Nonnonba

by Shigeru Mizuki

It's kind of strange reading Nonnonba so soon after I completed Mizuki's first Showa book, as it covers much of the same material.  That book is a mixture between personal autobiography and straight history book, examining Mizuki's childhood in a small town in Japan in the 1920s and 30s.

In Nonnonba, Mizuki focuses on his childhood, his relationship with the old woman who often worked for his family in a domestic capacity, and their shared belief in the rich spirit world of Japanese mythology and folk tradition.

Young Shige gets up to some pretty usual boyhood stuff, fighting with the kids from a different neighbourhood, visiting a 'haunted house', and drawing about his experiences.  He does terribly in school, and often exasperates his mother.

Nonnonba's familial relationship to Shige or his family is never made very clear, but it is obvious that the two care very deeply for one another.  She teaches him about the various spiritual creatures that live all around them, and as the book progresses, Shige gets to know a few of them on a personal level.

This is an interesting book.  It shows a touching example of inter-generational friendship, and helps document a way of life that is now gone.  I feel like Showa, which is supposed to be a broad examination of Japan's history, does a better job of explaining minute details about the mangaka's life, but this book is much more affecting and charming.

Showa: A History of Japan 1926-1939

by Shigeru Mizuki

I really don't know a lot about Japanese history, and since I liked Shigeru Mizuki's Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, his account of his own involvement in the Second World War, I thought it would be interesting to read his broader take on the country's history.

Showa is a multi-volume look into the era that began when Emperor Hirohito took the throne.  This also coincided, roughly, with Mizuki's birth.  The first volume of this series covers the start of the era through to the Second World War, and this was a time of great turmoil throughout Japan.

A devastating earthquake created economic instability, which was made worse by the Great Depression.  Following that, a number of 'incidents' in China, and a shocking level of independence in the military, plunged Japan into many years of militaristic expansion into other countries, notably Korea and China.

The larger history of the country is told a variety of ways.  We get straight narration, we sit in on discussions among regular men on the street, and are directly told what's going on by Nezumi Otoko, a magical character from Mizuki's other work.  These sections of the book are interesting, but often became a string of names and faces to me.

Of more interest were the sections that juxtaposed Mizuki's own life with the events of the time.  We see young Shigeru move from being a small child through to his early adulthood.  This provides some context to the larger events, and remind us that at every point of history where major events have happened, there have been people just going about their day.

This is a hugely ambitious project from a much-loved cartoonist who sadly passed away this year.  I look forward to reading the rest of this.

Optic Nerve #14

by Adrian Tomine

It's always exciting when Adrian Tomine releases a new issue of his very occasional anthology series Optic Nerve, but it's even more exciting when that issue is available at TCAF before it's released in comics shops.  This issue is made up of two stories, 'Killing and Dying', and 'Intruders'.

'Killing and Dying' is a story about fatherhood, comedy, and loss.  Jessica is an odd fourteen year old with a stutter who has developed an interest in stand-up comedy.  Her mother encourages her to take a course at the Learning Annex (for $500), while her father's disapproval is palpable.  Her first performance goes well, but her father figures out that her teacher has written all of her material for her.  Later, Jessica decides to try out her own material at an open-mic night that her father sneaks into, and what follows is one of the most awkward scenes I've read in comics.

An undercurrent that is never discussed in this story, but is made clear through Tomine's art, is the mother's illness.  I love the way this story becomes more about what is not being discussed, and how that affects everyone.  Tomine uses a twenty-four panel grid for most of this story, which gives it a tight and claustrophobic feeling, much as the father must feel, trapped in his own head.

The second story, 'Intruders', is about an aging guy who has found himself alone and unhappy in life.  When a chance encounter with a young woman who once apartment-sat for him leads to him having the keys to the apartment he once shared with his ex, he begins a disturbing habit of breaking into his former home on a daily basis.

The guy's actions seem more or less reasonable at first, even though they are deeply transgressive, but as is the way of such things, events escalate.  This story is told with a larger nine-panel grid, and is drawn with thicker lines.

