Prisoner 155: Simón Radowitzky

Anarchist Simón Radowitzky is given his due in this generous, sprawling graphic biography stippled with idealism. Forced from his childhood Russian shtetl by rampaging Cossacks, Radowitzky becomes acquainted with the anti-Czarist anarchist resistance before being sent by his father to Buenos Aires. There, he falls in with “anarchists, Jews, and some socialists” and, at a march, is assaulted by thugs. (“It was the same story... I was still among Cossacks, nobles, and a czar.”) After killing a police colonel who had led the bloody attack, Radowitzky is shipped to a remote prison and locked up for 21 years, “damaged and lost at the end of the world.” A cause célèbre, he spends much of his time in solitary confinement. Later, he fights the Soviets and fascists in the Spanish Civil War. The line art is fine and painterly, with coloring in black, white, and grays marked with unsettling bursts of pink watercolor wash that highlights both blood and sunsets. Although the story doesn’t unpack the motivations behind Radowitzky’s ideological commitment as fully as it could, his heroic, humble, and unbreakable dedication to antiauthoritarianism is evoked with fiery grace. This graphic treatment of a complicated hero is an epic of resistance and humanity. (Apr.)