You know what the Depression looked like. Black-and-white photos of hardscrabble farmers. Hoovervilles and shantytowns. Lines of desperate men waiting for work; lines of desperate women waiting for food. All of it seen through a cloud of dust.
One of the most remarkable things about Nick Hayes’ Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl Ballads is the way it reimagines the visuals of the Dust Bowl, that iconic American place and time. Those hard men waiting for work make appearances, yes, and Hayes’ panels adopt a sepia tone appropriate to the blowing dirt of the 1930s plains. But in telling the early years of folk singer Guthrie’s career, Hayes portrays the Dust Bowl as a creative crucible, a place of great cruelty but also great kindness, a world that inspired Guthrie’s love of beauty but also his populist fury.
Hayes’ artwork is fluid, ornate, and rich. He draws Guthrie as a loose-limbed young man surrounded by swirling influences: the terrain of the plains and of Mexico; memories of his mother’s suffering and the fires that uprooted his family; the old songs and stories that he loves to sing; the bankers and businessmen whose greed destroy the place he loves. Hayes’ book is a beautifully written, well-researched, vibrantly illustrated comic that makes a convincing and fascinating argument for the origins of Guthrie’s genius. We’re very proud to have Nick Hayes illustrating the March issue of the Slate Book Review.
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Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl Ballads by Nick Hayes. Abrams ComicArts.
See all the pieces in the Slate Book Review.
