Graphic Novel Reviews: Al Capone

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Title: Al Capone
Published by: Black Panel Press
Written by: Swann Meralli
Illustrated by: Pierre-Francois Radice
ISBN: 9781990521164
Ages: 18+

Is ambition a crime?

You are invited to walk into a jail cell and chat with ruthless gangster, Al Capone.
Al Capone tells his story in the graphic novel biography, Al Capone by Swann Meralli. With five chapters covering his lifetime, this story is a quick and brutal read.

Framed as Al Capone telling his mother how he landed in jail, the graphic novel begins when Capone is young. He makes a promise to tell his mother the truth. As readers explore the graphic novel deeper, they question how truthful Capone’s self-told story really is. During each of the crimes throughout his life, he justifies his actions. When he is young, he steals a fish because his family is poor and hungry. When he is older, he uses greed and desperation in the Prohibition era to exude influence and get rich in 1920s Chicago. Part delusion and part rationale, Capone lists justifications and logic fallacies to entice sympathy from his audience. He frames all his wrongdoings as chance, luck, necessity, and ambition. This graphic novel sets Al Capone’s story in a historical context. Although sources are cited, the best evidence of his life have may still be fictitious since Capone was a masterful liar and manipulator. Readers can decide.

Visually, perhaps the most unsettling moments in Al Capone are not the moments of violence but rather the pauses between his plotting and brutality to eat signature Italian food dripping with red sauces. The artist uses a simple caricature for Al Capone so the reader can easily follow him throughout the flashbacks to his younger years to his time in jail. Child Capone lives in a brighter, sepia world. His environments and appearance become increasingly gritty as he ages, earns his signature facial scar, and ends up imprisoned.

The graphic novel, Al Capone by Swann Meralli, is best suited for readers 18 and older. The story does not shy from using the slurs of the time and depicting racial bullying, extremes of poverty, prostitution, and planned murders.

This graphic novel biography explores the tangle of violence, ambition, and greed. The story is as plausible an account of Al Capone’s thought-process as possible. This graphic novel shows a complex man and provides a slice-of-life view of the seedy-side of America in the 1920s.

For fans of the movies, The Godfather and Road to Perdition.

Angela Dabrowski
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