Darkness Rising: Reinhard Kleist's Graphic Novel, 'Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness'

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REINHARD KLEIST'S GRAPHIC-NOVEL biography "Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness" begins with the singer speeding into Reno and shooting a man just to watch him die. Rendered in an almost moral black and white, the scene echoes the lyrics of "Folsom Prison Blues" and signals that this won't be a fawning biopic like "Walk the Line." Instead, this is a story about myth: It's the life story of the Man in Black, not so much Johnny Cash himself.

Granted, "I See a Darkness" reads like a straight biography, hitting the major events in Cash's life: his childhood picking cotton in rural Arkansas, the death of his beloved brother Jack, the drudgery of working on a Detroit assembly line, his tenure on Sun Records, his addiction to bennies and worse, his tumultuous first marriage and his romance with June Carter. In economically arranged panels, Kleist, a German writer and artist who has published graphic novels about Kafka and H.P. Lovecraft, shows how these disparate experiences not only defined Cash as a man but guided his music.

In "I See a Darkness," Cash's art strictly parallels his life, and Kleist takes liberties with both. He frames the novel with the unhappy story of Glen Sherley, the convict who wrote "Graystone Chapel." Cash performed the song when he recorded his famous "Live at Folsom Prison" concert in 1968, and he eventually arranged for Sherley's early release and gave him an opening slot on his Cash Family tour. But Sherley had trouble adjusting to freedom and celebrity, eventually taking his own life. In a poignant prologue, Cash as an old man wonders to producer Rick Rubin if performing "The Wall" saved Sherley or damned the poor man. "Do you think in hindsight he wished you'd never sung his songs?" Rubin asks, to which Cash responds simply and sadly, "I hope not, Rick. I hope not...."

Interspersed with actual scenes from Cash's life are set pieces illustrating Cash's songs, similar to the "Folsom Prison Blues" epilogue. "Big River" becomes a period-piece melodrama in which Cash and Carter playact a doomed love affair, while "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" is a painfully silent tableau that mixes American history with personal tragedy. "Don't Take Your Guns" plays out that sad story-song a bit too obviously, but the final, fearsome dream sequence — in which Cash sees the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse coming for him — encompasses many of his songs, from "Ghost Riders in the Sky" to "When the Man Comes Around" and his cover of Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "I See a Darkness."

Fitting a full and storied life into a graphic novel can be a challenge, and at times "I See a Darkness" is a bit cursory, moving choppily from one big event to the next with little connective tissue or visual scene breaks. And it ends with a hint of skewed chronology: the epilogue takes place while Cash and Rubin are recording "American Recordings III: Solitary Man" in late 1999/early 2000, and Kleist hints that June Carter has already passed away. In fact, she died in 2003, just months before her husband.

Still, a graphic novel is perhaps the ideal medium for Cash's biography, not only because it allows for such revealing imaginative digressions, but because Cash has become something of a superhero, with a built-in origin story and a great costume (all black, of course).

Aside from Elvis and the Beatles, Cash is perhaps the most popular and respected pop artist of the 20th century, although his catalog is arguably much more substantial and his backstory much more compelling. However, his myth constantly threatens to eclipse the man himself, and "I See a Darkness" finds little of the real man behind the legend. But perhaps this is not necessarily a bad development: Cash may be six years dead, but the Man in Black is alive and still kicking.

Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner