Review: New graphic novels dig into ‘Peanuts,’ Jane Austen and Wisconsin ginseng farmers

Four new graphic novels cover a gamut of subjects, from a serious-minded study of Charles M. Schulz’s artistic legacy to the quiet, creatively turbulent life of Jane Austen and a pair of memoirs, one about a trauma-haunted love life and the other about growing up in Wisconsin’s ginseng capital.

Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts

By: Chip Kidd.

Publisher: Abrams, 304 pages.

Has any comic artist besides Charles M. Schulz embraced such a breadth of emotions in their work, from chilly loneliness and insecurity to fuzzy-blanket sentimentality, and made it so seamless?

This re-release of the Eisner-winning 2015 survey of Schulz-iana delivers the range of emotional artistry the St. Paul-born great encompassed in his half-century of “Peanuts.” The book rummages through the Schulz Library archives and creates a chronological scrapbook of sketches, correspondence and original artwork that shows both Schulz’s creative evolution and his singular focus.

It roams from Schulz’s early days with the strip “Li’l Folks,” first published in 1947 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press, through his fast-accelerating success, as Charlie Brown and the gang’s curious musings turned from whimsical oddity to a global business. Surprise moments crop up, such as Schulz’s 1976 cover for Ms. Magazine and letters between Schulz and “Peanuts” fan Harriet Glickman, whose gently persuasive arguments encouraged Schulz to add his first black character, Franklin, in 1968.

Since the book is curated by book art legend and self-described “Peanuts nerd” Kidd, it functions as a compendium of design more than content. Zeroing in on the unassuming simplicity of Schulz’s craft, Kidd shows how the St. Paul native’s clean lines and spare dialogue amplified the work’s artistry and emotional subtext. In his introduction, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”’s Jeff Kinney explains how Schulz’s approach explains the book’s title: “No waste.” Reading the book suggests an update to one of the most iconic “Peanuts” lines: Happiness is having your own personal Schulz archive.

The Novel Life of Jane Austen: A Graphic Biography

By: Janine Barchas, illustrated by Isabel Greenberg.

Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal, 144 pages.

As with William Shakespeare, who occupies a prominent role in this graphic biography of another famous British writer, the life of Austen boasts more gaps than knowable truths. Barchas (“The Lost Books of Jane Austen”) admits up front that she and illustrator Greenberg (“Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës”) were forced to follow “breadcrumbs of facts” to create their narrative. Fortunately, Austen’s voice rings out clearly enough from her fiction that Barchas’s breadcrumbs can be cooked up into a tasty treat of a book.

“The Novel Life of Jane Austen” is broken into three parts: “Budding Writer” (1796–1797), “Struggling Artist” (1801–1809), and “Published Author” (1809–1817). Barchas contrasts Austen’s unassuming demeanor and quiet life as a single woman with her flashes of wicked wit, roiling ambition and anxiety over her family’s precarious finances (she yearns “to be above vulgar economy”). The gently humorous but mostly uneventful domesticity of Austen and her sister Cassandra (the “first and best reader” of her fiction but also the one who burned most of Austen’s letters) is interspersed with scenes from the novels, which gained some readers in her life but became more popular after her death. This is a cozy and charming biography that will make many readers want to pick up “Pride and Prejudice” again.

Heartcore

By: Štěpánka Jislová.

Publisher: Graphic Mundi, 240 pages.

“If I can’t have a boyfriend,” Czech artist Jislová ponders about her commitment-phobic, on-again/off-again hookup Mike, “he’s the next best thing.” The introspective, emotionally gnarled “Heartcore” charts the swooning ups and crashing downs of her young adult romantic life as she bounds from one impossible-to-achieve expectation to another. Drawn with a busy and rollicking energy that mimics Jislová’s manic vacillations, “Heartcore” is an angst-ridden, yet potently romantic, account of the holes that insecurity and childhood trauma can punch through our ability to see ourselves clearly. She draws herself as a young artist, overflowing with passion for her work, meeting like-minded people and finding love. Yet, whether trying to find a soulmate, professional recognition or romance-free one-night stands, she’s left frustrated by life’s failure to match her fantasy of perfection.

Eventually, Jislová delves into her past for clues to her self-sabotage and finds relief coming from therapy that could help with healing. Just when her narrative is on the cusp of eating its own solipsistic tail, she pivots to showing how Mike’s history of being bullied fueled the emotional chill she feels from him. It’s a lovely gesture of empathy that helps bring full circle the book’s often lonesome quest for connection.

Ginseng Roots

By: Craig Thompson

Publisher: Pantheon, 448 pages.

The kind of book you don’t read so much as let it wash over you, Thompson’s poignant “Ginseng Roots” is an autobiographical sequel of sorts to 2003 masterpiece “Blankets.” While that book dealt largely with Thompson’s loss of faith, this is a more physically grounded investigation of both his family roots in the small Wisconsin town of Marathon and the complex background of the ginseng he and his siblings spent their childhood helping to grow. His reveries about using fieldwork money to buy comics, dreaming of an artistic life far from the Wisconsin mud and heat (“the fantasy of a career path that would transcend our economic class”), are mixed with the anxieties of his chosen vocation and a desire to reconnect with where he came from.

Thompson’s ruminative style is wracked by uncertainty, spiking from the mysterious autoimmune disorder that threatens his ability to draw. But he infuses the narrative with a driving curiosity, whether about the struggles of Hmong immigrant ginseng farmers he grew up around or the tightly braided mix of history, capitalism and spirituality he discovers when studying ginseng. Though Thompson fills the book with layered yet flowing art, it maintains a lightness and teasing humor that keeps the material from being overwhelming. “Ginseng” is a lovely reminder that home never can be left behind, even for those who might want to.

Chris Barsanti is the author of several books, including “A Minnesota Book(ish) Miscellany,” a member of the National Book Critics Circle, and contributor to Publishers Weekly. He lives in St. Paul.