Description

A Tale of Two Arthurs is an impressionistic chronicle of two very different men: Jack Arthur Johnson, the black American boxer, and Arthur Cravan, the white French poet and provocateur. These two men fought an improbable boxing match in Barcelona in 1916 which acts as the pivot point of this double-portrait which is also a kind of mirror: for despite their differences they were both fiercely independent individuals who in their own ways defied the mores of their time with a mixture of bravado, intelligence, and brute strength. Accompanying both men on their journeys is a celebrity chimpanzee named Consul who serves as the uniting thread — as well as the unlikely narrator — of this adventurous and ambitious comic.

Review

Reviewers note: A lot of the story relied on double-page spreads that weren’t available to be viewed on ARC given. The flow of the story would without a doubt work better in a hard-copy.

This was fine. The art while not to my taste did an acceptable job illustrating the drama of Jack Johnston’s life inside and outside the ring. Johnson’s life takes up the majority of the book and rightly so. However, Arthur Cravan shares top billing and his history as told here seem like an afterthought. To me, it felt like a cheap gimmick. The fight between the two, which was a freakshow put on to raise money, never felt like the books true focus. Caravan who had a fascinating life and it would have given the book more balance to have had more of it told. While we understand Johnson’s reason for taking the fight Caravan’s are just glossed over. We never get a sense of why the public wants to see these two collide and more importantly why they are willing to pay for it.

I’d struggle to recommend this but it is not a bad book. The fight scenes were well done and the dialogue captures Johnson’s brashness. I’m certainly interested in reading more about Caravan’s adventures both before and after the fight.