Carbon (Carbon Saga)

Carbon is a fantastical tale that marries new Creation mythology with the very real coal-mining-culture-at-a-crossroads narrative now happening in southern West Virginia. Daniel Boyd, a three-time Fulbright scholar and Media Studies professor at West Virginia State University, has recently joined the ranks of accomplished filmmakers (he is known for Chillers, among many others) who are utilizing the graphic novel format to tell their stories. Cinematically illustrated by Brazilian Edi Guedes (with great attention to light and dark and mise en scène), Carbon tackles the tough questions and points an unapologetic finger at large Energy Corporations and state-level politicians.Little has changed since the state was founded during the Civil War in 1863. Coal was the means to solidifying the fledging state’s economic future and by the late 1880s all political policy was aimed toward that end. Politicians owned coal companies, and invested in them, as well as in all the corollary industries they spawned. Incidents like the Matewan massacre (the subject of a film by John Sayles, who wrote the Carbon Introduction) and the Monongah (1907), Sago (2006), and Upper Big Branch (2010) mining disasters, as well as the 2013 chemical spill near the state’s capital that made water unsafe for use by 350,000 citizens in the midst of one of the worst winters on record, have made an indelible imprint on the lives and psyche of West Virginians.Coming from a Horror background, Boyd employs some variations on familiar tropes: a demon species spawned in the process of the humans-employing-Free-Will-and-God-letting-them of his Creation myth and a sort of Super-Coal that burns continuously that drives the Big Bad in the story (the head of an Energy company) to do some out-sized and horrific things (although they have clear analogs in the “real world” of Energy companies cutting costs by compromising safety in order to bulge their bottom line and fund their political payola…).In the midst of all the Fantastical is a down-home redemption story about a local baseball hero who comes oh-so-close to the Big Leagues but blows it on a crucial pitch and is forced into the mines where his father was killed several years earlier.As I’ve learned in my decades-long study of Story and Structure, it’s all about that identifiable hero, the one with the major flaw with which we all can identify—no matter how fantastic the genre. It’s what makes the Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds work, and why “historical” films like Pearl Harbor and Apollo 13 are compelling and watchable although we know the outcomes. It’s what made TV series like Lost and Supernatural initially so fascinating despite their outlandish, fantastical worlds and well-traveled tropes.Like a carefully constructed film, Carbon’s dialogue is secondary to, and in service of, image, but the characters are well defined and succeed in illuminating various aspects of the central theme. And, most importantly, Boyd honors the coal miners (to whom the book is dedicated).And, in the end, this is very much the point of Carbon, and what makes the “coal mining/energy question” in West Virginia so thorny and compelling: It is not the working person who is at fault, but the Profiteers (the real-life demons in the darkness) who put them in harm’s way and wreak havoc with the natural landscape and the health and happiness of those who haven’t got a voice.Kudos to Daniel Boyd for giving them a Voice, and creating a wonderfully entertaining and fantastical journey in the process.

You don't have to be a fan of graphic novels to read Danny Boyd's Carbon, but you'll probably take your time looking at Edi Guedies's drawings. You don't need to be a fan of horror, even though Carbon has some scary monsters. What you most certainly will do is read to the end, pause for a few minutes to allow the thoughts running around in your mind to settle and then go to the beginning of Carbon and read it again.Danny Boyd has the gift to combine theology and environment in a action horror story centering around West Virginia's best known product; coal--carbon. You don't have to be a fan of graphic novels to read Danny Boyd's Carbon, but you'll probably take your time looking at Edi Guedies's drawings. You don't need to be a fan of horror, even though Carbon has some scary monsters. What you most certainly will do is read to the end, pause for a few minutes to allow the thoughts running around in your mind to settle and then go to the beginning of Carbon and read it again.Danny Boyd has the gift to combine theology and environment in a action horror story centering around West Virginia's best known product; coal--carbon.You don't have to be a fan of graphic novels to read Danny Boyd's Carbon, but you'll probably take your time looking at Edi Guedies's drawings. You don't need to be a fan of horror, even though Carbon has some scary monsters. What you most certainly will do is read to the end, pause for a few minutes to allow the thoughts running around in your mind to settle and then go to the beginning of Carbon and read it again.Danny Boyd has the gift to combine theology and environment in a action horror story centering around West Virginia's best known product; coal--carbon.You don't have to be a fan of graphic novels to read Danny Boyd's Carbon, but you'll probably take your time looking at Edi Guedies's drawings. You don't need to be a fan of horror, even though Carbon has some scary monsters. What you most certainly will do is read to the end, pause for a few minutes to allow the thoughts running around in your mind to settle and then go to the beginning of Carbon and read it again. This is a powerful work.Danny Boyd has the gift to combine theology and environment in a action horror story centering around West Virginia's best known product; coal--carbon.

It's pretty clear from the outset of the book that this was written as a movie, and it's even clearer by the end of the book that it should *be* a movie someday. The story revolves around a new kind of carbon that seems to burn forever -- naturally, the coal mining company that discovered it is willing to put its workers' lives on the line to get more, But what no one realizes is that there's a dark, primal force protecting this new carbon, and once it's unleashed, the world will never be the same.The writing is a bit formulaic and the art is decent but not stunning. What makes the book shine is its messages. The author grew up in coal country and has much to say about treatment of workers and the environmental hazards of continuing to mine coal, and the book becomes a parable on global warming pretty quickly. But seeing the effects of global warming on an accelerated timetable up close and personal, both in this book and in its forthcoming sequel, is part of the draw.

Carbon is an amazing graphic novel. It's captivating from page one, and the artwork is gorgeous. The story is interesting and hard hitting, and it's definitely a tale that needed to be told. Daniel Boyd is a fantastic professor, mentor, (I've personally gotten to experience this first hand!) and artist. Just as with his other works, Carbon hits it out of the ballpark in every area you could list. I absolutely cannot wait for the sequel, and anything else to come from this fantastic man!