Well, crap.

I listened to the debates and encourage everyone to do the same.  Sadly, Jeff Lemire's Essex County was the first book to get the axe from Canada Reads.  In the end, I think it was a very uphill battle for Sara and the book and that it would have either gone first or gone all the way.

The reasons for dumping it were spurious at best and sort of petty and pedantic.  The reasoning was that it, basically, wasn't all words.  Which is fine, but it is also a very narrow view of fiction and what constitutes literature.  Then again, anyone reading a comics blog will likely already be coming from that point of view.

I was hoping to see a much more informed debate about the nature of fiction and literature.  Instead, I think it was simply too much work for the other panelists to learn how to read differently.  Not only that, I think they needed to discover a new way of explaining what they read.  They needed to develop a new vocabulary as readers and it was a task that was simply too tough for them.  Instead they hid behind arguments of form rather than content.

My question would to them would have been, "how is looking at an image any different than reading description?"  Or I could go further and ask whether their logic discounts most work by Kurt Vonnegut when he doodles within the plot, or something as foundationally important to the novel form as Tristram Shandy?

There was some illogical discussion about the most essential book has the widest appeal that went to getting young people to read, and well, go to a classroom and see which one of these books they'd choose.

What I find interesting is that the book voted by readersonline to be given the door, by a large margin, is the one that won the Pulitzer prize.  I have no problem with challenging work being held up as something to read but I got to say I was expecting more out of the debate. 

I am glad that Essex County has been brought to wider attention.  I'm glad that it's consider on equal footing along with the five other books.  I'm just really disappointed that the panelists couldn't see outside of a very narrow definition of what constitutes fiction and literature.

Blacksad - finally.

Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarrido

In my new quest to read less superhero based comic book fare I’ve turned to the vaunted shores of Europe and picked up the recent Dark Horse English translation of Blacksad. The long and short of it are that this is an incredibly beautiful book that is superb cartooning which captures a time, place and genre almost letter perfect. The bad, is that ever since Chris Butcher saw the item in the Previews catalogue he’s placed the furries idea in my head and it tainted the experience (oh relax, I’m not pissed at him or anything). I know that this is just fiction and all, but I’m glad I never had to explain why I’m reading a book with the naked cat people having the sex.


Regardless, this is a great companion piece to the Darwyn Cooke Parker books in that it’s another thirties-forties-fifties based noir book that must be seen to be truly appreciated. The cast is made up of humanized animals where each character is reflected by the animal he is. The cold blooded killers tend to be reptiles, professors are owls, white supremacists weasels - you get the idea. It’s a conceit that is pulled off with aplomb. I kept waiting for the moment it would feel forced, and it never does. It feels like the creators took the funny talking animals genre and recast them in a gritty noir reboot that tries to engage in a realism form, like Marvels or Ex Machina.

What I found even more engaging than the characters was the rendering of the settings and backgrounds. The draftsmanship that goes into setting the stage for these comics is simply stunning. There are shades of Eisner’s New York (the universal setting not necessaryily the book) that are coloured in a muted pallet that feels aged properly, almost water coloured to give it a time appropriate production feel. The props are all note perfect as far as I can tell, which brought me into the world and simply kept me there. It’s not often that I notice the setting, but when it’s done right, it brings me into the story and here it was done so masterfully that I couldn’t look away. When something is done right, it either fades into your memory as accepted or it confidently recognizes its own beauty.

The stories are standard noir fare. Secrets are unleashed, heads are knocked together, people are stabbed and killed. Generally the horrible underbelly of humanity is cut open and spilled on the ground. There are some great ideas presented in the plots, particularly how the creators use the conceit of the anthropomorphic cast to tackle race riots in the middle volume (Arctic Nation) but I felt most of the ideas were related to the craft rather than the actual plot. I’m a story guy through and through, but I felt my enjoyment from these stories came more from appreciated the craft of the stories rather than the fairly generic noir plots. They hit all the key notes and call back to a lot of classic noir movies so it should work but it did just feel all too familiar and expected in terms of twists, turns, and Pyrich victories.

