Reinhard Kleist's The Boxer is a violent, sinewy tale of survival and triumph against the odds. Biographic comic artist Kleist (Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness) follows Harry Haft from his hardscrabble youth in Poland on the eve of World War II and his wartime experiences in concentration camps to a boxing career and a middle-class life in the U.S. Haft is tough from the beginning, and while no one was ever raised to survive Auschwitz, Haft's pugnacious attitude served him well. In scenes that Hollywood wouldn't dare to imagine, Haft became a boxer in the camps and was forced to fight other Jews to the death while his Nazi captors laughed and placed bets.
Kleist presents everything simply, with artful lines and seamless storytelling. His panel arrangements move the reader from the broadest strokes of horrific history to the whispered intimacies of inmates on the verge of death. Haft's wartime exploits are balanced with his domestic life in the U.S. as he tries to connect with his son despite his natural macho reticence and the way his experiences have warped his psyche. There is a wonderful last scene that draws the story full circle and points to possible catharsis, underlining what generations of Jews lost when they were dispersed.
The Boxer is a fast-moving graphic work, drawn with aplomb, scripted with the staccato rhythms of a boxing gym. It is also a valuable piece of Holocaust literature, a testament to those who survived and those who didn't--a graphic witness to man's endless capacity for cruelty and man's equally endless fight to withstand that cruelty. --Donald Powell, freelance writer