Tomine's work is always impressive.  He creates complete realities in very short amounts of space, and his stories stick with you long after you've finished reading them.

Good-Bye

by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

I'm pretty sure that, with Good-Bye, I've now read all of Drawn & Quarterly's collections of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's manga that have been published so far.  Tatsumi really is a marvel, and I consider myself lucky to have been able to have read so much of his work.

Lucky, and kind of depressed, as his stories are all about people who have been brutally isolated by modern, post-war Japanese society.  In one story, a man mourning his upcoming retirement decides to spend all of his money so that his cold and controlling wife doesn't get any of it, and even manages to end up in bed with the girl he's had a crush on, only to find the entire thing so incredibly sad and empty.

Another story has a young man become the only resident of his apartment building, after a corpse is discovered in the adjoining apartment.  In another tale, a young woman decides to prostitute herself out to American soldiers stationed nearby, mostly because she doesn't know what else to do with herself.

This is a very bleak book, and with its frank and sometimes explicit approach to sexuality, not at all what I would have expected to have been published in Japan in the 70s.  These are very literary and mature stories, and reading them in quick succession is a little numbing, but ultimately in a good way.

Fallen Words

by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Compared to the rather dark and brutal stories of Tatsumi's Abandon the Old in Tokyo, which I read recently, Fallen Words is an absolute delight.  Tatsumi, the father of gekiga manga, a sub-genre analogous to alternative comics in North America, experimented with this book.  Each story told here comes from the Japanese storytelling tradition of rakugo, which features moral fables that end with a punchline or joke.  Tatsumi decided to fashion these classic stories in the gekiga style, and see where it took him.

These are old stories from mostly the Edo period, and as such are all set during that time.  They play with themes of marital deception, and many of them involve prostitutes or the lengths people will go to to escape poverty.

The lightness of the stories is carried over into Tatsumi's storytelling and art, which feels a little looser than his earlier work.  I didn't find it difficult at all to relate to these characters, despite their being from a distant time and culture, and that is a credit to the ease with which Tatsumi weaves his tales.  Now, not being familiar with rakugo at all, I can't really assess how closely he stays to the source material, but that doesn't really matter.  What does matter is that this is a fun read.

Optic Nerve #13

by Adrian Tomine

It's always cause to celebrate when a creator like Adrian Tomine comes out with a new book, and even more so when he continues to release his material in the single-issue format.

This issue of Optic Nerve contains two short stories inside of it, and another short strip of Tomine being an artistic Luddite making up the cover (no wasted space here).

The first story, 'Go Owls' is a wonderful study of an abusive relationship.  A man meets a woman at a twelve step program, and the two of them hook up.  At first, the guy is loving and supportive, but over time, Tomine's portrayal of him changes to show that he's really a bit of a creep.  This guy is demanding and belittling, and also pretty weird in his pursuit of 'his sexy stuff', but the woman has nowhere to go, and so she stays with him.  It's not as bleak as it sounds though - there are some genuinely funny moments, and the ending is downright awesome.

The second story, 'Translated, from the Japanese' is beautiful.  It's narrated by a young mother who is returning to America with her daughter after a sojourn in Japan.  Each panel is either architectural in subject, or an extreme closeup of the things around the narrator.  None of the main characters are actually shown.  Most of the story takes place on the flight to California, where a Japanese professor befriends and entertains the young girl.  A flight attendant mistakes the trio for a family.  Upon landing, it becomes clear that the woman's nuclear family is going through a bit of a crisis.

These stories show Tomine at his best.  His pieces are literary and original, and show insight into the human condition.  His art is top notch, and the only thing I have to complain about this book is that it's probably going to be another year before we see any new work from him.  I cannot recommend this book enough.

Abandon the Old in Tokyo

by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

I'm not sure I was prepared for the utter bleakness of the stories collected in Abandon the Old in Tokyo.  I've read a few of Tatsumi's books now, most notably A Drifting Life, but I still didn't expect that his work would be quite this dark.