Not having a French volume to compare, I can’t really comment on the quality of the translation but I can say that on a very few occasions the dialogue actually felt translated. It was straightforward and wasn’t broken English but it felt a bit flat and more of a literal translation that lost some of the charters’ voices. It was very few and far between, and not having a copy of the original makes it hard to know if this is an issue of translation or the original writing. There were a few times, as well, where it felt the plot just jumped forward a hell of a lot. I understand the nature of the medium but sometimes those jumps were too pronounced and it felt disjointed, as if the creators wanted to explore moments, characters and develop the plot more but were forced to cut out because of page limits. It never derailed the plot but it would have been nice to see the development or escalation of situations before seeing the setup then resolution on the next page (often in the first panel of the next page). I’m not sure that wanting more of the story is any kind of a valid criticism or not, but httre it is.

But the craft comes through in spades. Not just in the rendering I’ve already mentioned but in how the majority of situations would flow throughout a page. The creators really understand the art of the page turn with often somewhat odd panels ending an even numbered page being revealed on the page turn. It was generally handled with aplomb when moving from one character situation to other times and places. It is only occasionally that it would jump along one character’s arc and feel off. And, ending each volume with a negative black and white image of a loose plot thread was always fun and rewarding. Particularly the confused Australians. Fun stuff.

All in all, this is an easy book to recommend for anyone who likes comics and appreciates both Uncle Scrooge and the Parker books.

Collecting some thoughts on Essex County

One of the things I love most about comics and all cartooning for that matter is that they create an obviously interpreted world. In my opinion comic art that exaggerates or simplifies the world in meaningful ways is what appeals so much about the artform. Yes, there is a lot of personal aesthetics involved when approaching or talking about art – some people don’t like black and white, me – I’m not a huge fan of photorealism. If I wanted things to “look real” then I’d just watch something with live actors. This isn’t to say that photorealism is worse than other art, there is a lot of skill and love that goes into that work and it can be very impressive. However, the strength of the cartoon medium is that nothing needs to be realistic.

Blending realistic elements into comics, on the other hand, does seem to work when you think about narrative. I should really get my thoughts together on Maus, which I just re-read. It is a masterful combination of real and cartoon, but if you flipped the elements and made the art more photoreal and the narrative more fictional it just wouldn’t hold the same appeal. Now, simplified doesn’t mean lazy or messy. When I see simplified artwork I see a wonderful economy of linework. Every piece must be just right in order for it to work; there is care in the placing of every element on a page.

Combine this style of art with a good story and you’ve got me hooked (most times). For whatever reason I find that in having characters that can be expressive and “act” for the artist seems to allow for stronger storytelling. This allows for really fantastical stories but it also allows more down to earth and real “slice of life” storytelling. By keeping one aspect stylized, the rest of the elements become more powerful in the weird balance of ideas that Scott McLoud explores a lot better than I ever hope to.

So what’s all this leading to? I reread Jeff Lemire’s Essex County and it’s really fucking good. I’m generally burned out on the usual Can Lit stuff (depressing things happening in small communities) but his art and story telling completely sucks me in. I’d read the first two volumes previously, and my wife picked up the collected edition for me as a Christmas gift, and I happily read the whole thing cover to cover. The way these lives intersect and inform one another is made all the more engaging simply by how the pages look. The characters come to life with Lemire’s lines and inks that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. You see the pain of ages on faces and the desire to get lost in imagination. The connection to the land and the ties of history are all reflected in the enduring love that one character has for another.

Essex County is really a great place to visit that slowly draws you in and reveals the connection that these characters have to one another and to the place. This isn’t a tapestry, it’s a lovely torn rag mat that was put together by someone who is wisely frugal. Shit, I should have written this based around that metaphor – it really is a beautifully woven and solid piece of work that invites you in and stays with you after you put it down, which I used to find incredibly rare in comics (but I’m seeing my tastes change and my purchases lead me to more material that isn’t just simple plot).

Classic Seth

I’ve recently finished Seth’s It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken. It was a weird experience as I only read it in little chunks of time here and there while the rest of my world had some kind of a fit. Me and my wife started house hunting but then her place of business just announced impending large cuts (she’ll be safe though so that’s okay), and I get to interview for my own job. So reading about a slightly misanthropic and depressed protagonist searching for some kind of meaning that may never exist wasn’t exactly my idea of escapism I usually seek in comics.

