Review of No Surrender in Buzz Mag
7 December 2022
Graphic novel version of NO SURRENDER colourfully reworks a Suffragette classic
This 21st-century graphic novel version of Constance Maude’s No Surrender charts the plight of Suffragettes at the beginning of the last century. The style is very soft and colourful in its presentation with rich tones lending themselves well to the colourful personalities that fill the multi-panelled pages. Thankfully, no efforts have been made to update the original 1911 text, which was groundbreaking in its presentation of both working women and the British and American women of status who supported them.
Maude made the struggle of women central to her story, and cleverly weaved a narrative from the mill to the magistrate and even to the ‘medicine’ the protesters received for their brazen uprising. These pages, telling of the Suffragettes’ punishment, are – much like the penultimate chapters of Matyáš Namai’s 1984 – hard to look at. Sophie & Scarlett Rickard fantastically bring the pain and anguish to life, as their illustrative style changes as quickly as the tone of the story.
By the end, the bleakness of those dark satanic mills from the opening pages is a distant memory, as a double page, full of light and colour, depicts the standards and banners raised in protest by these remarkable women. No Surrender is a well-presented, substantial representation of a classic which deserves to be explored further.