Tatsumi uses these stories, which originally saw publication in the 1970s, to explore the growing sense of isolation in Tokyo's cities, and the pressures placed on young men to be successful and happy.  His protagonists usually look the same in each story, giving the impression that we are seeing the same poor sap again and again.  His protagonists are also often silent or men of very few words; they allow others to shape their existences, be they demanding fiancés, infirm parents, creditors, or unfriendly editors.  Again and again we see these poor guys get beaten down, until they make some questionable life choices.

The most disturbing story in this book is 'The Hole', in which our protagonist is tricked into falling into a hole on a mountain, where a woman with a burned face and chest holds him captive for reasons that are never made clear.  Things get really twisted when the man's wife shows up, but insists she will only help him if he gives up his plans to divorce her.

Often when reading manga, I feel a cultural disconnect with the characters.  That's not the case here, as Tatsumi focuses on the problems of the modern condition; in many ways, this work is as relevant in post-recession North America as it was in post-war Japan.  This is a disturbing book, but it has been made by a master of the art form, and for that reason, it is a worthy read.

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths

by Shigeru Mizuki

Take a moment and think about how the West has portrayed Japanese soldiers of the Second World War in films, novels, and other media.  The image that immediately comes to my mind is of tenacious fighters who attack suddenly, and who never give up an inch of ground.  I can't think of a single movie I've seen or book I've read that gets into the Japanese perspective though.

That's why I was excited to crack open Sigeru Mizuki's Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, the collection of a manga story that was originally serialized in 1973.

This book is, according to the author, 90% true.  Mizuki was stationed on New Britain, an island in the Papua New Guinean archipelago, and was home to some fierce fighting between the Japanese and the Americans.  Mizuki introduces us to a number of characters of all ranks, and shows the boredom of the soldiers awaiting an Allied attack.

Much of this book is given over to portraying the officers as dehumanizing the men under their command.  Barely a page goes by where someone isn't being slapped or beaten simply because of their lower rank.  The men have their time wasted by officers looking to keep them busy, and the men slowly lose all sense of respect for the war effort in general.  When it becomes clear that the soldiers holding an area around Baien have no hope of success, their leaders decide that the appropriate course of action is to attack the Americans in a frontal suicide charge.

Some of the men survive this, and make their way to their larger forces, far to the rear of the fighting.  That they survived is seen as something between an inconvenience and a complete insult.  Their deaths have been reported to military command, and so it is necessary for them to attack again, ensuring their fate is what their commanders expect.

This book lays bare the problems of Japan during the war.  The need for honor, and for keeping up appearances sent men to needless deaths, while doing nothing to halt the Allied advance.  Mizuki does a terrific job of humanizing this senseless slaughter, and portraying it in a light, enjoyable fashion.

Mizuki's art is very interesting.  His backgrounds and establishing shots are exceptionally detailed and photo-realistic, while his figures are drawn in a very simple, cartoonish style.  Many of the characters look like the racially stereotypical drawings of the Japanese seen in American comics of the war period, which kind of surprised me.

I enjoyed reading this book a great deal.  None of the characters, with the possible exception of the doctor, stuck with me, although that is something that often happens to me when I read war comics; all of the characters are usually so similar that as individuals, they don't matter.  Which was more or less the point of the Japanese command.

Black Blizzard

by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

I really enjoyed reading A Drifting Life, manga legend Yoshihiro Tatsumi's gigantic manga memoir a couple of years ago.  It portrayed his early days in the manga industry, a business that he helped shape with his resolve to write darker, more adult stories for a more adult audience.

In that book, the act of his creating Black Blizzard is a watershed moment for the young Tatsumi, and I was curious to read this book.  Luckily, the fine people at Drawn & Quaterly decided that this book was deserving of a North American edition, and so I was able to get the chance.

Black Blizzard is a Japanese noir story set in the late 1950s.  It opens with a young pianist showing concern that he may have murdered another person, although he was drunk at the time, and does not remember what happened.  He is arrested, but while being transported alongside another prisoner, to whom he is handcuffed, the train derails.  The two men make good on this chance for freedom, and end up spending hours together in a forest ranger's cabin, hiding from the police and trying to get warm (they've just walked through the titular blizzard).