I did enjoy it though for what it is and it is a book I’ll certainly recommend to others looking for a certain type of read. I have to say that Seth’s quest for a past that somehow feels more honest and real hits close to home these days. He’s looking for something that exists in the creations around him – buildings, clothes, literature – but I’m just looking for a time when our current Prime Minister wasn’t in charge of anything.

At the moment I’m seeing a lot of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation in things I read because of another project, and really It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken is a perfect example of searching for a more truthful and honest past that never exists. That what current life is simulating may never have existed in the first place. That can be a very powerful and depressing idea or it can free you to simply enjoy what is there now. It’s a frustrating story to read on quite a few levels, from Seth’s search for John Kalloway to his interactions with people and constant self-reflection. You both love the character and get frustrated by him which makes the character appear all the more real and human. He can’t be distilled down to a core idea or element (well, maybe the idea of moving forward while watching the road through a rear-view mirror – see Marshall McLuhan for more on that).

I love Seth’s lingue Claire artwork that feels as much like an anachronistic detail as the buildings and clothes surrounding the protagonist. It’s equal parts comic books and newspaper comics (as well as the New Yorker cartooning), that is somehow more expressive and clean than you feel it should be. It shouldn’t be able to portray the content because it is a style meant for gags and single panel cartoons but it is precisely the freedom of the style that allows for a beautiful world to be created. I’d say the art style hits at the core of the word decadence – something overly beautiful with something decaying at the core or as the subject in this case. Beautifully rendered buildings that are falling apart and the like.

Mildly Informative Review - The Salon by Nick Bertozzi

It seems that I'm the last in a long line of people to praise this book, and worthy of praise it is. Not only is the story engaging (who doesn't like a good murder-mystery?) and the characters all well rendered and written (I can't think of Picasso in any other way now) but the use of colour is exceptionally striking as the panels adhere to a really structured format throughout.

I love this movement to take early twentieth century figures in Paris and turn them into a sort of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This book explores quite a few things at once, which is the essence of the art that Braque and Picasso were striving for. In one story we have the exploration, definition and construction of a new artform, multiple character interaction subplots and a surreal murder mystery. And at its core each element presented in the book is an exploration or reflection of that basic artistic idea presented via Braque and Picasso. To see something from many angles and using colour for emotional resonance allows the art to explore a new type of reality.

The comic itself, the physical object of the book, reflects this as well. The book is a landscape format often used to gather newspaper funnies, but it is vibrantly colourful in a minimalist sense with two colours used per page. And while all this fits into the idea of looking at the form slightly different, Bertozzi also manages to show how all movements that work out a final definition also become constraining in its own way. There is a rigid grid of four panels per page, that doesn't ever change. This can reflect the cubist ideas but it also shows how that movement itself, after its novelty wore off, became restrictive in its own right.

So, you can explore this book on whichever level you like, and I feel that if I had a bit more art history knowledge I'd enjoy it a bit more (or at least be able to place more of the characters easily). On it's purest level, this is a story you can just pick up and enjoy on face value. You don't have to think about the form or the ideas if you don't want to, you can simply read about a bunch of guys doing wild things in order to capture a demon sprung forth from a canvas. It is a rollicking adventure as much as it is a meditation on immortality through art.

Read this book

Gemma Bovery
by Posy Simmonds
Pantheon Books
ISBN: 0375423397

I picked up Posy Simmonds’ Gemma Bovery because I loved the name. Yes, I know its literary heritage but more so from Woody Allen’s short-story The Kugelmass Episode than Flaubert’s work. And while nowhere near necessary, having read Flaubert’s novel Madam Bovary would allow the reader to see many more parallels that I simply wasn’t able to. But, seriously, it’s not required reading to enjoy this book.

I know very little about Posy Simmonds other than she’s English and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her illustrations and cartoon strips in the papers when I lived there. Then again, maybe not. She’s a bit of a figure that I feel was hovering just out of my eye sight or earshot during my years living in the UK. The artwork here felt instantly familiar to me so I kind of have the feeling I’ve seen her work before. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the artwork of Miriam Katin’s We Are On Our Own but it could just be that both had a very loose and comfortable feel to them. It’s warm and engaging because it doesn’t feel over produced which really helps mirror the plot of a married English couple settling down in rural Normandy only to be beset upon by the local baker Joubert.

