Shadow is looking for a missing girl at Lakeside, and Mr. Ibis is gifting us with a story.
American Gods: My Ainsel # 5, Writer: Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell Artist: Scott Hampton, Mark Buckingham Colorist: Jennifer T. Lange, Scott Hampton, Chris Blythe Cover Artist: Glenn Fabry, Adam Brown
The ”Coming to America” tales from Mr. Ibis where my favorite ones from the novel; so many beliefs compound us, it is as if our dreams and beliefs were carried through our DNA, and perhaps they are.
Mr. Ibis likes to tell the truth, and some truths are harsher than others. He is a bit solemn and rational, but perhaps, when you are about to unfold such a story as this (the African slave trade in the late 18th century, of a young girl named Wututu, and of her twin brother Agasu), a calm and rational explanation is needed:
“There are stories that are true in which each individual′s tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of it is that we have heard it before and we can not allow ourselves to feel id too deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope.”
Why do we need to cope? Because some harsh and cruel things were done in the past, and perhaps are still being done today, in some degree and we cannot solve it all. Wututu is sold by her uncle, and has to travel by slave ship to America. Her brother lands in an island, (now Haiti), and the gods that these twin siblings have carried in their minds to these distant shores fare different: in Saint Domingue they take root, and his brother fights for a revolution that has echoes to this day.
In America the gods are weak, and the slaves suffer terrible things: abuse and rape, stolen children and abject deaths, beatings and violence. There is a lot of blood in history and each droplet has been shed by people with a story to tell.
I traveled to Dakar, Senegal′s capital, once. There is an island there, Goree, preserved to showcase how slaves were treated: how they hoarded them like cattle, separating women from men; it was so small.
The tiny place where they kept the children was the worst: dark and damp, with narrow holes instead of windows. You could feel the electricity in the air, and a faint line, a green line, that hovered over the water and pointed directly to Brazil. Thousands of men, women and children died there, and I think it was good I got to visit the island, as it is good to visit places that remember the Holocaust. We have to know that this things happened to people. That they mark the past of thousands of survivors, and that they leave scars in our DNA, just like beliefs do.
So… let′s talk about pain. Mr. Ibis leads the way.
American Gods: My Ainsel # 5 is on sale since July 25th, 2018.
Genre: Horror, Crime, Action/Adventure
Publication Date: July 25, 2018
Format:
FC, 32 pages; Ongoing
Price:
$3.99
Featured image by Glenn Fabry, all images belong to Dark Horse Comics
