fit—literally and metaphorically. Never mind that he hadn’t actually written it yet; at the time, the 38-year-old was contemplating a novel, a mythical fantasy tale inspired by one of his favorite works, The Odyssey.

But, he realized, scanning the store’s shelves, there wasn’t really a place for the book he had in mind.

Then Nelson walked over to the shop’s graphic-novel section and realized he’d hit upon the perfect niche—his own story would fit perfectly there, right next to Alan Moore’s acclaimed 1980s-era Watchmen comic series.

That he’d never attempted comics was beside the point. Here, he says, he recognized a clear void: a comic-book hero based on one of the Greek literature greats.

Nelson, who lives in Shingle Springs with his wife and four young daughters, never wrote that particular book. But the moment did, eventually, lead him to craft another graphic novel, one with a character who drew on various elements of classic literature—most notably Joseph Conrad’s 1903 novella Heart of Darkness.

Released this week and illustrated in bold, punchy frames by Dario Carrasco, Marlow reads as a complex yet pulpy adventure rife with comic-book-worthy images—a loyal band of allies, a cold-hearted villain, scheming pirates and a throng of soul-dead zombies—as well political themes that examine, among other subjects, globalism and the war on terror.

And, of course, there is the title character, a muscular, square-jawed anti-hero, alternately consumed with self-loathing and a desire to save the world.

Think Pirates of the Caribbean meets Call of Duty.

So why did a guy who studied a “great books” curriculum in college and counts Homer among his literary heroes envision this story as a graphic novel?

“It’s a quick art in visual form—it’s very helpful in conveying literary elements,” Nelson explains.

And, he adds, the graphic novel has come into its own. In addition to the Watchmen series, he says, Moore’s V for Vendetta, is a prime example of how arresting visuals and strong storytelling can combine for a gripping, stimulating journey.

“[As a writer] you have to think about … the interplay of words with images and the density of the page—what’s the relationship of the story to the page [and] to the panel?” he says.

“You have to break [the story] down to its most efficient point for each panel.”

Pulp Friction

The story contained within Marlow’s panels is, at times, dizzying. It’s the account of one man’s journey into the abyss of his own soul. Marlow is a former Marine who has been injected “like a lab rat” with a nano-virus that’s now turning him into a zombie.

Nupharma, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, is responsible for Marlow’s condition and the firm’s Dr. Arcos holds the key to his survival—via pills that hold off Marlow’s complete descent into the land of the living dead.

Marlow’s physical indebtedness to Arcos and Nupharma puts him, of course, at their mercy. The company’s enlisted him as a hit man, a job Marlow unhappily accepts—his survival depends on the death of others. As a result, Marlow’s alienated nearly everyone once dear to him, namely his wife and daughter.

Eventually, he realizes that this life he’s chosen to live—a loveless, cold existence—is hardly any life at all. Perhaps, Marlow muses, he’s truly a zombie after all.

“Marlow is in a double bind,” explains Nelson. “He’s had to do some really bad things but he’s also been able to retain some sense of who he is as a human—if he doesn’t do the right thing, then he becomes this monster.”

The graphic novel actually comprises two separate stories—Soul of Darkness and River of Symbols. Nelson wrote the first installation in 2006, intending it as a serialized comic.

But Soul of Darkness was a hit, eliciting praise from comic aficionados including Ain’t It Cool News, which lauded Nelson’s story as “[S]urely one that will stick with you, given the war-torn state the world is in today.”

And so, at the behest of his publisher, Nelson wrote River of Symbols. Now, collected in one volume, the two stories complete a cohesive story arc but, Nelson says, embody key differences.

“[Soul of Darkness] is pretty dark—by the end [Marlow] comes to the revelation that he can’t win either way and decides to stop playing the game altogether,” Nelson says. “But in the second story, he’s turned a corner and become more hopeful. He’s at peace with himself.”

River of Symbols’ overall tone and pace is, Nelson says, also lighter, with quick-witted barbs, pirates and a kindly Italian riverboat captain, who guides Marlow on his journey.

“It’s a bit more pulpy … it’s more of this jungle adventure that he’s on.”

Still, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom it’s not.

“[Marlow] is in that milieu of characters,” Nelson says, “in that he’s being chased across the jungle by this band of characters, and it’s fun and adventurous—but he’s [also] fighting some personal issues.”

Zombie crush

Certainly, Marlow dives into a venture so volatile and dangerous, that ol’ Indy would likely think twice before swinging his whip within 100 yards of its action.

Set in Romania, Marlow draws on Heart of Darkness for inspiration but, rather than paralleling the original’s exact storyline, instead echoes several prevalent themes.

In Conrad’s book, for example, a narrator named Charles Marlowe recounts an assignment for a Belgian trading company, on which he served a riverboat captain in Africa. Along the way, Marlowe encounters grave dangers and is witness to the European’s cold, cruel treatment of African natives.

