Author: Niccolò Machiavelli and Morim Kang
Publisher: Netcomics
Rating: WORTHY!
This is rather an oddball comic book. It takes the text of The Prince, written by Niccolò Machiavelli, a "textbook" designed for no other purpose, really, than to ingratiate himself with the powers that be after a fall from grace. The book purportedly advises royalty how to get power and hold onto it regardless of what it costs the people under rule. This work is really at the root of world politics, but it has nothing to offer modern politicians and dictators who have far surpassed Machiavelli in Machiavellianism, which has degenerated from being a byword of power plays in the past, to being a dirty word today.
There was a problem with the iPad version on Bluefire Reader, which I have been experiencing in several comics, not just this one. In other comics, speech was missing from speech balloons. In this one, the text in the space (see image on my blog) where the original text from Machiavelli's work is printed at the start of each chapter, is missing. Where this text was supposed to appear on the bottom half of the opening page to each chapter, it was missing. if it continued to a second page, then there was text on the second page, but it continued from the missing text on the first page, which of course was invisible! Something is screwy here!
The original work from Machiavelli is interspersed with comic book style art work illustrating his antiquated and brain-dead precepts, which is to say that, in the big picture, Machiavelli was clueless. He was a product of his life and times, of course, which is a good excuse to have! Hereditary rule is, let's face it, nothing more than a dictatorship, and has no place in a modern enlightened world - or any world for that matter. Indeed, it's nothing more than the fruit of unearned privilege rooted in might makes right, and fertilized with the lives of the monarch's subjects. The problem is that all too often in our world even today, we still have "royal" hereditary, as the Kennedy and Bush families have demonstrated, or we have capital heredity where money stands in for royal privilege and provides a monetary line of descent.
It does offer insight into how people thought of their world back in Machiavelli's day, so it is of historical interest, but other than that, The Prince has nothing of value to offer us, and it certainly doesn't make for a rollicking read. However, if you have to read it, you could do worse than this volume. It's crisply done and well laid out. It offers clean, simple images, which are, at least for me, drawn amusingly, so that lightens the road of Machiavelli's dense and pedantic text. Despite the fact that for me it did nothing, I am recommending this as an alternative to even drier versions!
