Weird and Salacious: Rick Geary's 19th Century
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on May 30, 2006 Sign up now!
by Kate Culkin, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 5/30/2006
Once again, cartoonist Rick Geary combines elegant illustration and careful historical research to bring to life another grisly 19th-century murder. The Case of Madeline Smith, the latest volume in his popular, series A Treasury of Victorian Murder, is the true story of a wealthy Scottish woman who killed her less-prosperous lover to protect her reputation.
In an interview with PWCW, Geary says his Victorian murder series allows him to explore his interests in both true crime and in 19th-century mores. "I've always been a true crime buff—it appeals to the weird side of me," he explains. Geary says he's fascinated by the 19th century because "the Victorian era is so foreign to the era we live in now," pointing to the century's strict rules of conduct for sexual behavior and its salacious popular press. "I am also attracted to the era in a visual sense—all the knickknacks, carriages, buildings—the whole thing attracts me."
Geary calls the Smith story "emblematic of the era." Smith, the daughter of a Glasgow architect, carried on a covert romance with Emile L'Anglier, a clerk at a seed warehouse, for two years. But in 1857, after Smith accepted a successful merchant's marriage proposal, L'Anglier died quite suddenly of arsenic poisoning. Smith's passionate letters to L'Anglier pointed the authorities towards her and she was soon arrested. A sensational trial followed, with the public devouring newspaper accounts of the proceedings.
Geary devoted six months to researching the Smith story, and the book includes a bibliography. But the book is far from a dry historical account. By adopting what he calls a "Victorian voice" and filling his graceful, black-and-white artwork with small, revealing details, Geary viscerally re-creates the dramatic events. In a remarkably concise manner, he crafts memorable biographical portraits and conveys the intense emotions of the romance, a sense of the historical time and place, and the tumult of the trial and its aftermath.
NBM, which will distribute the book to the trade itself, will release the hardcover volume in July with an initial printing of 8,000 copies. A paperback edition will follow six months later. Geary, as he does every year, will be at the Artists' Alley at the San Diego Comic-Con International in July.
The previous seven volumes in the Victorian Murder series have been popular with their original intended audience—fans of true crime and social history. But the series has also found an unexpected group of fans, Geary explains: "I have been surprised and gratified that they have become popular with young readers and in school libraries." Its popularity with libraries began in 1996 when the Young Adult Library Services Association named Jack the Ripper, the second book in the series, to its "Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers" list.
"The series has been a pioneer in institutional markets," notes NBM publisher Terry Nantier. All seven previous volumes in the series are in print, and Nantier says, "They are a constant success story." The two most popular, Jack the Ripper and The Borden Tragedy, have sold upward of 10,000 copies each.
Geary is currently working on The Bloody Benders, the story of a German immigrant family who killed as many as a dozen people in Kansas in the 1870s. He may then turn his attention to the 1906 murder of architect Stanford White. Geary explains that the early 20th century is as far forward as he is willing to explore: "I don't want to bring it too close to the modern era—I want to keep a sense of detachment."