The young man tells the hardened criminal his story, one of love, music, and the cruel ringmaster father of his circus performing girlfriend who does not want them to be together.  Later, desperate to be free, the older criminal contrives to drug the younger, and cut off his hand.

The story is pretty simple in its design and execution, but for all that, it is effective.  This is a classic noir story, and it illustrates how little that genre has changed in sixty years.  Tatsumi's early art is much cruder than what was in A Drifting Life, but there is a charm to this work by a young man looking to stretch the possibilities of an entire medium.  As a story, this is entertaining.  As a historical document, this book is essential.

Jerusalem: Chronicles From the Holy City

by Guy Delisle

Guy Delisle has made a name for himself by traveling to parts of the world where people suffer under oppressive regimes, and then cartooning about it in a style that is often both sympathetic and critical at the same time.  His first book, Pyongyang, had him stationed for a while in the capital of North Korea, and sharing his observations and musings with us in his disarming, chummy style.  It worked well, as did his later forays to China (Shenzhen), and Burma.

Now, with this work, he turns his eye to Israel, after he and his wife lived for a year in Jerusalem.  Delisle's wife works with Médecins Sans Frontières, and joined their mission to Palestine in 2010.  They stayed in an apartment owned by MSF in East Jerusalem, right across from an Israeli settlement.

What makes Delisle's travel memoirs work so well is that he portrays himself as entering a country with no real preconceptions or specific expectations, and he actually does allow events and the people he meets to dictate his feelings about a place.  Early on, the family (they have two young children with them) is encouraged to avoid shopping in the settlements, as spending money there lends them a sense of legitimacy, and all of the settlements are illegal, if openly permitted.

As the year unfolds, Delisle spends a lot of time traveling the small country looking for good places to sketch (there are a lot of drawings of the Wall between the West Bank and the rest of the country), trying to see all of the historical and religious sites (with varying degrees of success), and meeting people on all sides of the conflict.

Clearly, the Palestinians come out of this book looking the best, but it would be hard to have it any other way.  The settlers are portrayed (accurately, from all other accounts I have read) as racist aggressors and insane fundamentalists, who are seen as an embarrassment to the rest of Israeli society. 

It's hard to read this book without gaining a sense of anger at the injustice of Israel's policies, and also a curiosity as to why the rest of the world is so permitting of the crimes permitted by the state.  There are a lot of books on this topic, but Delisle's is effortlessly accessible and frequently quite funny.  It's a nice comics companion to Sara Glidden's How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, which Vertigo published last year.

Once again, Delisle has succeeded at showing the world a system and a place where people suffer great hardships, although here it is not so much at the whim of a hard-line regime (although it is) but also at the hands of individuals who have been given too great a sense of entitlement and empowerment.

Back Alleys and Urban Landscapes

by Michael Cho

The first time I ever attended the Toronto Comics Art Festival was the last year that it was held at Victoria College, on the University of Toronto campus.  While looking around for comics to buy, I came across Michael Cho's table, and was blown away by the prints he had made of some of his drawings and paintings of back alleys of Toronto.  I bought two, and they have been hanging in my house ever since.

Now, Drawn & Quarterly has published Back Alleys and Urban Landscapes, a collection of Cho's urban scenes, which means I get to own all of these fantastic pieces of art, at an affordable price.

I have always been drawn to quiet or forgotten urban settings.  I have long been fascinated by abandoned buildings or spaces where progress has marched on.  The back alleys of Cho's book are neither forgotten nor abandoned, but they often feel like they are.  The areas that he draws and paints are frequently shabby and devoid of human presence, just back walls, fences, and detritus.  There is a timeless quality to many of his pieces here, and save for the proliferation of satellite dishes and large plastic garbage and recycling bins, they could have been drawn at any point in the last hundred years.  These are the old neighbourhoods of Toronto that Cho captures here, and his record is appreciated in a city that is so determined to constantly reinvent itself.

