scans_daily

Rejoice! On this day I bring to you several pages of a manga series which is practically two manga in one: Me and the Devil Blues.

Me and the Devil Blues, you may know, is also the name of a song by legendary blues artist Robert Johnson. This is no coincidence, for this manga is about Robert Johnson... kinda. Not much is known about Johnson's life, and this manga is not meant to be biographical (indeed, it only ever calls the protagonist "RJ", and not his real name). Instead, it takes elements of Johnson's life and mythos and writes a pseudo-Southern Gothic tale (er, kinda--I'll get to that later).

The mythos of Johnson that it incorporates is the legend that he met the Devil at a crossroad and sold his soul to become a master musician.

I have to say that I love the art on this series. It's wonderful. I guess sometimes things can seem weirdly stretched, but that's an artistic choice for showing perspective and not poor drawing.

The series opens with RJ being yelled at by his sister and wife for being a lazy good-for-nothing. He oversleeps, is lazy (so they say), spends his nights going to juke joints, and dreams of becoming a blues player rather than working hard to provide for his soon-to-arrive child. Read all the following right-to-left:

They do indeed go to the juke joint, and RJ at one point gets up to play the guitar... and gets laughed off the stage due to his crummy playing. While drinking his sorrows away, some of the other patrons tell him how he can get guitar skills.

The next day, they go to church:

There's a fair amount of poetic musings on the nature of blues like RJ does there.

Later, RJ goes down to the juke again. After being lured outside by a girl, he hears the most bewitching blues being played from inside the shack, and leaves her to run back inside. However, the blues player is gone, and no-one seems to have noticed who it was or where exactly he went. RJ notices he appears to have left his guitar behind and says he'll find the man to give it back.

But, well, nothing happens. So RJ goes home. There's a flashback which shows Virginia (his current wife) and him as he was trying to woo her. Except he was using some voodoo charms to try to do so, which Virginia laughed at. Cut to present day, and she and his sister are laughing about it all over again.

Over several weeks, RJ continues to go to the juke joint, talking with Son House and Willie Brown about the blues, but he continues not to get it. He insists that blues is just about music, or about skill, but Son tries to tell him otherwise.

RJ stubbornly insists that playing the blues is just about skill at the guitar, and gets into a drunken fight with Son. He storms out of the juke, and ambles about drunkenly until he finds himself in a graveyard. There he hears a ghostly sound, and makes his way back to the juke. There he walks past Son and Willie playing the blues, sits down on a stool in a corner, and begins playing guitar himself.

His playing is phenomenal, getting the attention and admiration of everyone in the building. Son even gives up playing, since no-one is listening to him anymore, RJ having stolen his audience. As RJ continues playing, his sister and brother-in-law come in.

After this, RJ meets Clyde Barrow (yes, really), who basically kidnaps RJ and forces him to accompany him. It really is kind of a strange shift for the series (even though admittedly it happens after a mere four chapters), and Clyde doesn't really seem to fit the odd horror vibe that the series seemed to initially be about. In fact, some time after the two meet up, they come across a virulently racist town that imprisons RJ so they can lynch him, and much of the narrative focus shifts to Clyde instead. So, like I said earlier, it kinda feels like two rather different manga. The horror aspects do continue to appear, but it seems like the author wanted to explore other aspects of America during this time period (Bonnie & Clyde, racism, lynching, the end of prohibition, etc) rather than focus on a Faustian blues player. And while Clyde can be interesting to follow, that's not what I thought I was getting when I picked up the book.

Worst of all, it never gets its focus back. The series terminated after four volumes--and not in a semi-satisfying "I'm gonna get the ax soon best wrap this up as quick as I can" way; in a "I'm gonna take a break mid-story and never come back". They never do get all the way away from the lynch mob town. It's a shame, since it started out pretty promising.

In case the references to lynch mobs and racism don't make it clear, the series as a whole might be triggering, and there are also some violent scenes with Clyde, and hints of sexual abuse. The series was translated into English by Del Rey, although these are scanslations I found.

41 pictures from three chapters below the cut. The chapters are 48-54 pages long, so these are still within 1/3 of each.