“[Heart of Darkness] takes what the British and European empires are doing to Africa and turns it on its head,” Nelson says. “It shows that these justifications based on the idea that they’re savages can be applied to us—that we’re the ones acting in the savage manner.

“I liked that, and I wanted to flip it around,” he says. “I wanted to do that with zombies. What is a zombie? Maybe we’re the zombies? Maybe we’re the ones killing to make them more like ourselves.”

Oh yeah, about those zombies.

If you’re looking for ones of the flesh-eating, Walking Dead variety, then keep looking. Here, the zombies that Marlow encounters embody a classic interpretation of the term, Nelson explains.

“These are more Caribbean/West-African zombies—someone who is under the control of a master—that’s definitely different than the [filmmaker George] Romero zombie.”

As such, Marlow finds himself one of the afflicted.

“It turned me into a zombie instead of healing the psychological damage inflicted by years of warfare,” Marlow says at the beginning of the book’s second installment. “It’s blackmail. If I don’t work for them, they cut off the supply and I become a freak.”

But it’s not just Marlow’s personal dilemma that drives the story. As Marlow tries to achieve his mission, he’s faced with resistance in the form of a mysterious figure known only as “The Russian.”

“He’s the antithesis of Marlow, he’s not in a double bind, he’s all for what [Nupharma] is doing,” Nelson says.

The Russian’s presence elicits tension and dread among Marlow and his allies, and although on one hand, the evil henchman seems like a quaint relic from the Cold War era, he also effectively represents the collective post-9/11 fear of—and fear mongering—that surrounds foreign enemies.

To that extent, Nelson adds, perhaps pop culture’s current zombie crush—Walking Dead, the novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, et al—may reflect people’s fears about the state of global politics, terrorism and warfare.

“Why is zombie culture so popular right now?” Nelson asks, “Maybe it says something about us, about who we are as a society.”

Still, Nelson insists he didn’t intend Marlow as a “political diatribe.”

“While Conrad has a pointed statement to make about colonization, I was [approaching] this story from a literary standpoint,” he says. “I didn’t have some foreign-policy objective, it was more like, ‘How does it feel to be in this world?’”

So far, critical reaction to the book has been strong. Comic artist and critic David Hopkins, for one, praises Marlow for its smart approach to the genre.

“Aaron is a writer with a brain, and he’s not afraid to use it,” Hopkins says, adding that he thinks Nelson is due for a “break-out year.”

“His work has commercial sensibility … yet he maintains his own voice as a writer.”

And, although alternately, a few reviews have called Nelson’s writing “clunky” or “cliché,” Hopkins dismisses such criticism as missing the point.

“Aaron’s writing often takes common conventions and moves in a new direction, which is the very opposite of cliché,” he says. “He takes timeless archetypes and ideas, then transposes it into a popular medium orgenre—it’s not that unlike what Alan Moore does.”

Art of darkness

Of course, no graphic novel, no matter how well-written, can succeed without compelling art.

So here’s the funny thing: Nelson has never actually met his creative collaborator, Dario Carrasco—at least not in person. The two, who swap files via email, first encountered each other on a comic message board and, Nelson says, instantly clicked.

“It’s like we’re these kindred twins, everything we do is in sync.”

Before Carrasco, Nelson adds, he had “no idea” how Marlow looked. Carrasco’s rendition of the character has been integral to the overall storyline, he adds.

For Carrasco, a 50-year-old artist living in Alberta, Canada, Marlow was an easy venture.

“Aaron, even as a newcomer to the comics industry, has a knack for writing cool characters,” Carrasco says. “I [could] easily imagine … the sequences of the panels that I’d put on the page—that’s simply the work of a really good comics writer.”

Carrasco, whose résumé includes illustrating Captain America and Alpha Flight for Marvel Comics, is on board for future Marlow projects, including a prequel to the story in which the reader will finally be privy to some of the story’s murkier details.

“We want to talk about who Marlow is and learn more about the Russian,” Nelson says.

In the meantime, Nelson remains busy. There are plans to write a novel—perhaps, finally, that Odyssey-inspired book. Nelson’s also published another serialized graphic novel online, a “babes-and-ray-guns story” called Kid Lightspeed & The Neutron Women and there are hopes to shop a Marlow screenplay. When he’s not writing, he works as an account manager for a technology and market-research company and, of course, there’s time with the family, including those four daughters, ages 5 to 12.

So are the girls fans of their father’s work? Nelson laughs.

“They know what graphic novels are, and they know what [their father] does, but they haven’t read my work,” he says. “The oldest one is into Twilight.”

Of course.

Nelson has a theory about this.

“Twilight subverts that classic ‘angry young male’ character—Edward is the feminine version of that, we don’t really have angry young males [in pop culture] anymore.”

Perhaps Marlow, although he’s actually 40-something, might help to subvert that trend.

Or, maybe not.

“Marlow’s a zombie and all of these bad things have happened to him,” Nelson says. “But, really, he’s a very good person at heart.”