Obscure Comic of the Month is a column where I take a look at a comic or series that hasn't really been talked about. This covers independent comics, zines, weird spin-offs, webcomics and more.
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Squire by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas - 2022 Quill Tree Books
Contains Spoilers
There's been a topic of conversation floating around recently putting forth the idea that stories with a 'message' are somehow compromised by their decision to prioritise some kind of 'personal opinion' over the 'telling of the story.' Now, anyone who has at least paid half attention to what they were told in literature class can tell you how silly of an idea that this is, but it is increasingly depressing to see how many people are parroting such nonsense.
The idea that 'the story' and 'the message' are two separate entities that can clash makes about as much sense as implying that 'the mechanics' and 'the movement' of a vehicle have no impact on each other. While, yes, it is possible for stories to tell broader tales with no great high minded purpose, even something as simple as 'this is funny' or 'this is exciting' still constitutes a 'message' and intent.
Really, I shouldn't have to waste my time going over this, but I felt it a particularly pertinent point to begin on given I'm about to cover Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas' Squire, a fun, simple adventure story with a capital M message.
Squire tells the story of Aiza, a young girl who lives on the fringes of the Bayt-Sajji empire and a member of the Ornu people, a colonised minority within the empire. As an Ornu, Aiza is a second-class citizen and is forced to hide her identity due to being treated as a potential insurrectionist, guilty until proven innocent. Aiza seeks to become a squire and later knight within the empire's ranks in the hopes of gaining full citizenship and proving to the greater populace that her people can be loyal subjects.
Aiza's attempts, however, soon prove to be in vain, as no matter how hard she tries she realises that she alone cannot gain acceptance for her people within the eye of an empire that calls for blind obedience. That no matter how far she goes to try and show that the Ornu can assimilate her masters will be more than happy to demand she take up arms against her own people.
Reading that short plot description you can see already that Squire is no entirely constructed fictional world, as if such a thing could exist. There are probably more than a dozen historical and contemporary conflicts that you could map Aiza's dilemma on to. Given that Alfageeh and Shammas come from Jordanian and Palestinian backgrounds, respectively, you can probably reason out yourself what history the story has been inspired by.
If all this is making Squire sound like a dour treatise on the nature of colonialism then fear not, because it's quite the opposite. The story is light, breezy and fun, with optimistic but well rounded characters. The story falls pretty heavily on the idealistic side, a much needed take given our current propensity for cynicism right now. It's a rip roaring adventure full of excitement and heart. You could easily consume it in one sitting, cover to cover.
Alfageeh's artwork brings a magnetic, animated style to the proceedings. There's a feeling of constant motion to the panels that emphasises Aiza's energy and optimism. As she refuses to be beaten down by the world, refuses to give up, we believe it because of the energy and dynamism Alfageeh give to her movements. Add to that the use of several real world locations as inspiration for settings of the comic, and it almost feels as through the panels are moving in front of us.
This is not to say that Squire takes it's own subject matter lightly, however. As mentioned, Shammas has put great deal of intent into the words and world in which we see this plot through. By choosing to set the story within a constructed, fictional conflict, the story takes on a more universal context. The injustices that Aiza faces mirror a great many injustices across the world, and her refusal to back down and be beaten into cynicism has likewise a universal appeal.
As Squire's story continues, we get drawn further into not only the empire's crimes, but also their justifications, and the apparatus in which evil is done and is continued to be done, sometimes by the most well intentioned of people. While the story concludes into a neat and tidy ending, it does not leave the reader with the suggestion that the evils of the world are so easily defeated through a single sword fight. Aiza's story may be over (for now) but her fight is far from done. Yet in spite of such insurmountable odds, her refusal to give up is a victory in and of itself.
Squire is a solid, fun, exciting and at times intense and emotional story that is wrapped entirely around it's message and it is all the stronger for it. Taking out the real world subtext of the story would be like taking the engine out of a car and expecting it to still go. It's a damn shame that we're still having silly arguments about how stories are 'ruined' by 'messages,' but I take heart in knowing that we have works such as Squire to prove that such an attitude is balderdash.
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Jack Harvey 2023. Squire (c) 2022 Nadia Shammas and Sara Alfageeh. Images used under Fair Use.
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