These pictures were made using a variety of tools, from paints to ink markers, and they are largely organized by time of year and colour scheme.  His evening pictures perfectly capture the orangey-yellow of life under mercury vapor street lights, while his winter scenes, tinted blue, evoke the cold of a Toronto winter (okay, not lately).  Spring is filled with greens, while his autumn pictures are more reddish and yellow.

Every page of this book feels familiar, although there are few scenes I can identify with any certainty.  Cho has captured aspects of my city that I love, and I am certain that this is a book I am going to treasure.  It is a beautifully designed book, and I'm pleased that Drawn & Quarterly put this together for us.

Summer Blonde (Stories)

by Adrian Tomine

Summer Blonde collects four stories from Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve, each of which is a minor masterpiece of literary comics.

In Alter Ego, a struggling writer obsessed with issues from his childhood that he hasn't been able to let go, enters into a strange relationship with the teenage sister of a girl he had a crush on in high school.  The writer lives in a different town, and is in a stable relationship, but can't seem to tear himself away from this young woman, with whom he has a platonic relationship, at least until she makes a move.  This story has a bit of a Paul Auster feel to it - the writer wrote one derivative autobiographical novel to middling acclaim, and then ghostwrote another for a celebrity, which received great praise.  One cannot escape the feeling that he is pursuing this young woman with one eye on how it would turn out to be a good story for his next book.

Summer Blonde is an interesting study in jealousy and obsession.  Neil is a sad, quiet man, who has decided he is in love with a girl who works in a gift card store, despite the fact that their interactions with one another do not extend past him going in and buying cards that he never sends to anyone.  He gets a new neighbour, Carlo, who has all sorts of success with women, including the card shop girl, who already has another boyfriend.  Neil steps up his game to stalking, and lets the boyfriend know that Carlo is around, with interesting results.

Hawaiian Getaway follows Hillary, a dour young woman who loses her job answering phones for a mail order catalogue, and descends into her own brand of weirdness.  She makes audio tapes of her roommate having sex, and starts prank calling a payphone across the street to amuse herself.  She has problems with her Chinese immigrant mother, and can't maintain normal friendships.  Strangely, she meets a nice guy through her prank calling, and begins to see a brighter future for herself.

Finally, Bomb Scare is about Scotty, a high school student with one friend - Chris, who is kind of odd.  There are rumours flying through the school that the two are lovers, and Chris ends up alienating Scotty through his interest in extreme pornography and his forceful ways.  Scotty begins to get close to Cammie, a party girl with a reputation for being easy.  This story is a fascinating look at the horrors of high school.  Being roughly the same age as Tomine, the time period depicted in this story is incredibly familiar.

Tomine's stories are excellent.  He has a tendency to not provide any sense of closure in his endings, preferring to close his tales on potentially pivotal scenes.  He has a strong understanding of people who find it difficult to interact with people.  Hillary receives a book on making small talk from her sister, while Neil and Scotty are equally uncomfortable in the same types of settings.

I really enjoyed this book, and am sad that I've now read Tomine's complete body of work, at least until he gives us another issue of Optic Nerve.

Market Day

by James Sturm

Despite being a very quick read, Market Dayis an impressive example of a literary graphic novel.  Mendleman is an anxious rug weaver, living somewhere in Eastern Europe around the turn of the twentieth century.  He has a baby on the way, and finds himself worrying about all the things that first time fathers worry about.  Market Day comes around, and because of her advanced pregnancy, Mendleman's wife stays home, forcing him to make the lengthy journey on his own.

When arriving at the market, Mendleman meets up with some of his fellow artisans, and they stop in at A. Finkler & Son, the store that always purchased their wares.  The problem is that the store has changed ownership, and where its previous proprietor only bought the best goods, and paid top dollar, the current shopkeeper is more interested in selling cheaply made goods for a lower price.

Sturm captures the beginnings of the industrial age, and the shift it caused in the production and value of many items, without ever openly discussing it.  One also feels that this book is as much about our own modern era, where production has all but abandoned North America for cheaper, shoddier places like China.  Later, Mendelman travels to an emporium in another town, chasing rumors of better prices, only to find himself lost in what was the Wal-Mart of its day, where market pressures forced down the prices of even high-end goods.

