Seriocomics

Donald Duck, meet Karl Marx

Attention, truthseekers. Now, in only minutes a day, you can dip into Einstein, Freud, Marx and other intellectual giants without all that painful reading. The secret: E-Z Read comic books that make you laugh while you learn.

Such an ad might be penned to describe a collection of "documentary comic books," the first of which went on sale this week in U.S. college and trade bookstores. Already selling briskly in Europe and Latin America, the cheeky seriocomics treat great thinkers with snappy drawings and humorous cartoon panels, presumably to appeal to the generation and others intimidated by reading the originals. "We're combining the popular Donald Duck form with serious intellectual thought," argues Pantheon Books' Tom Engelhardt, U.S. editor of the series' first title, the 158-page Marx for Beginners ($2.95).

On the evidence of the Marx comic book which has been translated into seven languages and has sold 150,000 copies worldwide, the Donald Duck part of the effort is a success. Produced by award-winning Mexican Political Cartoonist Eduardo del Rio under the pseudonym Rius, the book relies on a barnyard of impish figures to add humor to the story of "Charlie" Marx ("Wasn't he one of the Marx Brothers?"one character asks early on). The book dances quickly through a field as woolly as the history of philosophy prior to Marx. For example, France's Rene Descartes "introduces us to a mechanistic concept of the world," observes a whimsical bird in one cartoon panel, adding: "Later, we'll see what this is and whether it's edible." In a playful hand-lettered preface, del Rio says that a "reason for trying to take on Charlie was my wish to understand him--an ambition which I haven't satisfied." He repeats that note of puzzlement throughout the book, drawing in a variety of marginal characters who scratch their heads at the ideas and jargon of philosophers like Hegel and Kant.

Though the fare is heavy and perceptive compared with conventional comics, the cartoon paneling cannot, of course, do justice to the complexity of Marxist thought. Del Rio's treatment of the theory of surplus value is little more than a shouting match between a cartoon worker who wants more wages and a Daddy Warbucks entrepreneur who seeks investment return. Worse, del Rio occasionally slips into heated leftist polemic and embarrassing overpraise of his hero. At one point, he credits Marx singlehanded with now making possible "what was impossible for 20 centuries: freedom from the exploitation of man by man''-a claim inaccurate enough to bring a blush even to the cheeks of devoted Marxist scholars.

Marx for Beginners was first translated into English in 1976 by the Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, a small, left-wing London publishing venture. Intrigued by del Rio's idea, they have since embarked upon a whole series--including comic-format volumes on Lenin, Freud, Jung, Darwin, Mao, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and even a subject title. Nuclear Power for Beginners. W.R.P.C. editors are delighted to be associated with "such a prestigious American publisher" as Pantheon. But whether their books, originally designed, the British publishers say, for "a committed socialist market," will catch on in the U.S., as college trot or liberal fad, is a $2.95 question.

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