Kevin Costner, John Baird and Rick Ross travel back in time in this new book

A Hollywood director, an author and a celebrated comic-book artist collaborate to produce a spoof on the 19th- and 20th-century world

THE EXPLORERS GUILD
A Passage to Shambhala
Author: Kevin Costner, Jon Baird and Rick Ross
Publisher: Atria Books
Pages: 784
Price: Rs 594

As the Great War rages on in Europe, Arthur Odgens finds himself in a “gentleman’s wager”, which takes him on a journey of adventure and exploration across the late 19th/early 20th century globe. Rings a bell? Jules Verne is back, you would say. Well yes, and so are Rudyard Kipling, Hergé, Joseph Conrad and Lewis Carroll. The trio of Kevin Costner, John Baird and Rick Ross, has worked for nearly a decade to travel back in time and bring back an epic throwback to the Era of Exploration. Old, musty-looking pages, illustrations reminiscent of 19th century London intaglio printing, Victorian language and a strange dreamy hangover of a vast colonial empire where “Arabs”, “Sikhs” and “Mongols” were highly confusing tags for an otherwise culturally homogenous-seeming subject — one might have discovered Explorers Guild: A Passage to Shambhala in the dusty crannies of an old, venerable library.

Explorers Guild revolves around the Ogdens — brothers John and Arthur, and sister Frances. Arthur belongs to the guild, a gentleman’s club serving as a front to what the narrator claims is a mysterious group of adventurists who keep pushing the boundaries of known science. Challenged by his irksome, and much saner, cousin, Arthur sets out across the Arctic with his fellows from the guild, encounters the “Esquimaux”, and comes across a bright white light, a sunken city and a severe wasting condition called “the Complaint”. Frances conveys Arthur’s predicament to John —a major in the army in British India, and the leader of a feared band of dragoons known for the devastation they leave in their wake. John and his dragoons desert their post in Mesopotamia and scurry across the world collecting other sufferers of “the Complaint” for examination by a certain Mr Sloane, another mysterious and potentially dangerous character, who for most of the book remains a ubiquitous shadow in conversations.

The book is both a critique and a tribute to the late 19th/early 20th century exploration and science fiction. We start with the loquacious, omniscient narrator of the “gentle reader” variety, who both exalts and pricks the great halo he places around exploration itself. This narrator, however, is only filling the gaps that Arthur leaves, narrating his voyage through his log of adventures. Arthur, too, is similarly goofy, if not more so, in his attempts at exalting his trade. Sample this: ‘This is no easy job, hoaxing the modern public on a matter of exploration… Try to find a proper horizon to slip over and disappear, as the ancients did. You’ll find that we don’t much have them anymore. You will feel eyes upon you everywhere…. from your living room all the way to the blackest pit of Africa.”

And so, when Arthur is challenged to hunt down the Northwest Passage, he ultimately decides to go exploring a place famed for its decadent life of debauchery and excess. “What pioneering we do in this time, we do in the realm of vice,” he says. It is only by chance and goof-ups that Arthur finally stumbles upon Shambhala — emphasising the prominent role mistakes play in most discoveries. The rapidly unravelling world of science and new horizons, then, seems like a sudden series of mistakes and mishaps, as explorer after explorer keeps stumbling upon what is believed inexistent — mostly driven by a misplaced sense of hurt pride and affront, as is Arthur in the book.

There is also a subtle nod to the era’s politics. Kingdoms and religious brotherhoods shuffle uncomfortably on their spindly legs, waiting to be toppled any moment. An atmosphere of intrigue and politics prevails. Even as the authors coat it with a layer of dark humour, history keeps surfacing in its ominous form, sometimes as Archduke Ferdinand, sometimes as black-clad figures scurrying between the panels of the sequential art, trying to rein in a world changing too fast for their comprehension. The book is an assemblage of characters who are not supposed to be where they are. Whether it is Corporal Buchan or Evelyn Harrow, most characters are running away from their original occupation — army and movies, respectively. The book also gives a glimpse at how most industries were falling into stagnancy, lulled by a sense of supremacy and security, right on the edge of a world war.

This collaboration between a Hollywood director-scriptwriter-producer (Costner), an author (Baird) and a celebrated illustrator and comic-book artist (Ross) lives up to expectations. Broken down into five sections, the book switches between prose and sequential art to represent the two narrative voices — Arthur Odgens’s and the omniscient narrator’s. Ross’s art invokes, consciously or subconsciously, the original artworks of Sir John Tenniel, the illustrator of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Hergé, the creator of Tintin. Ross’s art closely follows the style of European comic Realism, evident in the early works of William Eisner, with a sprinkle of the grotesque. The silhouette art in the last few panels is breathtaking.

Do not let the inclusion of sequential-art, however, fool you into mistaking this for children’s literature. The creators have developed The Explorers Guild for a mature reader who can stomach a certain degree of gore and sexuality. The Victorian language, too, can be a barrier for the first few pages, but reveals its charm as you read on. For lovers of graphic novels, what can be disappointing is that Ross’s art, efficient in carrying the narrative on its own, is often used to do no more than deliver dialogue. One only hopes this might be remedied in the sequel.

As the Delhi winters come calling at last, this is a book you want to read by the light of a flashlight underneath the blankets.