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HENNI (graphic novel review)

Review by  Lily Fierro
Written and Illustrated by Miss Lasko-Gross
Published by Z2 Comics
ISBN: 978-1940878027
Pub. Date: January 2015 / $19.99

Following the discourse technique of Ken Russell’s The Devils and Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond The Hills of using hyperbolic scenarios to critique the perversion of faith in organized religion, Henni by Miss Lasko-Gross arrives to the graphic novel world at an opportune moment given current events.

Illustrated with a dour and severe color palette of blacks and blues, Henni opens with a fundamental question of faith: What is faith if one does not attend an organized service run by clergymen?

In Henni’s surroundings, the fictional organized religion and faith have a concrete societal link, and when her own father refuses to attend temple, she must witness the violent repercussions inflicted on her father.

With the nightmarish experience of her father’s mutilation by clergy guards fresh in her mind, Henni begins to doubt and question the law and the rituals of her religion and its institution governing her village.

Henni’s inquiries are not welcomed, and the vicious response of her temple leaders accelerate the erosion of her obedience to the rules she had always questioned but had followed regardless. Then, to exacerbate her skepticism and her distrust of the temple leaders, she uncovers the ritual of food offerings to the temple as a disguise for bribing the leaders to match upcoming potential brides to the wealthiest grooms.

With most of her own belief in the religion she had ascribed to destroyed, Henni must decide whether to stay in her village and abide by the oppressive and corrupt distortion of law by the whims and greed of the temple leaders or to escape. Uncertain of what lies beyond her village, Henni chooses to escape with the risk that whatever is out there could be better or worse.

Unfortunately, her first destination in her fleeing is much worse than her village. The new village is more violent, more oppressive, and uses the word of God to justify the power and success of the higher tiers in their own perverse caste system.

In this village, any hint of independent thought proves to be fatal, so when Henni receives a punishment of mutilation for enjoying the non-secular art of an outsider, she must find a way to escape yet again.

For a coming of age tale, there is little attention given to Henni as a complete character and individual, thus dulling the connection between the reader and the protagonist.

Henni focuses less on the full trajectory of Henni’s growth on her adventures as she seeks a just and equal land and more on the heavy-handed conclusions Miss Lasko-Gross wants you to gather on each obstacle Henni faces.

As a result, by the end of the novel, rather than demonstrating the full self-reflective path of intellectual development and comprehension of one’s individual faith and thus rise to mental maturity, Henni almost feels like a book of cautionary tales.

The novel fails to fully flesh out Henni’s own understanding of her faith or even lack thereof in a world where religion seems to be an evil force, which is the space where a faith based narrative can really shine. For example, Harvey Pekar’s Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me successfully ruminates Pekar’s own understanding of individual faith and organized religion, which then lead to his transition into full atheism.

On the contrary, Henni does not deliver a path of spiritual self realization for our protagonist. Instead, Miss Lasko-Gross utilizes the horrors Henni encounters in the religious communities to teach important but familiar lessons in understanding the pitfalls of organized religion.

In focusing the narrative on fictional composite religions that allude to real ones, Henni reiterates the dangers of religious extremism and fundamentalism across all religions, making the lessons themselves universal but not new because they contain conclusions that most of us already know in learning about the extremist actions of religious organizations occurring in our own reality.

Henni  is not a bad read by any means. The artwork is phenomenally beautiful, gothic, and oddly playful, but its narrative just does not allow for any further insight into understanding faith outside of organized religion, which was an opportunity not only to make the novel a richer one for its fundamental message but also to build more reader empathy for Henni as the protagonist.

The novel had the potential to become so much more than an indictment on fundamentalism and extremism in organized religions; it could have been a superb and intelligent discussion on the development and adjustment of one’s own beliefs in a God or in nothing under non-ideal circumstances, but it instead only uses pathos to shock and anger the reader.

Sadly, the horrors inflicted on Henni in the extremist villages she encounters are innocuous compared to the atrocities committed in real life to innocent civilians by radical religious groups, so if I was looking to read something to condemn the worst of organized religion, I would most likely just read the news.

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