Week 8 - Andre the Giant by Box Brown (6 points)

 

I have read some details of Andre the Giant’s story and how difficult a lot of it was, so I was very curious to read this graphic novel. In short, it reminded me the despite looking like a real-life superhero, Andre Roussimoff was a disabled man who endured a lot of hardship during his life.

I found that Box Brown’s art had much appeal in its simplistic shapes and bold line choices. In doing so it smoothed over some of the roughness that reality has. I watch bits of the Andre vs. Hulk Hogan fight and the close ups are pretty gritty. Andre looks rugged and tired as hell and the cute drawings don’t quite convey that. Brown also chose to draw Andre even comically larger than he was, at least as it seemed to me. It was probably done to get a point across over how big he was and that cartoon illustration might have been how big people felt like he was, but maybe he wasn’t that big. And of course, I say this as someone who has never seen anybody 2 feet taller than me, so I could be proven wrong.

I also find the choice to have the comic end rather abruptly to be effective. At first, I was confused because in one panel he’s on a plane and the next the book is over with Andre’s death date. However, that is what actually happened. Andre was on travel and he died relatively young. His life was cut short from his disorder.

I stopped growing when I was 12 and became frustrated that so many people overtook my height and size in high school. As a teenager I did research on height that eventually led to a Wikipedia rabbit hole about Giantism and then Andre the Giant. At first, I was envious of people like Andre who were gifted with strength and stature but I quickly came to realize that Giantism was truly a handicap. And especially now having read this biography I can see just how difficult it made Andre’s life. It makes me sad that the only things people really talked about with Andre was how big he was and how he handled that. I am glad to see that he had parts of his life that he enjoyed and cared about despite how cruel the world was. And so, with seeing now how that being 7 feet tall is not what it’s cracked up to be, I find myself content with my own height.