Dead Memory

AUTHOR: Mathieu, Marc-Antoine

ARTIST: Marc-Antoine Mathieu (illustrator); Dirk Rehm (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Delcourt (French); Dark Horse Comics (English)

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION:Mémoire morte, 2000 (English translation, 2003)

Publication History

Dead Memory is the English translation (by Helge Dascher) of Mémoire morte by Marc-Antoine Mathieu. It was published by Dark Horse Comics in 2003. Dead Memory is the first of Mathieu’s books to be translated into English. As of 2011, the only other graphic novel by Mathieu available in English was his Les Sous-sols du révolu: Extraits du journal d’un expert (The Museum Vaults: Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert) which is the second of four graphic novels commissioned by the Louvre Museum and copublished by the Louvre and Futuropolis. The English edition was released by NBM ComicsLit in 2007.

Mathieu is a highly successful and admired graphic artist in France. His first graphic novel, Julius Corentin Acquefacques 1. L’Origine, won the Alph’art Coup de Coeur Prize for best first book at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 1991, and his third book in the series, Julius Corentin Acquefacques 3. Le Processus, received the Alph’art award for best story in 1994.

In addition to writing graphic novels, Mathieu is involved in a graphic-design business, Lucie Lom, which he founded in 1985 with Philippe Leduc. The firm is one of the major creators of expositions throughout France, including the Forêt suspendue (suspended forest) exhibit in Lille in 2004. After publishing the fourth volume of the Acquefacques series, Le Debut de la fin, Mathieu devoted himself to the projects of Lucie Lom and did not write and publish another graphic novel until Dead Memory.

Mémoire morte, the original work in French, was published by Delcourt in 2000. Mathieu’s first volume of his Julius Corentin Acquefacques series was published by Delcourt in 1990. This experimental graphic novel, the first to be drawn without delineated panels, launched Delcourt as a publisher of experimental and alternative graphic novels, and it is the major publisher of Mathieu’s work in France.

Plot

Dead Memory is a philosophical science-fiction graphic novel that targets an adult audience. It addresses issues of human existence and elements, such as language, that define and delimit human beings. In Dead Memory, Mathieu portrays a city of the future that is organized and controlled by a computer “ROM.” Each citizen has a black box, a communication device through which he or she receives real-time information. The black boxes also serve as a means of verifying the identity of each individual. The city is infinite, yet it is organized in every detail. Everything from its physical plan to the events that happen there is recorded, analyzed, evaluated, and preserved in ROM. Stability, order, and conformity reign in the city.

A twofold crisis is occurring in the city; mysterious walls dividing neighborhoods and sections of the city are appearing overnight, and the residents are losing their memories. The city administration is at a loss as to how to handle the crisis. Firmin Huff, an employee in the Land Registry, is assigned to investigate the problem. Huff begins his investigation at the Land Registry, where the staff is attempting to map the locations of the walls; however, walls are appearing so quickly that the registry cannot keep up. ROM is strangely quiet and unresponsive about the problem.

Next, Huff heads to the observatory. On the way, he is detained; a neighborhood is blocked off to let a Grinder demolish a building to make a new street. Huff suggests that the Grinder could be used to knock down the walls. His colleague Menilmont is appalled at the utopian character of such an idea. At the observatory, Huff learns that only the past is observed and hypotheses about the present and future are proposed. Huff proceeds to the Department of Communication, where he learns that ROM is still not speaking. He is given an enormous file containing all the dimensions of the walls and told that he has been appointed director of the “Incident Observation and Preliminary Investigation Commission.”

With the walls proliferating at an overwhelming rate, Huff turns his attention to the problem of memory loss. He counts all of the words that he still knows and disconnects his black box. Later when he confronts ROM, the computer will mock Huff for this daring act. That night he dreams. In the dream, he enters ROM’s complex and finds the entire city existing in a virtual world that has replaced the other “real” world. Upon waking, Huff searches through libraries and books to see if words are still there; he observes people leaving the city and decides to visit ROM. The confrontation between ROM and Huff ends with Huff unplugging ROM. Huff leaves and receives a message prerecorded by ROM on his black box. It is an account of ROM’s last dream. The city is shut down and silent. Letters begin to rain down; words are returning, and walls are being knocked down. The novel ends with ROM explaining that systems are living forms that die; ROM proposes that his story exists or does not depending upon whether or not the residents have relearned words and understand the story. The novel begins with ROM repeating Huff’s question about “who he is” and rephrasing it to “who are you?” It ends with another question, asking if there is reality without language.

Characters

•Firmin Huff, the protagonist, is a management-level employee in the Land Registry. He is assigned the task of finding out why walls are suddenly appearing throughout the city. Physically, he is more a caricature of a human being than an actual realistic person. He is short; has a large, round head; and has a large moustache. He wears large glasses that obscure his eyes. He is the only human character who has a significant role in the graphic novel. He moves about in the infinite city, consults various departments, and finally interacts with ROM as he attempts to solve the mystery of the walls and the residents’ memory loss.

•ROM is a computer that collects and stores all facts about the city, the events that take place there, and all of the actions and words of the residents, so they have no need to remember anything. ROM is both antagonist and friend to Huff. He identifies himself as having become all of the residents of the infinite city. Without him, Huff could solve nothing, yet he must cease to exist for the residents to reclaim their identities.