I almost feel like I’m cheating you by trying to summarize the plot because any summary I give will gloss over the actual joy and brilliance of the book. Where the book shines, isn’t in its main plotlines but in the little details throughout. It’s how the characters reveal themselves and you get to know them more and more with the minimum of effort by both you the reader and through the precise line-work that conveys everything about a character exceptionally well.

On it’s most basic it’s the story of Gemma Bovery as witness through the local baker Joubert who gets more and more obsessed with her and her life. Gemma has lived a life almost mirroring that of Flaubert’s famously doomed heroine. She cheats on her husband, falls in love and eventually dies – which is no big shocking secret if you’re worried about me spoiling the plot here. Joubert is relating not just her story to the audience but his own as he is going through Gemma’s diaries as he tries to piece together everything in her life.

This is a very intimate story that captures all the highlights of “classic literature” for a modern audience. It’s a slower paced story with a judicious use of images and lots of text throughout. If I were a scale making type of man I’d say this weighs more on the novel aspect of the graphic to novel ratio on the graphic novel scale. It’s a love of words that conveys the action with graphic punches to fortify and strengthen the characters in your mind. We get one main narrator but we also get access to what all the characters are thinking and saying when he isn’t about.

If you forced me to describe this book in a word or two I’d go with something like modern pastoral, or neo-classical French intimate drama. Pretentious words I know but this is a smart book that is actually an escape from everything you think you know about comics. It’s a rewarding read, it’s a sad read, it feels voyeuristic and is ultimately tragic but you never feel cheated – which is a major accomplishment in any comic these days. Plus, it ends with the possibility for a sequel which I thought was a brilliant little commentary on the comic medium whether intended or not.

I have to agree with the Grand Old Wizard of comics Alan Moore when he writes “The pity of it is that the vast majority of people who like to think of themselves as comic fans... will never do themselves the favour of picking it up and getting a decent education in graphic narrative."

This book is wonderful and is simply a treat to have read. It's a few years old (1999 was the first printing) but is widely available in bookstores if not your local comic shop.

*Cough*Cough* - Excuse me, but I have a point, I think.

Monologues From the Coming Plague
Anders Nilsen
Fantagraphics, 2006.
ISBN: 1560977183 (pbk.)

This is the kind of book that I always think I should love and support but end up not liking. I’m happy to say that I’ve finally found an exception to that pattern in this book. This is the kind of book that I always think I should support and I ended up actually liking it quite a bit.

It’s a simple book that is basically riffing on whatever is in the creator’s mind at the time of creation. It’s a sketch book and a bit of an exercise sheet. I tend to not be the biggest fan of the whole stream of consciousness type of storytelling but this volume worked for me. I guess this volume had a lot of shared characteristics with those remix CDs that double as 45 singles. Instead of just giving us an A-side and a B-side we’re now given an A-Side a B-Side and either a few other songs as well as a lot of remixed versions of the original song. I’m not the expert on electronica, go ask Kevin for a better explination.

What I’m trying to say is that I liked it. I liked it because it was what it was and wasn’t really trying to be more than it was. I usually get the feeling when I read a lot of stream of consciousness indy books that the creator is trying to be arty and deep when they come off as incomprehensible and boring. Not so much here. It’s light, it’s rough, but more than anything it’s actually funny and sometimes poignant.

And the format is completely different from anything I’ve ever come across in comics at this point in my life – although I’m not the most well read in the medium. It looks like a paperback novel with stiffer coloured paper for the first three-quarters and regular white paper for the last part. This delineates two separate sketchbooks but it also makes the reading process unlike any other comic you’re likely to come across. If you want to look smart and catch the eye of that cool looking person working at the local coffee shop but you’re a bit too geeky then this might be your ticket into the art crowd (although you’re more likely to catch the eye of a self-important yuppie in a coffee shop these days).

My particular favourite in this book was the treatise of mediocrity. It kind of struck a bit too close to home but I liked it. There’s examinations of the modern pseudo-intellectual, modern Bhuddism, and a few other found conversations added to comic characters.

It’s not a long read by any stretch of the imagination but it is completely enjoyable and, shockingly, can give you a few things to really think about unlike a lot of the indy comics I have preconceptions of. Hey, they’re not all self-indulgent but I’ve read enough to be wary of them now. I was really happy this wasn’t one of them.