Note: I’m on a semi-vacation this week so I’m going back into the archives for a review or two. Aaron McGruder, Reginald Hudlin and Kyle Baker’s BIRTH OF A NATION came out in 2004. Going into the Independence Day holiday, it seemed like a good book to revisit this week. This review was originally written when the book was released.
Birth of a Nation
Published By: Crown Publishers
Written by: Aaron McGruder & Reginald Hudlin
Illustrated by: Kyle Baker
What you should know:
The presidential election was a shambles. Due to “errors,” a number of important votes were not counted and the wrong man quite possibly won the White House. Sounds a lot like Florida, doesn’t it? Except in this world, it’s East St. Louis that is the center of controversy as many residents of that city aren’t allowed to vote. So, what do they do? They secede from the rest of the United States. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
What happened:
What happens when you get the people responsible for the movie HOUSE PARTY, the comic strip THE BOONDOCKS and the graphic novel THE COWBOY WALLY show together? Would you believe political commentary?
BIRTH OF A NATION tells the story of Mayor Fred Fredericks, mayor of one of the poorest cities in the nation– East St. Louis. It’s also predominantly African American. Loved by most everyone, he’s the kind of mayor who takes a garbage strike into his own hands. He drives around picking up everyone’s garbage. He knows everyone by name and he’s a good leader for his city. And when he leads his city into secession, he thinks he’s doing what’s best for everyone. And the hilarity just goes on from there.
Have you seen the movie BARBERSHOP? Have you at least heard of the documentary FAHRENHEIT 9/11? To borrow from Reeses Peanut Buttercups, these are two great tastes that taste great together. The humor behind BIRTH OF A NATION is the same humor in the two BARBERSHOP movies. Like BARBERSHOP, BIRTH features humor about race without making an overtly racial book. And it’s not a black vs. white book. The story is about what happens when national and global events start overwhelming the common man. When that happens, your gang lords become your new national army.
Those national events appear to be a fictitious and false presidency. When election mishaps have major impact on a presidential election, you naturally get a nation divided (much like the 2000 Presidential race and Florida.) Unlike Michael Moore and his movie, this book only looks at the results of the election and don’t have an entire war to also try to argue against. In his introduction to the book, Hudlin says that this story originally started as a screenplay that he did with McGruder that no one wanted to buy so they made it into a graphic novel. I wouldn’t be surprised now to see this book get optioned somewhere down the line.
It’s always great to see a new book featuring Kyle Baker’s artwork. His cartooning and sense of design of a page only gets stronger and stronger with each book he puts out. On each page, you have anywhere from a couple to eight panels a page with any dialogue or caption typeset below the panel. Baker arranges the panels of varying length and height to time out and to establish a rhythm and pulse to the story.
BIRTH OF A NATION is a bit of an oddity, a graphic novel published by a major publisher (meaning not a comic book publisher.) It is encouraging to see companies outside of Marvel, DC and Image looking to publish major works. BIRTH OF A NATION is a fun and entertaining book that makes you stop and think about what really could have happened four years ago.
BIRTH OF A NATION is available on Amazon.com.
