Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, elsie harris picture palace, entertainment, mac's books, miwk publishing

Mac's Books Reviewed: Elsie Harris, Picture Palace

Published Fri, 11 Dec 2015 19:00:16 -0600

A monthly review spotlighting the best titles the UK indie press has to offer.

By Olly MacNamee.

Elsie Harris, Picture Palace (Miwk Publishing)

Written and illustrated by Jessica Martin

With two critically acclaimed independent titles already to boast about, IT Girl and Vivacity, Jessica Martin is no greenhorn when it comes to this self-publishing malarkey and for the last few years Martin has been working on her largest and most substantial offering to date, her first black and white graphic novel, weighing in at 152 pages. And what a good read to is too, telling the tale of a simple London girl, Elsie Harris, who over the course of just a few years, rises from being a lowly 'Nippy' (waitress) at the famous Lyons Corner House of yesteryear – a monolith of a building that was genuinely open 24/7 offering up fancy dining for fancy folk – to shining in the bright lights of Hollywood as a …. well, that would be revealing too much now, wouldn't it?

I had put aside an hour or two over a few days to read through this terrific tome, but found myself immediately absorbed with this well researched, very personal story of one individuals – no, make that one young, creative, talented woman – and reading it from cover to cover in one sitting. Not that you need necessarily do that, as it is easy to treat this as you would any novel because of the book's structuring; episodic in nature with key milestones that allows the reader to pause, should they so wish.

Elsie's story then, is one large and epic in scope, with many central characters as well as peripheral characters, with their own tales to tell and secrets to reveal, along the way. This, and a look back through time at the late 1930's and a world where a woman's place was in the home, or in the service of men, regardless of their superior skills. A world still in the grip of recession, but a recession that still seemed to leave the rich and idle unscathed, a world in which it was not just women without a voice, but anyone who was not male, white and wealthy. These are the details that fleshes out Elsie's rise to fame and make hers a real, fully fleshed out landscape, one we can relate to both looking at it with our 21st century sensibilities and one that is not too dissimilar to our own, nearly 100 years later. The social injustices, where the rich go unscathed by the economic ruin most of us are feeling, where the white and the wealthy still call the shots. Elsie's story, in many ways, is a story that many, many of us can immediately relate to, but it is also the story of the individual's battle against adversity towards greatness.

Forced to find alternative employment when fired unfairly from her position at the Lyons Corner House, Elsie's determination and raw talent – and good manners – soon finds her winning a converted position at a fashion house, Bernard of Paris in Mayfair, Elsie finds friends, familiars and lovers that help her on her way to Hollywood as part of a production team taken up to work on an adaptation of the novel, Greensleeves (a fictional account of a love triangle involving Henry VIII Anne Boleyn and Thomas Wyatt, for Colossal Pictures). Even before she gets there, and halfway through the book, we have already witnessed, for some, a lifetime of living and learning and a cast of supporting characters that had me turning back a few pages to remind me who they all were. Probably what Elsie felt like too as each page seemed to introduce a different situation, event, crisis point in our young heroine's life.

Using grey washes to add tone and depth to her art, Martin offers a meticulously crafted world of both 1930's London and Hollywood, and looking back at her previous offerings, one can see the development in her art and her attention to detail. You are immediately whisked back in time to this era and as Elsie rises, so her backdrops change, improve. But, she always remains the wide-eyed, modest woman that we first see waiting tables and watching her back. There are tragedies along the way, both her own and her supporting players, and the odd surprise as well. But then, that's life, isn't it and there is nothing farfetched about her story, fictional though it may be.

Helpfully edited along the way by Martin's friend and mentor, Mark Buckingham (Fables, Marvelman), there is not a spare moment in this book. It is fast paced and full of life, the book breathes and will definitely hold up to further readings, given the amount of subtexts that she includes that help expand and build her microcosmic world; the inbuilt prejudices in society, the snapshot of the era, the gap between rich and poor, I can't believe she was able to fit it all in and tell a riveting story that feels real. Indeed, at times I felt I needed to check with online search engines to check this wasn't all make believe, some of the names sound so real. But then, aren't all the best stories make believe?

And, if you are in London this Saturday, you could bag yourself, or a loved one, a signed copy of Martin's graphic novel as she will be signing copies in Orbital Comics between 5.30 and 6.30 before she hotfoots it back to appear in the smash hit festive fun ride that is the stage production of Elf at The Dominion Theatre. Don't miss her, at either!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Be seeing you.

Olly MacNamee teaches English and Media, for his sins, in a school somewhere in Birmingham. Some days, even he doesn't know where it is. Follow him on twitter @ollymacnamee or read about his exploits at olly.macnamee@blogspot.co.uk. Or don't. You can also read his articles fairly frequently at www.bleedingcool.com too.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!