This is a very intelligent book, beautifully illustrated with expansive panels that evoke the growing hustle and bustle of the towns while preserving the tranquility of the countryside.  I enjoyed this book, although I think I would have been pretty displeased had I spent the cover price ($22-24, depending on your country) for a story that is so short.  Does that make me the equivalent of the guy who took over A. Finkler's store?  Probably.

Sleepwalk and Other Stories

by Adrian Tomine

Having decided to get caught up on Adrian Tomine's library, I was fortunate to find two of his collections in used bookstores this summer.  Sleepwalk collects the tales in the earliest issues of Optic Nerve, his very occasional anthology series which recently had a new issue published.

There are a lot of stories in this lovely hardcover collection, although they tend to return again and again to Tomine's usual themes - recent breakups, broken families, and lonely young people.  I suppose it's easy to find Tomine's work a downer, since so many of his characters are so sad and downtrodden, but there is also plenty of beauty to this book, and not just in his wonderful art.

Characters are faced with a lot of adversity here - they miss their ex, they have trouble communicating with their family, they hate their jobs but don't see any other prospects - but there is also an underlying belief in the resilience of people that makes each story an enjoyable read.  Tomine frequently ends his stories in odd places, and many of the just feel like they stop, instead of end.  It's a cool technique for this type of story, and where it would be pretty annoying somewhere else, here it works.

I love Tomine's art.  His pencils are nice and clean, for the most part, and I like his use of ziptones for shading.  This is a good book, and I can't wait to get to Summer Blonde, which is also on my shelf waiting to be read.

Paying For It

by Chester Brown

It's been a few days since I've finished reading this book, but I wanted to take a while before writing about it, as I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Basically, Chester Brown gives us a journal of his experiences with prostitutes and escorts, in both in-call and out-call situations.  We also get to read a fair amount about his justifications and rationale for this behaviour, and the reactions of some of this closest friends with regards to it.

After having a slow breakup with his last girlfriend (they continued to live together, but her new boyfriend moved in), Brown decided to use prostitutes to satisfy his sexual needs, and to no longer seek relationships with women beyond the monetary kind.  We follow him through a few years of his whoring, as he goes from being a timid john utilizing a pseudonym, to developing a monogamous relationship with one particular woman who he loves, but continues to pay for services rendered.

While the book avoids being particularly graphic, it is indeed pretty explicit in a number of places.  This is definitely not a book for someone who enjoyed Louis Riel and wanted to read more of his stuff (although that's more or less how I came to read it).  Brown gives each woman their own chapter, and gives us as faithful a rendition of their encounter as he can, allowing for the shoddiness of memory, and his desire to protect the identities of these women.  It does seem like he's getting (and paying for) a lot of sex, but it's worth paying attention to the dates listed, as he has carefully organized the time between his encounters.

A book like this is sure to raise all sorts of opinions and questions.  I can see how this arrangement worked for Brown, but recognize that it's not for me.  He doesn't shy away from issues of human trafficking and sexual slavery, but also appear to ever reject a woman if she suspects that her involvement with him is not purely consensual.  Brown fills the last twenty-five pages of the book (before his voluminous notes) with 23 appendices designed to share his views on topics like exploitation, pimping, violence, and Nevada's brothels.  It's a very informative book, opening a window onto a world I am pretty unaware of.  The fact that Brown lives in my city adds particular relevance to the book for me.

This is probably the most honest in a long line of autobiographical and confessional graphic novels completed by Brown and his circle.  I have no doubt that it's an important book; I'm just not sure how much I enjoyed it.  I did find it compulsively readable, but like Brown's meetings with Anne in the book, it left me feeling kind of empty afterwards.

Optic Nerve #12

by Adrian Tomine

I know everyone in comics land is very excited about DC's 'New 52', but finding the new issue of Optic Nerve in my pull-file was my big thrill of the week.  I'll confess from the start - I never read this title before, but did read Shortcomings, which was collected from the most recent issues (most recent meaning several years old).

