Globetrotters: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s World Tour
By Julian Voloj & Julie Rocheleau
184 pages/Abrams ComicArts/$25.99
Elizabeth Jane Cochran liked to write under various names, beginning her journalism career as “Lonely Orphan Girl” for the Pittsburgh Dispatch before adopting the more familiar name Nellie Bly. As Bly, she checked into New York City’s Women’s Lunatic Asylum for 10 days in 1888 and documented her experiences for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. Her fame assured, she was no longer consigned to the “women’s pages” and could dictate her content.
A year later, she had planned to turn Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days from fiction to fact, beating the fictional record.
At the same time, another female journalist, Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore, was asked to travel in the opposite direction and beat Bly for Cosmopolitan. History shows that Bly beat Bisland by four days, and interestingly, the two competitors never met one another; yet, they are both buried in the same cemetery.
The race between the women and the best-selling novel forms the core of the entertaining graphic novel, out this week. Writer Julian Voloj brought their detailed chronicles to amusing life as they battled train schedules, seasickness, storms, skeptical customs agents, and more. As they race, both lament their inability to truly enjoy their visits, even when they were stranded for several days, such as in Bly, China.
Julie Rocheleau’s limited color palette and cartoony expressiveness bring the pulse-pounding race to life, nicely capturing the look and feel of this bygone era.
For Bly, it was all about the adventure, relishing her travels unlike the more serious-minded Bisland, whose New York Times obituary never even mentioned this aspect of her career. She left journalism after this, bringing her breathless worldview to serial novels.
Both women are characterized through shorthand, and I wish Voloj spent a little more time on them as people. Similarly, the craze surrounding their reports could have been given greater play, as two women racing around the world was unusual in this male-dominated era. The World even ran a “Nellie Bly Guessing Match,” encouraging readers to estimate Bly’s arrival time to the second, with the grand prize initially consisting of a trip to Europe.
Most people today may know Bly for the mental health expose and not even know about this event. Even fewer may remember Bisland and her output. As a result, we owe the creators a debt for bringing this to light.
English (US) · 