•The Infinite City is an overpopulated city without limits or borders that is controlled by ROM. It is organized and cataloged, with everything about it recorded. Ironically, however, the city administration has no idea of its size.

•Black Boxes resembling early mobile phones are devices that continuously transmit real-time information to the city’s residents. The residents are totally dependent on the boxes and must consult them to know what they are to do and where they are to go. The residents are required to always have their boxes with them because, in addition to providing controlling information about daily life, the boxes verify the identity of each resident and are a technological replacement for the required French carte d’identité (identification card).

Artistic Style

Mathieu avoids the use of color throughout his graphic novels. In his opinion, color tells too much and restricts the creative participation of the reader in the story. Mathieu’s complex use of black and white is the most striking feature of Dead Memory. It delineates and controls the story line and, at the same time, frees the reader to imaginatively elaborate the story at certain points.

The story is narrated by ROM. All of ROM’s narration appears as white words on a black background; by contrast, the dialogue of the various characters is presented in black words on white background. The story is divided into a prologue, eight chapters, and an epilogue, similar to a traditional novel. Each part is introduced by a title in a framed white box and is concluded with a frameless black panel. In this way, Mathieu introduces the section’s story and then opens the story’s end to the imagination of the reader. The final black panel represents the failure of the characters to find answers and also invites the reader to find the answers. However, the use of final black panels at the end of each section also adds a dimension of irony; there may be hidden answers, or the blackness may simply represent a void. Interestingly, only once in the novel does Mathieu use an image within an image. In the last chapter, a vague image that is difficult to identify appears in the shadow of a man knocking down a wall.

The use of black and white only is also an important element of character portrayal. The characters have really no distinguishing qualities. They are the crowd, the amorphous overpopulation of the city. They are the physical shells of human beings, whose thoughts, emotions, and memories have been stored in ROM. Only Huff, with his round head, his enormous glasses that hide his eyes, his large mustache, and his round white hat, stands out at all. Even Huff shares almost all of his physical features with various other characters. The reader has the impression that Huff has been made more visible in order for him to serve as a guide through the congested, confusing complexity of the city in crisis and to provide access to ROM.

Geometrical shapes are also a significant element of Mathieu’s graphic novel. They reflect the order and stability of the city. The use of vertical and perpendicular lines gives a sense of the infinite quality of the city. Many of the panels and drawings of the city resemble blueprints or diagrams of machines. Geometrical shapes also reaffirm the themes of the story: The prologue is entitled “Rectilinear Ruins”; the epilogue is “Circular Foundations.” One of the unanswerable questions considered by the characters is whether the city is round or square, which, by extension, is a question about infinity.

Themes

Dead Memory examines the relationship between human beings and the technology that they have produced. Mathieu questions how much of human activity and existence can be relegated to technology without reducing the human being to a creature who lacks the ability to remember, reason, create, and use language. The residents of the infinite city have lost control of their lives and their individuality and eventually lose their ability to remember and to use language. They live only in the present and are totally dependent on their black boxes for information and for direction for their daily activities.

Mathieu also satirizes the modern bureaucratic tendency to survey, analyze, evaluate, and record without taking effective action. The various city departments create large, useless files that provide no solution to either the appearance of the walls or the loss of memory. The observers see the past but are not really aware of its connection to the present or the future. They lack any sense of continuity in human existence. Mathieu also portrays how the human need for conformity and avoidance of change restricts human existence. These themes lighten the tone of Dead Memory and permeate the work with an ironic humor, as what may have appeared beneficial becomes an obstacle.

The importance of language is also an integral theme in Mathieu’s graphic novel. Language that enables communication between human beings, the expression of individuality, and the intellectual realization of the past play major roles in the story. For reality to exist, language must exist, be understood, and used. Without language, nothing is understood or remembered, and, thus, there is no reality.

Impact

For Mathieu, the graphic novel is a medium in which he can give full freedom to his imagination and creativity. His stories are compilations of influences from his intellectual interests and experiences, both artistic and scientific, which he has reworked and filtered through his creative genius. Dead Memory presents a world that reflects the influence of his mathematical investigations, his readings of Franz Kafka and Jose Luis Borges, and his interest in the Surrealists and le nouveau roman.

From the earliest volume of his Julius Corentin Acquefacques series, Mathieu has taken the graphic novel in the direction of serious literature and significantly contributed to it being considered art. He uses it to investigate philosophical questions about human existence and the existence of reality. Mathieu also enlarges the creative possibility of the graphic novel as he explores the use of images within images and stories within stories and challenges the reader to look beyond what is presented. Mathieu’s graphic novels have been successful in France, but their effect on the graphic novel on a global scale has been restricted by lack of translated versions, particularly translations to English. None of the five Julius Corentin Acquefacques volumes have been translated into English. The two graphic novels that have appeared in English have enjoyed a good reception.

Further Reading

Mathieu, Marc-Antoine. The Museum Vaults: Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert (2007).

Schuiten, François, and Benoît Peeters. The Great Walls of Samaris (1987).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Tower (1993).

Bibliography

Dauncey, Hugh, ed. French Popular Culture: An Introduction. London: Arnold, 2003.

Fosdick, Charles, Laurence Groves, and Libbie McQuilan, eds. The Francophone Bande Dessinée. New York: Rodopi, 2005.

Groensteen, Thierry. The System of Comics. Translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007