Alt history based on reality - SuffraJitsu
Oct. 5th, 2015 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailyWell, it's not often I hear about new graphic novels from the BBC, but there you go.
"SuffraJitsu - Mrs Pankhursts's Amazons" is a three part graphic novel series from Jet City Comics which details an alternate history, with some fascinating roots in the real history of the British Women's Suffrage movement and includes one of the most remarkable women in it.
In the years before World War I, the Women's Suffrage moment was getting more physical in it's campaigning, in response to a perceived lack of progress in the face of strong police opposition.
"We have not yet made ourselves a match for the police, and we have got to do it. The police know jiu-jitsu. I advise you to learn jiu-jitsu. Women should practice it as well as men." - Sylvia Pankhurst in 1913
And the result was; step forward one Edith Garrud who was, to put it politely 6'4 of fighting skills in a 4'11" body!
She and her husband were staunch proponents of Women's Suffrage and she became the official trainer to the movement in the art of self defence.
This is an actual poster from the era
And this is a contemporary editorial cartoon on the topic!
There's a more complete outline of Edith's remarkable story at the BBC link, which I thoroughly recommend.
The best trained members of the movement formed "The Amazons", a baritsu trained personal bodyguard for Mrs Pankhurst herself. These were ladies you did NOT want to get on the wrong side of... EVER!
The "SuffraJitsu" series is part of a larger shared world, the "Foreworld" and appears to involve utopian cults, a rather complicated conspiracy theory (Neal Stephenson, author of Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash, amongst others is one of the contributing writers and a straightfoward plotter he is NOT) and some additional sci-fi (I suspect steampunk, but don't have any evidence of that, so don't hold me to it)
Love the cover!
There's also a video trailer which dramatises part of the storyline.
Certainly looks to be... different, but interesting, I hope.
"SuffraJitsu - Mrs Pankhursts's Amazons" is a three part graphic novel series from Jet City Comics which details an alternate history, with some fascinating roots in the real history of the British Women's Suffrage movement and includes one of the most remarkable women in it.
In the years before World War I, the Women's Suffrage moment was getting more physical in it's campaigning, in response to a perceived lack of progress in the face of strong police opposition.
"We have not yet made ourselves a match for the police, and we have got to do it. The police know jiu-jitsu. I advise you to learn jiu-jitsu. Women should practice it as well as men." - Sylvia Pankhurst in 1913
And the result was; step forward one Edith Garrud who was, to put it politely 6'4 of fighting skills in a 4'11" body!
She and her husband were staunch proponents of Women's Suffrage and she became the official trainer to the movement in the art of self defence.
This is an actual poster from the era
And this is a contemporary editorial cartoon on the topic!
There's a more complete outline of Edith's remarkable story at the BBC link, which I thoroughly recommend.
The best trained members of the movement formed "The Amazons", a baritsu trained personal bodyguard for Mrs Pankhurst herself. These were ladies you did NOT want to get on the wrong side of... EVER!
The "SuffraJitsu" series is part of a larger shared world, the "Foreworld" and appears to involve utopian cults, a rather complicated conspiracy theory (Neal Stephenson, author of Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash, amongst others is one of the contributing writers and a straightfoward plotter he is NOT) and some additional sci-fi (I suspect steampunk, but don't have any evidence of that, so don't hold me to it)
Love the cover!
There's also a video trailer which dramatises part of the storyline.
Certainly looks to be... different, but interesting, I hope.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-06 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-06 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-06 07:41 am (UTC)There's some invention of people (Sanderson didn't exist AFAIK) and alliances (Katie Sandwina, "the Female Hercules," was a real weightlifter and suffragette, but never on the frontlines with Pankhurst and company), but the core of the idea is sound. There was a real corps of UK suffragettes who staged some truly clever escapes from the police -- body doubles, barbed wire hidden in flowers, the works. This is obviously amped up for comics, but it's far from pure invention.
Frankly, I'm hoping the upcoming Meryl Streep movie covers some of the Suffrajitsu territory.