Hunter S. Thompson is sort of like Ernest Hemingway or Jack Kerouac: his voice is so strong and unmistakable that when you immerse yourself in his writing, you have to work hard to avoid becoming just another acolyte. Look what's happened to Johnny Depp. He played Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, became such a devotee that he got The Rum Diary made, and according to the foreword to Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson, he is now trying to get The Curse of Lono turned into a movie too.
That foreword is written by Alan Rinzler, one of Thompson's many editors and collaborators over the years, and it's an unforgiving, fascinating piece of writing. I have heard at least one other interview with an editor of Thompson's (John A. Walsh), and the picture of him that emerges is pretty consistent: he was capable of brilliant writing, but he was also an alcoholic, an addict, and an incredibly difficult human being to deal with. His collaborators miss his talent but aren't surprised he killed himself, and didn't necessarily feel close to him personally.
So here's a man who inserted himself into his journalism, and wrote about himself and his opinions extensively, in a way that bewitches readers into wanting to be like him, but in a way that also doesn't square with the accounts of those who worked with him. Is the heroic drug use in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas less heroic if you know that his immoderation eventually killed him? Is his relentless pursuit of Nixon in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 less compeling when you know what a political crank he became in later years?
I give Gonzo credit for at least raising these questions. Writer Will Bingley wants to put Thompson's life into context, and you can see him fighting to do it page by page, to convey Thompson's irresistible appeal while at the same time making sure we understand that the binge of Las Vegas came after months and months of struggling and failing to report on the Chicano Pride movement in East L.A., and his partner in crime in Las Vegas, Oscar Acosta, was his main contact and friend there. Many times (as with this example) he succeeds.
He also happens to know how to write for the comic book page, and so keeps his text spare, giving Anthony Hope-Smith's excellent art room to breathe. Hope-Smith never catches his figures straight on, preferring to draw them from slightly above or below, and he uses those changing angles to create dynamism and a sense of unbalance even in scenes where Thompson is sitting still.
But it was in examining these drawings that I first began to understand what was bugging me about Gonzo.
See, Hope-Smith's drawing of Hunter S. Thompson is preceded by two massively famous, cartoon Thompson avatars: Uncle Duke and Spider Jerusalem. It's impossible to look at Hope-Smith's drawings of Hunter S. Thompson and not think of how Garry Trudeau and Darick Robertson drew him. Similarly, it's impossible to read Bingley's words and not think of the cartoon version of Hunter S. Thompson the man created for himself.
All those cartoon versions are simply way, way more fun than Gonzo's straight-ahead truth. The book would have been better served not trying to compete with them. I'm imagining a drawn version of an older Thompson, during his waning, struggling years, or even a younger Thompson, during the formative time in Puerto Rico that he novelized as The Rum Diary. Gonzo does give some pages to each, but it devotes the bulk of its attention to Thompson's most creatively fertile years, his peak from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. That's exactly the Thompson we already know intimately, and no matter how Bingley fights to give us a fresh perspective it can't help but feel a little familiar.
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