A review by stregamorte
The Stars of History: Marilyn Monroe by Bernard Swysen

2.0

I have loved Marilyn Monroe since I found out we shared our birthday years ago. So I was so excited when I saw that her story was made into a graphic novel. That said, I was kind of disappointed with this. I'm not sure if it was the graphic novel format or the storytelling itself, but all the nuance of her life was stripped away. This book made Marilyn seem ditzy and flakey, when she was deeply intelligent and was forced to use her body to sell her career. They did excel in showing how much trauma she went through in her life, but I'm not sure that her depression came across well. It also felt like there was an agenda to make it seem like Arthur Miller was a good husband to her, and making it seem like her previous husbands were astronomically worse by comparison. By the end of this I just wanted to pick up one of the Marilyn biographies on my shelf, including rereading her journal entries in "Fragments" and her own accounts in "My Story."