All Star


By Jesse Lonergan (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-835-2

Jesse Lonergan (Flower & Fade, Joe & Azat) is a sublime master of nuanced and mesmerising human dramas wedded to astonishingly hyperkinetic cartooning, and All Star proves he’s getting better all the time.

This latest graphic novel puts a unique spin on that most powerful cocktail of emotions – nostalgia and adolescent cockiness – all embedded in a timeless tale revealing how arrogance and injustice can shape a lifetime…

Previously released as 8 mini-comics and digitally on ComiXology, this fabulous monochrome fable draws more on the author’s High School observations than any personal sporting experiences whilst dissecting and celebrating the pressures and joys of small town life.

It all takes place in the summer of 1998 where school baseball star Carl Carter is poised on the cusp of a glittering career. His near record-breaking performance for the Elizabeth Monarchs has set the sleepy, bucolic Vermont town ablaze as his stellar efforts bring the team to the brink of winning the State Championship.

His senior year successes promise a full scholarship to the University of Maine, and a tantalisingly lucrative pro ball career. It’s everything Carl’s dad “Gordon” has worked so long and hard for…

Douglas Carter tries hard – both at home and on the ball team – but is not like his brother. He’s also less than thrilled at Carl’s smug superiority and aggravating, blasé air of contemptuousinsouciance. The golden boy is the town hero and Doug just doesn’t exist…

Carl is coasting. Even though he only needs academic minimums and he’s already getting preferential treatment from the otherwise bullying Coach, Carter keeps unwise hours and company. His best friend Esden Hubbard is an unacceptable influence: a bad seed from a family of trashy ne’er-do-wells – although Carl is increasingly dawn to Esden’s moody dark-horse sister Chelsea…

As the days progress – a blend of lessons, loafing, practising and unsupervised partying – Carl is beginning to feel unaccountably ill at ease, and his life changes forever in an instant when he and Esden, on a prankish teenage whim, break into the local store.

With seemingly every adult in town disappointed or screaming at him, Carl gets a shocking glimpse of the real nature of the world when Esden is summarily expelled from Elizabeth High but Principal Wick only gives his sporting wonder boy a painless slap on the wrist…

Confronted with a nauseating sense of his true worth, Carl’s naive sense of injustice goes into overdrive and he makes a rash decision that shakes up everything in the sleepy little town…

And there’s one more surprise the fallen idol has up his uniform sleeve…

Lonergan’s sparse and Spartan visual style displays an astounding ability to depict emotional intensity, his lean composition enhances the blazing dynamism of the sporting sequences and his portrayals of an intoxicating range of small town characters and past-it “glory days” survivors provides each human vignette with a beguiling life and tragically undisclosed back-story. This is comics storytelling of incomparable quality and class.

Poignant, bittersweet, with an ending but no conclusion, All Star is another superbly understated dissertation on the responsibilities of friendship, the fools gold of glittering prizes and the toxicity of unattainable dreams rendered in a magically simplified and mesmerising manner: a delight for any fan searching for more than broad jokes and bold action.

This is true Hall of Fame stuff you must not miss…
© 2014 Jesse Lonergan.