Christian Perrissin

Given how exaggerated and unreliable all the stories about Calamity Jane are, this probably fits about about as comfortably on a biographical fiction shelf as it does on a biography shelf. Based largely on the letters that Martha Jane Cannary supposedly wrote to her daughter (who'd she'd adopted out to a wealthy couple on agreement that she be known in life only as a family friend), which were sent posthumously and therefore, supposedly, more honest than the wild tall tales she told in saloons and shows, Calamity Jane certainly makes for a wild ride across the old west.

Born into a Mormon family that followed the Oregon Trail to Utah only for both parents to die when she was 14, Martha Jane sets sets out disguised as a boy to seek her fortune and avoid becoming a second wife. She soon forgets her five siblings as she finds work first as a laundress and then, again in disguise, accompanying army caravans. From then on she lives openly as a woman, bouncing between jobs on the plains and in soors, and between skirts and pants. After saving the life of Bill Hickok, they supposedly marry and she has his baby, though she eventually (and mournfully) gives the girl up for adoption so they can both have better lives. Alcohol and men take their toll, though between her work on ranches and convoys, and in laundromats and inns, she gets by...always spinning her fabulous tall tales for willing audiences. Age hits her faster than expected, but surprise motherhood and reluctant marriage still can't tie her down: she works for a while in Buffalo Bill's show and sneaks in a few visits to her first daughter. Finally ending up in Deadwood with old friends and her second daughter in school, Jane dies and is buried next to her long-beloved Hickok...though no one's sure they were ever really married.

In water color shades of black and white that suggest old photographs, Perrissin and Blanchin tell as truth the stories that could be totally made up. Though they say they've tried to find the fact in the fiction, there really doesn't seem to be much way of knowing what's true and what's not. They mention this a few times but not, perhaps, as much as the history lover in me might like.

Still, there's no doubt Jane's life was remarkable. Not only did she live openly as a woman in tough jobs, but her very inability to settle down allowed her to bump elbows--or be in places where she could plausibly claim to have bumped elbows--with famous western personalities, and to allow today's storytellers to display the wide range of experiences to be had out west: ranching, army life, wagon trains, brothels, laundromats, hospitals, motherhood, traveling shows big and small... Calamity Jane's life had it all. Including tragedy: death, rape, abusive relationships, alcoholism, stillbirths, children given up for adoption, unhappy marriages, unrequited (possibly imagined) love. I'd like to say Perrissin and Blanchin don't varnish anything, but they did, at one point, seem to suggest that if Jane had known what the U.S. army would eventually do to the Native American population, she wouldn't have worked with them--which just seems absolutely absurd. If nothing else, a job was a job.

Still, they did a great job bringing Jane to larger-than-life. I'm not sure I'll claim to know the truth about her life having read their book, but I can at least claim to know some of her wild stories about it.… (more)

When I read biographies, I'm hoping for insight into a real person or context for why this person's life is important to know. Unfortunately, this long, long graphic novel mostly offers up a string of events that cohere to inform only that Calamity Jane was a habitual liar and alcoholic. Indeed, even the string of events offered have to be asterisked as possibly false, as they are based on sources created mostly by the prevaricator in question herself, and contradictions abound.

The dusty dry narration and scratchy art do little to make the reading experience pleasurable.… (more)