GEORGE SPROTT review in the Calgary Herald
Updated December 14, 2009
Graphic Novels
by Nancy Tousley
32 STORIES: THE COMPLETE OPTIC NERVE MINI-COMICS
Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine (Summer Blonde, Shortcomings) started drawing credible mini-comics so early that this boxed set of eight booklets -- an introduction and seven facsimile issues of Optic Nerve -- could almost be considered juvenilia. He was 17 when he published No. 1, and graduated from high school and left home between No. 4 and No. 5. By No. 7, he was well on the way to developing the distinctive linear style and subject matter that have made him one of the top graphic novelists in North America. Watching him do it is cool.
GEORGE SPROTT 1894-1975
Seth
Few artists deliver as much complexity and artistry to a graphic novel as Seth. This stately, beautifully designed picture novella is the "remastered" version of Seth's serial of the same name, which appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in 2006-07. The melancholic, bittersweet story of a not altogether likable man, it is also the evocation of a golden era in Canada's recent past, whose passage is marked by the passages of Sprott's life. Only Chris Ware lends as much feeling and atmosphere to a graphic story.
AD: NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE DELUGE
Josh Neufeld
This gripping book about hurricane Katrina is a non-fiction account of the storm and the life-altering experiences of seven diverse New Orleanians, gleaned from interviews, media reports, blogs and Neufield's experience in the storm's aftermath as a Red Cross volunteer. The story, which begins one week before the storm, captures horrors of the disaster along with the character of New Orleans. The doctor, who lives in the French Quarter, throws a hurricane party before the flooding begins, then helps everyone in the neighbourhood he can. AD: After the Deluge began as a webcomic at www.smith-mag. net/afterthedeluge/ that expands the story into a hypertext with a number of interesting links.
RED: A HAIDA MANGA
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas
Red represents a new form of graphic storytelling, Haida manga, invented by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. The British Columbia artist melds a traditional Haida tale about Red, a leader obsessed with avenging his sister's kidnapping, and traditional Haida imagery, with graphic and mass-circulation aspects of Japanese manga. This beautiful, fullcolour book is read page by page, but the four-metre-wide assemblage of original watercolours, from which the book's pages are printed, becomes a rich overall image in which black Haida form lines connect to superimpose three symbolic figures over the whole. This view is printed on the inside of the dust cover. The artist advises you to buy two books and take them apart to arrange the big picture.
TALKING LINES: THE GRAPHIC STORIES OF R.O. BLECHMAN
The wiggly, broken, space-making lines, the well-honed wit and the wry ironies of R.O. Blechman's single panel cartoons are well known to readers of The New Yorker. But this great veteran innovator has done longer works, too, from one to several pages in length. They are compiled here and many several have not been published before. Among the latter is Magicat (1972), whose attempts to make gold with butter and heavy cream land him in a discussion of ethics and politics with his sidekick, Cornelius, a cockroach. Sounds like many a New York kitchen.
MOOMIN: THE COMPLETE TOVE JANSSON COMIC STRIP, VOL. 4
What seems at first like food for an acquired taste blooms on the palate with repeated exposure. Finnish writer and illustrator Tove Jansson has a fey sense of humour and gentle satire that relishes absurdities. Only the heartless could not fall for Moomin, Snorkmaiden, Mymble, Snufkin, and Moomin Pappa and Mamma. Jansson's wit and sophistication make Moomin a delightful read for children and adults. A delicious offering from Vol. 4, of an eventual set of five: Snorkmaiden Goes Rococo.
THE COLLECTED DOUG WRIGHT: CANADA'S MASTER CARTOONIST
Seth and Brad MacKay
More than a collected works, this oversized book with a candy-apple red foil cover is an all-out tribute to Doug Wright (1917-1983), who was the best loved and most widely read Canadian cartoonist of the 1950s and '60s. Wright's creation, a rambunctious little boy called Nipper, predates Charlie Brown and Dennis the Menace. Drawn in elegant verticals with innovative use of spot colour, Wright's strip about family life in the 1950s and '60s was frequently hilarious, and often fraught, and had a realistic ring.
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