Not long after John Lennon’s death in 1980, an earnest 16-year-old from LaGrange named Steve Darnall visited a local forum on gun control. While speaking to a woman legislator, Darnall began to cry, apologizing for becoming so emotional. The woman told him not to be embarrassed, because the world needs more people with strong feelings.
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It was advice Darnall took to heart, fueling his writing with indignation over ugly truths most would rather ignore. “Much of my work involves perception versus reality,” he says. Darnall, who now lives in Chicago, is the author of Uncle Sam (Vertigo/DC Comics), a graphic novel about a confused, guilt-ridden, street-dwelling, stinky personification of the figure pointing ominously from the famous army poster. A distraught old man in torn red-and-white striped trousers and a black coat, Sam is exposed to the destructive effects of more than two centuries of unfettered capitalism as he aimlessly roams the streets of an anonymous American city, largely going unnoticed as an everyday maniac. That city might look familiar: Darnall and illustrator Alex Ross, who lives in Wilmette, traveled around the Loop and along the Dan Ryan shooting pictures of crowded streets and smokestacks as studies for the book’s artwork.
Surrounded by crime, pollution, and decay, Sam bemoans the contrast between the city and the bright promise of a younger country: “Alabaster cities undimmed by human tears and good wars and new frontiers and amber waves of grain and better living through chemistry….The words stink of treachery.” –Melissa King
