Though I was largely disappointed with Peter Bagge's Women Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story, I still picked up Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story. I thought going in with clearer expectations would help. It did a bit, but the book still left a sour taste in my mouth.

Bagge does begin with a nice introduction of "Why Hurston," to explain why he chose Hurston as a subject, and I was prepared for the noodle arms art of only eruptive moments in Hurston's life. The comic is again a quick & dirty version of Hurston's biography, with a proper biography in the back matter, styled as annotations to the comic art. It was a chore to keep flipping back and forth. The one shining point is Bagge's grasp of Hurston's political philosophies and "warts-and-all" approach to blackness in art. For example, knee-jerk liberalism would take umbrage with Hurston's stance on segregation/integration...until they stopped and listened to the rest of what she had to say, which is that all schools should be funded and no one should be forced to live & work where they don't want.

Bagge's understanding of Hurston's philosophies, however, made other points in his annotations even more jarring. There were multiple moments of attempted humor that did not land. Bagge calls Langston Hughs a doofus and skewers him for struggling with his gay identity. Hurston's possible attraction to women is dismissed as a prank. At one point, Bagge makes a "triggered!!" joke. These moments abruptly reminded me that a white man wrote this, and he is still un-learning his own prejudices (hopefully).

Like with Women Rebel, I was left desperate to read Hurston's life story in her own words, instead of through translation and interpretation. Thank goodness she was prolific.