I mean it as a compliment when I say that Sammy Harkham’s Blood of the Virgin is a very nerdy kind of comic; if you’re a fan of cartoonists such as Joe Matt or Seth, and their intense feeling for lonely, hapless men, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here. Like some of their work, superficially it’s a nostalgic beast, one set mostly in the Los Angeles film industry. It’s 1971, the year of Dirty Harry, Diamonds Are Forever and The French Connection, though you’d never know it: in Harkham’s universe, the Hollywood sign is far, far away. But there’s a lot going on here besides. Its hero, Seymour, is a 27-year-old movie editor at an exploitation film company who also happens to be a Jewish Iraqi immigrant. If the book is about one man’s struggle to become an artist in a city that cares nothing for losers, it’s also about the Jewish experience in the period when thousands of Holocaust survivors were still around to tell their stories. It is, in other words, as much about inherited guilt as it is about rank ambition.
