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Book Review: Crecy

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By: DThompson | in: Books, Comics |

Crecy

“Cunt.”
There. I said it. If it bothers you, by all means stay away from Warren Ellis’ highly entertaining graphic novel Crecy.
Best known for the sci-fi noir comic Transmetropolitain, this time Ellis takes you on a first hand journey through England’s 1346 invasion of France. The book is named after the battle (named after the town) where everyday English peasant soldiers, sort of the “citizen soldiers” of their day, slaughtered the French aristocracy and their hired mercenaries. The operating word here is ‘slaughter’ and Crecy, God bless it, doesn’t skimp on the gory details.

The narrator, at once a man of his own era and cognizant of how 1346 seems in our politically correct times, gives us the following advice on page 1: “In England, “cunt” is puctuation.” And then he proves it, by saying it about six billion times. When our narrator and guide isn’t randomly blurting out the “c” word, he’s using it to insult whole ethnic groups of people. He has little nice to say about the French, the Scottish, The Welsh and just about everyone else. It’s actually all quite droll as his hatred spews at unforseen moments and with little provocation. As he says, “The French speak in music but English only soars when we start being bloody ‘orrible to people.” Well, horrible they are and soar the language does into twisting strings of gleeful insult.
For a VERY short book that’s little more than an historical narrative, Crecy is amusing and engaging, graphically violent while exhibiting a real degree of class consciousness. The book comes down squarely on the side on its English everymen protagonists, reserving a special didsain for aristocrats both French and English and their belief in their own superiority over other men.

Well, pride goeth before a fall and it’s a great big muddy, bloody splat of a fall that takes place at Crecy in 1346. You’d think the French would have learned, what with half or so of the aristocracy slaughtered, yet they made the same mistake again aproximately fifty years later at Agincourt. I guess once you start thinking of yourself as “all that” it can be difficult to stop.
Oh, and in between all the cursing and hatred and streams of insult and mucking about in the rain and graphic depictions of massive flights of arrows coming to land, Ellis’ book also manages to tell you where the peace sign came from. Now that’s a book worth reading.

VERDICT: Not for those who dislike that word I said at the start of the review.


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Posted on April 8, 2008

Comments

2 Responses to “Book Review: Crecy”

  1. DThompson on April 8th, 2008 1:44 am

    OK, so maybe he doesn’t say the “C” word six BILLION times…


  2. Charbarred on April 8th, 2008 6:47 am

    It ain’t proper English literature if it doesn’t have the C word in it….


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