Can someone in possession of the truth become an enemy of the people? What good is being right if you don’t have power? Is the absolute majority always right?
Javi Reyone of the numerous talents that have emerged from the Escola Joso quarry, adapts the play “An Enemy of the People”, a text that raises fundamental and complex questions about the democratic system. Issues that, 140 years later, are still valid, which makes Ibsen’s work, as this graphic novel demonstrates, a universal story that could be adapted anywhere and at any time without losing the luster of his critical spirit.
It is not the first time that Javi Rey faces the adaptation of a literary work. His “Weather” (Planeta Cómic, 2016), which adapted the homonymous novel by Jesús Carrasco, won him the award for Best New Author at the Barcelona Comic Fair. The comic adaptation of a play is less common, even taking into account that one of the forerunners of the ninth art, “Story of Monsieur Jabot” by Rodolphe Töpffer, adapted “The Bourgeois Gentleman” of Moliere. Reading any theatrical work, moreover, has always been a somewhat challenging process for me, since it requires the person reading it not only to imagine the story, but also to imagine its stage representation, which is what finally completes and gives meaning to the text.
so he has done Javi Rey, giving it another twist to adapt it to a totally different language, that of the comic. And, in this transformation, certain licenses have necessarily been taken, contributing elements of their own harvest, but always respecting the essence of the original text. To have adhered, for example, to the five scenarios of the five acts of Ibsen’s play, which makes perfect sense in a theatrical performance, would have greatly constrained and limited its adaptation. Instead of that, Rey takes us through the beautiful landscapes of the small coastal town and moves the characters to other settings to thus print a dynamism different from that of the theatrical piece. In this sense, I believe that Rey has been very successful in knowing how to discern which parts of the work could be more flexible and which should be respected almost in their entirety, as is the case of the powerful speech that the protagonist, Tomas Stockmann, delivers before his stunned fellow citizens. In this way, the script manages to be faithful to the original content, taking it to its terrain and giving the story an agile rhythm thanks to the inclusion of some pages with hardly any dialogue, with large vignettes, which offer a breather after the intensity of some scenes. .
I can’t miss the style of Javi Rey, impeccable in the successful design of each of the characters, without ever neglecting the backgrounds and opting for an intense and vehement color palette. It is understandable that, like other authors such as Josep Homs or Jordi Lafebre, his work has been recognized in the Franco-Belgian market, where he has been working for years. With “An Enemy of the People”, shows that he is capable of conjuring a solid work both in script and drawing. Revisiting this classic is also sadly opportune in a time of manipulation, misinformation and wild speculation in which prosperity is confused with wealth and ignorance is still rampant.
It has always seemed to me that “An Enemy of the People” is a passionate praise of those who, despite the circumstances, decide to go against the current and be faithful to their principles, just like that recurring and allegorical image that he has chosen Javi Rey: that of the black sheep that abandons the flock. But above all it is an excellent opportunity to reflect on our democratic system, which is far from perfect but which is, as they say, the least bad of political systems. It is about knowing its scope and its limits and subjecting it, if necessary, to criticism. Because that critical spirit, embodied in the protagonist of this story, constitutes, or should constitute, one of its foundations.