This issue has two stories, and a two-page strip.  The first story, 'A Brief History of the Art Form Known as Hortisculpture', is told as a series of four-panel comic strips, with every seventh chapter being a full page in colour, evoking newspaper strips.  It's about a gardener who comes across the idea of marrying traditional sculpture with plants, having them grow within the structure, and spread out through various openings.  The comparison to Chia Pets is made early on, although I kept waiting for someone to discuss bonsai.

Unfortunately, Harold's bold new art form doesn't take off the way he'd hoped, and over a course of about six years, we follow his (and his wife's) growing frustration.  This story is quite funny, but also speaks to the inherent misery of the creative process when it is not recognized or appreciated.

The second story, 'Amber Sweet', is about a woman with more than a passing resemblance to an Internet porn star.  This association, made by fellow college students, boyfriends, and random people on the street, has a deleterious and lasting affect on the young woman's life, and when she finally meets the real Amber, we would expect that anger to rear its head.  What really happens is much more interesting of course.  This story is fully coloured, and drawn in a much more expansive style than Hortisculpture.

Taken together, we see that Tomine continues to be a master observer of relationships and the human condition.  The book is completed with a self-deprecating two-page strip about Tomine's own defense of the 'floppy' format of comics.  This book isn't actually coming out in most stores until next week (my store has a hook-up I suspect), and you won't find anything better on the shelves.  Pick it up.

Red Snow

by Susumu Katsumata

I found this collection of short pieces done in the gekiga style in the same treasure trove of Drawn & Quarterly remainders in Victoria.  I can never make up my mind about manga - what little I read I usually enjoy, but I never feel like I completely understand it.  Having read Yoshihiro Tatsumi's masterpiece A Drifting Life, I understand the context surrounding these stories, and their place in Japan's history, which is good because the back matter in this book did little to address that.

These are all rural stories, set in places that wouldn't even qualify as villages.  The characters in these stories tend to live in very small communities, bordering on total isolation.  They have a deep connection to their surroundings and its seasons, and the reader picks up a number of details of pre-WWII Japan, such as some of the complexity of sake manufacturing.

Frequently, these stories are about people lusting after or mistreating women, and many of them have magical realist qualities.  A girl falls in love with a chestnut tree, which begins visiting her at night.  Also, there are tons of Kappa around; these are mythical Japanese creatures who live in the water, and resemble turtle-shelled Fraggles.

I enjoyed this book, but found that many of the stories ended in ways that I felt left most of the plots unresolved.  I freely admit that there are any number of cultural connections that I am not making, and think it's a shame that the people at D&Q didn't include some explanatory notes in the back of the book, as was done for A Drifting Life.

Wilson

by Daniel Clowes

Drawn & Quarterly make some wonderful comics, both in terms of their content and their design, but they are expensive.  Regular readers will have a feel for how many comics I read in a given month, and so it's hard to justify dropping $22 or $24 for what is essentially an 80 page graphic novel, even when it is over-sized, hard covered, and beautiful.

However, while on vacation in beautiful and kind of sleepy Victoria, BC, I stumbled across Russell Books, which must have some kind of arrangement with D&Q, or their Canadian distributors, because they have a plethora of overstock graphic novels at very reasonable prices.  I stocked up, and found a few other surprises along the way. 

Anyway, Wilson.  This story is told in 70 one-page strips, which work in chronological order, but frequently jump over periods of time, leaving it to the reader to figure out how much time has passed.  Clowes changes styles frequently, often using a realistic approach, but at other times drawing Wilson more like a cartoon figure.

Wilson's a jerk.  He wanders around, pontificating and grilling people in coffee shops and on transit about their lives, before cutting them off and delivering some withering criticisms.  Where his self-confidence comes from is a bit of a mystery, as he is jobless and divorced, with only a dog to love him.  After his father passes away, Wilson decides to look up his ex-wife, who has apparently fallen on hard times, and together they track down the daughter that his wife put up for adoption.

