The Incredible Nellie Bly: Journalist, Investigator, Feminist, and Philanthropist - Luciana Cimino - ★★

AUTHOR: Luciana Cimino

ILLUSTRATOR: Sergio Algozzino

GENRE: Graphic Novel

PUBLICATION DATE: March 2, 2021

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A graphic novel focussing on Nellie Bly. Had tremendous potential considering the impactful life of the investigative journalist who was so far ahead of her times, but the execution didn’t work well for me. Offered just a cursory glance at her achievements. The illustrations were somewhat good. But the overall result was a disappointment.

This graphic novel was originally published in Italian in 2019 under the title ‘Nellie Bly’. This English translation was published in 2021.

Many of you might already be aware of the legendary Nellie Bly. Ever since I heard of her, I have been in awe of her spirit, determination and courage. One of the pioneering female investigative journalists, she is most known for two things: her solo journey around the world following Jules Verne’s novel “Around the World in Eighty Days”, and her pretence of being mad so as to get institutionalised in an insane asylum, thereby carrying out a first-hand undercover sting operation on the malpractices of the staff. However, her exploits go far beyond these two achievements.

This graphic novel attempts to tell us Nellie’s story using an interview as a framing device, with Miriam, a fictional female student at the Columbia School of Journalism in 1921, trying to get Bly to offer her life story in her own words, such that Miriam can prove to naysayers how female journalists also make a difference. On paper, this idea sounds good. However, the execution of this idea is somewhat disjointed.

The story comes to us from 1921, thirty years after Nellie Bly’s undercover assignment at the mental asylum and just one year before her premature death from pneumonia. The interactions between Miriam and Bly show how women’s rights are still in their primitive stages in those years, and Miriam’s frustrations are easily visible. However, considering the title of the book, I didn’t anticipate the fictional content.

Because the story depends on Miriam, we don’t get to see a structured presentation of Bly’s life. Her reveals don’t follow any particular order, so they go all over the timeline. We learn Bly’s family background only somewhere in between the book. Her numerous achievements receive mention, but as there is so much to include, many of the events don’t get in-depth coverage. Her two biggest accomplishments – the solo world trip and the asylum expose – get just a few pages; quite an odd decision as these are what make her a admirable name even today. In fact, we don’t even learn in detail about her personal experiences and learnings during the world trip. The planning of her trip outfit gets almost as many pages as the trip itself.

Then again, the above two topics get at least some pages. The rest of Nellie Bly’s professional endeavours are excessively hurried, with barely any introduction to the characters depicted, and hardly any personal detailing. Further, the challenging aspects of Bly’s life are mostly brushed aside. Her sudden marriage to a much older man right after her journalistic successes, her takeover and conversion of his business into a profit-making enterprise, her being cheated of the business at the hands of a fraudulent employee, and her subsequent return to journalism… All of these are either glossed over or revealed just minimally. What’s the point to a semi-biographical book if it just lists out the person’s work achievements and sanitises their more questionable life choices without offering their personal observations of and reasons for the same?

At just 144 pages, this graphic novel is anyway quite short for the lengthy list of triumphs notched up by Nellie Bly during her life. This limited page space is further restricted thanks to the fictional Miriam’s storyline about her professional pursuits and personal challenges. I think I would have liked the book better had it functioned more like a biography, culling out the fictional and focussing only on Nellie Bly.

Even after reading the whole thing, I feel like I know bits and pieces of Bly’s life but I still don't know her. This was the case even before I opened the book. So there was not much for me to gain from the book. I barely learnt anything new and didn’t even get much insight into her thinking as this diluted plot was more about the whats than the whys. One might assume that the book would work better with those who don’t know about her achievements, but even in this case, a chronological structure would have been far easier to grasp than this jumpy, super-rushed narrative. The outstanding introductory write-up by author David Randall is more insightful about Ms. Bly than the actual graphical story.

The illustrations are the only aspect of this graphic novel that worked somewhat positively for me. Made with digital art, every character’s facial expression and physical stance was carefully carved. I rarely see graphic novels where the faces are so realistic in their expressions right down to their eyebrows and lips. However, with the back-and-forth timeline and the standardised colour scheme throughout, it is sometimes tricky to guess the identity of the characters (Miriam and the younger Nellie Bly look quite similar at times) and the change in timeline. The illustrator’s note at the end of the book reveals some aspects of their artistic choices – very interesting to read.

Overall, I expected far better from a graphic novel looking at such a legendary journalist’s life. The interview structure and the somewhat haphazard plot structuring failed to do justice to Nellie Bly’s feats as every event felt just surface-level. Then again, if you aren’t looking for a biography and just want to know some basic details about this amazing woman achiever, please do feel free to give this graphic novel a go. It should work for readers aged 16+.

Nellie Bly deserves 5 stars, but the book earns just 2 stars.

This was a library read.