The cover illustration for this comic makes Robert Moses
look demonic, which given his reputation, doesn’t shock me. It chronicles his
upper-class boyhood to his metamorphosis into the city’s biggest vampire,
sucking the blood from neck of New York. The book tries to create a balanced
image of Robert Moses, including his great contributions and his catastrophic
destructive habits. In the end, his mega-callousness wins out. Try as you
might, you can’t make this guy look good.
Despite making Robert Moses look like the domineering
bulldozer that he was, the book is unbiased and even in its portrayal. He did
care about the health of the city, which is why he pushed for the creation of
the city’s beaches. It was better to have a decent beach, he thought, than to
have kids jump off the docks and into the river. He also built swimming pools,
which for the average working class New Yorker had previously been out of
reach. That alone is wonderful. He built bridges to connect the boroughs, and
went under-budget. That’s great. He emptied several decaying square blocks, on
both the Upper West Side and the East 14’s, to build co-op complexes. That’s
sort of good. He put in restrictive covenants to keep African Americans out. That’s
not good. Then he plowed up whole neighborhoods to build a highway through the
Bronx. I’m sorry, but that’s bad.
Olivier Balez, a French comics artist, creates artwork is
brilliant, with realistic drawings and bright colors. When necessary, the
artist uses slightly muted colors to evoke the mood of the era. Great artwork,
great writing, I’ll call this a great book about a horrible guy. If you’re
interested in learning more about Robert Moses, I would also recommend watching
the Channel 13 documentary The World That
Moses Built. It has interviews with the people who lived in the
neighborhoods that he bulldozed for the Cross Bronx Expressway.
There is one thing missing from this book, and that is an
explanation of the financing. Moses’ bridges, tunnels, pools, and beaches were
often financed with bonds, and the profits financed his other efforts. An illustration
of this process would’ve been welcome
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