REVIEW: The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam

The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam

By Ann Marie Fleming

Published September 2007

· It was interesting on how Ann Marie had multiple interpretations on her great grandfather Long Tack Sam on his various tales of how he became who he was, as all her accounts were from second hand sources. Fittingly, I liked how she illustrated this in a Golden Age style origin story. Most noted to me was that she had a total of five different origins to the mystic arts and magician’s fame, some of which contradict one another. While these panels were straighter forward in nature compared to the collage of her other pages, they are noted to adding her interpretations of the times Long Tack Sam was popular, especially with Golden Age inspired art. (Fleming, 11-16, 38-43, 61-63, 65-67, 77-79)

· When Ann Marie was asked to take pictures next to her grandmothers, I found it interesting that she maintained her anonymous character persona through the scene by having a hand-drawn version of her stand next to the illustrations. While minute in detail, it shows the degree of reliability of her journey to the viewers within the continuity of her decision to have a drawn version of her be the representation one follows through the entirety of the book. This is opposed to having the true photograph of her next to the illustration, which would bring about an entirely different connotation altogether. (Fleming, 8)

· Reading this, I had a personal discrepancy with the ambiguity of her choice of composition on one page. While there was an arrow leading the viewer to read downwards on the piece, I couldn’t help but misread the piece by reading the panels continuously left to right as opposed to top to bottom. This would’ve been easily solved with a better planned composition of panels or dividing the page’s composition into two pages so as to remove the bad flow of reading for the viewer. However, this is just my personal observation. (Fleming, 7)

· It was a nice touch to add notable dates on the border of the pages, yet I felt that they were not necessary to the story and instead served as filler. My reasoning behind this is that she started out her journey to knowing her great grandfather with some noted dates yet the composition soon had them almost removed from the book entirely until the very end, where they jolt out in bulk to cover for the credits of the book. I can see why she placed them there, as a means to tie to the culture at the time. However, they serve little to the understanding of Long Tack Sam as the bulk of the graphic novel is dedicated to the mysteries of his stage life, not the mundane of the world around him. There wasn’t even a guarantee that he necessarily would be one to partake in the developing music and technology during those dates. (Fleming, 10, 50, 164-170)

· I liked how the pictures drawn to illustrate Long Tack Sam were at the time not the stereotypical Yellow face that captivated America since the Gold Rush and the first Chinese immigrants. This may be due to the fact that the illustrators may have not been American, but regardless of that fact it holds that Long Tack Sam was respected enough in his art that he wasn’t considered a “rat man” when drawn to promote his talents. It might’ve helped that he always wore the contemporary Chinese clothing at the time, thus noting his ethnicity, but that had little to do with his status in my opinion. (Fleming, 96)

· As a Charlie Chaplin fan, I find it interesting that Ann Marie made her statement about the black and white star with her noting of the rise of Hitler and other noted characters and people at the time. This, compared to the random dates previously noted, actually served the narrative well as it brought out the contemporary problems and influences at the time that people can research should they wish to relate to it. (Fleming, 103)

· The new reel from how Long Tack Sam refused to involve his daughters in racial lessening of Asians in the film industry at the time was notable. It showed the sense of ethnical pride that few note Chinese people at the time had. It denoted an interesting sense of Nationality from a man who traveled from place to place and had no permanent home of his own during his career. It was significant that Ann Marie chose to place illustrations of how beautiful her grandmothers were with how the American film industry noted them “too pretty” to portray Chinese people for their productions. It was even noted that Ann Marie provided newspaper that showed how much of an impact Long Tack Sam had to not wish for his family to be involved in the demeaning of Asian people in the public eye.(112-113)

· Overall, this was a great book. The small flaws it had me pause for a moment to contemplate what Ann Marie was trying to bring about in the plot of her journey, however they had little effect on the reading of the graphic novel. Her use of blending hand drawn illustrations with photographs and references as a collage made this an avant garde piece of work.

Bibliography:

Fleming, Ann Marie. The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam. New York: Riverhead, 2007