Slowly a more sympathetic picture of Wilson begins to develop, although this is frequently shattered by him opening his mouth.  There are touching moments in this book though, and it is sometimes very funny.  It fits comfortably alongside work by Chris Ware, Joe Matt, and Chester Brown.  Very enjoyable.

The Klondike

by Zach Worton

I love reading decent historical novels, books, and comics, so The Klondike is the type of book that I'm always going to pick up.  When it's made by someone who works at the comic store that I frequent, I'm even more likely.

The Klondike tells the massive story of the gold prospectors, entrepreneurs, and police officers who rushed into the Yukon Territory at the end of the 19th century, during the last large-scale gold rush ever seen in North America.  This was a moment of great importance for Canada, as it exerted its sovereignty in the north, and began to develop one of the last true frontiers.

Worton tells the story in a kaleidoscopic fashion, jumping from character to character, attempting to give the reader the big picture of what was going on in this cold and unforgiving place.  The book is full of interesting historical figures, like 'Lying' George Carmack, who discovered a large vein of gold, and Belinda Mulrooney, a tough woman who opened a hotel in the region.  There is Joe Ladue, who did more than anyone to bring a sense of order to the camps, and "Soapy" Smith, a gangster-like figure.  Also, Superintendent Sam Steele, the most famous member of the Northwest Mounted Police is given some screen time.

What emerges from reading this book is a good understanding of the type of person that abandoned their lives to gamble on becoming rich in this difficult part of the country.  There is a dignity to Worton's characters, as well as a desperation.  The book jumps all over the place in terms of story, which allows for a more nuanced gestalt to form in the reader's mind.  There is some interesting backmatter in the book that explains mining techniques, as well as a who's who of important figures.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and imagine it will fit nicely on the shelf next to Louis Riel and Northwest Passage.  I love that there is a growing body of good Canadian history graphic novels.

Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography

by Chester Brown

I have wanted to read Chester Brown`s historic comic again almost since I finished reading it in its serialized form, and am pleased that I did.  Riel has long been a figure of interest for me, and I wanted to revisit my memories of this series, and see what insights it may provide into such a controversial Canadian figure.

Louis Riel was the leader of Canada`s Métis people through two uprisings, the Red River Rebellion of 1869, and the Northwest Rebellion of 1885.  The Métis were a mixed-race people, representing a blend of Aboriginal, French, and English and Scottish cultures.  In the 1860s, as the government of Canada prepared to purchase Rupert`s Land (a massive territory that made up the bulk of Canada`s modern-day area) from the Hudson`s Bay Company, the Métis became concerned for their land and their rights to continue living on it.  They took up arms, and were successful in having their rights recognized in the Manitoba Act (not that all of those rights were later honoured).  Riel, though successful, fled arrest and spent many years living in the United States.

Later, as Canadian settlers continued to push westward, towards the Saskatchewan River, the Métis who had moved west ahead of them found themselves in a similar position as before, and Riel was summoned to lead them once again.  The thing is, during those intervening years, Riel kind of lost his mind.  He believed he was the chosen of God, and claimed to receive messages and visions telling him how to proceed (at one point, he believed that Batoche Saskatchewan should become the centre of the Roman Catholic faith).  This rebellion did not go so well, and Riel was captured, tried, and later hung.

Riel has remained a controversial figure in Canadian history.  To the Métis, Aboriginal groups, and many more, he was a Father of Confederation who worked to secure the rights and freedoms of his people.  To many others, he was a traitor who got what he deserved.  Brown, in creating this biography, avoids choosing a side, and prefers to stick as close as he can to the historical record (he provides detailed footnotes explaining the places where he has taken artistic license, or examining areas where historians disagree).  What we have then is a pretty accurate accounting of what happened, with the mistakes and ambitions of many of the principal players revealed.

To a history geek like myself, there is nothing cooler than a comic like this (the actual trial transcript - in comic book form!).  Brown has done a fantastic job of researching the events, and making them into a compelling and fascinating read.  His simple yet detailed drawings, and strict adherence to a six-panel grid, work well here in creating a comic that feels like a historical document.  I wish there were more comics works with this level of historical accuracy, commentary, and scholarship.