Scott McCloud's Sculptor

Sometimes we like the story that is told, but not the particulars of how it is told, and sometimes we like the way a storyteller tells a story without liking the particulars of the story all that much.  In a great work of art, you are able to have both.  For me, Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor is aesthetically fantastic, but the story itself falls flat for a number of reasons.

Let’s start with the cool things about The Sculptor.  I liked the very format of a graphic novel in the same dimensions of a regular book.  I liked the use of a bluescale instead of a grayscale.  I liked the drawings themselves, the way the characters and the world wer depicted in ink.  Moreover, McCloud does a fantastic job with pacing and composition.  The dialogue is good and McCloud’s preference for visuals over dialogue is wonderful.  Even when the drawings look a little simple, there is great charm in that simplicity. 

Now beyond this point, I am going to be spoiling plot, so don’t read any more of this review if you don’t want the story spoiled.  Whatever I have to say about the story isn’t all that important anyway since your tastes are your own.  Buy or borrow the book and read it for yourself—it’s a quick and satisfying experience—and then you can hear what I have to say and tell me what you have to say.

All good?  Good.

I’m not really a fan of stories about moping and angst-y protagonists to begin with, but that wasn’t my problem here.  I wasn’t annoyed with David because he was moping.  I was annoyed with David, because he was so incredibly self-absorbed, and still more, I was annoyed with McCloud because he seemed equally self-absorbed.  On the surface, The Sculptor is about an artist willing to die for his art.  He would rather have a 200-day life-span in which to make incredible art than a lifetime of regular human existence.  But outside of a few passages about David believing in “absolutes,” McCloud never asks what it means to be willing to die for art.  In fact, David appears to have little to say with his sculptures.  The art that he makes after a feverish three weeks of binge-creating is nothing more than a collection of snapshots from his past, moments from his life.  The only thing David wants to talk about is himself, but he wants to say it loudly and be praised for it with money and accolades.  McCloud did not create an arc for David’s character in which he discovered what it is that he really had to say, discovered what art really was or what about it was worth dying for.  His final creation, the one he literally died to make was yet another snapshot from his past (Meg holding the baby).  The extent to which David grows is to realize that he needs to make every second of life count.  McCloud seems to embrace the David we meet and seems no more critical of David, in the end, than David is.  McClouds’s novel is every bit obsessed with David as David is of himself, which suggests a lack of irony in his portrayal of David’s self-absorption.  There are no subplots, nothing that happens that doesn’t directly affect David, no character relationships that exist beyond its impact on David.

Meg, while she insists she is not, is really just a thing in David’s world.  While searching the internet this afternoon to determine what didn’t sit well with me about Meg, I discovered the trope “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” a phrase coined by film critic Nathan Rabin describing Kirsten Dunst’s character in his review of Elizabethtown: “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”  That is literally what Meg is in the novel.  She is fun and quirky and there for the sole reason to teach David his lessons about how to live life.  McCloud half-heartedly attempts to complicate that image by giving Meg a few fiery and feisty explosions and chronic bouts of depression, possibly suggesting she is bi-polar or suffering from some similar condition.  The treatment of mental disorders seems painfully simplistic and without genuine insight.  I would be very interested to hear what activists in the mental health community would say about McCloud’s portrayal of Meg.  Of that chronic condition, we only ever witness one bout; her moods, whenever they surface, quickly fade and she returns to her plucky optimistic self.

McCloud gave himself nearly 500 pages to explore the themes of his novel, but there appears to be very little exploration at all.  He is of course, perfectly in his rights to do that—he should tell the story he wants to tell, not the one I want to hear.  My disappointment with the way he treated his own subjects is on me.  He’s a very talented storyteller, and if he ever really delves into the depths of a story he is telling, I would eagerly read it.