Category: Drama

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Mother Come Home


By Paul Hornschemeier (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-973-9 (HB) 978-1593070373 (PB)

Paul Hornschemeier is a Californian author, artist, musician and film maker whose non-comics work has appeared as far afield as in Life Magazine to The Wall Street Journal to McSweeney’s. He’s produced animations for TV, lectures on YouTube and is part of the Creative Writing Faculty of the University of Chicago. He is internationally renowned for his lectures on the philosophy of narrative and art creation.

Mother, Come Home originally ran in marvellous indie publication Forlorn Funnies, before being gathered into a lyrically stunning and dreamily magnetic exploration of grief and coping mechanisms in a soft cover collection in 2004. In 2009 Fantagraphics produced a beautiful and magnificent deluxe hardback edition of one of the best, most emotionally complex and graphically symbolic tales ever to grace our medium.

Tom is a seven-year old boy whose mother has just died. As his father David – a deeply intellectual college professor of symbolic logic – slowly retreats into a nervous collapse, the youngster assumes the household duties as much as he is able. Throughout his trials, the boy is bolstered by his love and sense of duty, as well as the innate half-world of fantasy that is the rightful domain of the very young.

Empowered by a dime-store lion-mask his mother bought him, Tom becomes the head of his diminished clan and guardian of the home… until his aunt and uncle discover how ill his father has become.

When David voluntarily commits himself to an institution, Tom goes to live with them, but dreams of reuniting with his true family; even planning a meticulous escape and joyous reunion. However, when he takes action the consequences are painfully revelatory, inevitably tragic and hauntingly real…

Rendered in a number of simple, powerful styles, utilising a mesmeric, muted colour palette to bind ostensibly neutral images (that nevertheless burn with a highly charged intensity) with a simplified heavy line, this subtle, seductive, domestic tragedy is a perfect example of how our medium can so powerfully layer levels of meaning and abstract a personal reality until it becomes greater than itself.

Deeply moving, monstrously deep and overwhelmingly simple, Mother, Come Home is a true classic and ranks beside such noteworthy pictorial novels as Maus, Barefoot Gen, Stuck Rubber Baby, Pride of Baghdad, Persepolis or My Favorite Thing is Monsters. This is a tale nobody could ever be embarrassed about reading, but they should feel ashamed if they haven’t…
© 2002, 2003, 2004, 2009 Paul Hornschemeier. All Rights Reserved.

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Victory Point


By Owen D. Pomery (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-91039-552-3 (PB)

No matter where we are or when, we are all tied to key places and past events. Many of us also include abstract input in that chain of memory. In my head, childhood events are stored away in the pictorial style of Kirby, Ditko, Dudley Watkins and Hergé…

That distant sense of place and the picture postcard, Ligne Claire image efficiency clearly also impacted the sensibilities of architect and comics creator Owen D. Pomeroy (Between the Billboards, The Megatherium Club Vl. 1: The Great Ape) who here conjures up the powerful forces of recall and anticipation for his new book Victory Point: a beguiling seaside odyssey of many minor events and major changes.

With overtones of David Hockney to accompany the magnificently simple and engaging pictures, the tale follows urban bookshop worker Ellen Small – or “Minnow” as her dad calls her – as she returns for a short visit to the quaint seaside town she grew up in.

As Minnow contemplatively revisits old haunts and uncomfortably fails to reconnect with old friends and childhood acquaintances who never escaped the quasi-resort’s gravity well, she ponders how outsiders regard this seemingly legendary location.

For architecture students Victory Point is an icon: a bold 1933 experiment in social planning, intended to create a new kind of town and a “modern way to live”. Dedicated to promoting ethnic diversity, it was only partially completed and abides now in a timeless, unchanging state…

Moved in ways she can’t really express, Minnow visits the promontory Observatory where her mother died so long ago; chatting to a village newcomer and her child before reliving her own youth via a covert skinny dip in her old hidden coastal cove. She ends up spending the night with Dad in their old house. All the time that she’s talking to strangers and those she knows best, Ellen is pondering a big, life-changing decision…

Contemplative and philosophical, this gentle confection evokes sun and sea, past holidays and tomorrow’s unknown demands in a manner that feels quintessentially English: an unforgettable hotchpotch of vacation light, candy floss and the smell of briny ocean and vinegary chips. It’s a heartfelt paean to a mythical past with buildings, landscape and environment playing the parts of the lead characters, and with blessed tomorrows informing how the future should unfold. This is a beautiful, evocative and utterly contemplative visual experience no one could possibly resist, and possibly all the vacation you’ll need this year…
© 2020 Owen D. Pomery.
Victory Point is scheduled for release on September 10th 2020 and available for pre-order now.

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Clara


By Cécile & Christophe Lemoine, translated by Kevin Sullivan (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital only

It’s a truly horrific realisation that 2020 has brought the concept of imminent mortality back to the forefront of societal consciousness in way we in the west thought gone with gaslight, horse-brasses and Victorian ornaments. Now you’re truly lucky indeed if death hasn’t touched you, your family or circle of friends.

So, with the subject now truly unavoidable, how do you explain it to those who most need to understand what as much as why things have suddenly changed?

Originally released in Europe in May 2012, Clara is a children’s comic book tackling exactly that thorny issue in a potent – but ultimately uplifting – fantasy splendidly reminiscent of kindergarten classic The Velveteen Rabbit…

Written by actor, novelist and script doctor Christophe Lemoine and illustrated by artist, cartoonist and designer Cécile Brosseau, the tale reveals how the idyllic life of a bright, imaginative seven-year old changes forever when her devoted mother receives some terrifying news from her doctors.

In the days before and after her mother’s death, little Clara experiences a wave of unwelcome and uncontrollable emotions, barely held in check by the attentions of her equally-shattered dad and grandmother and centred around the scruffy old doll mummy gave her before everything changed…

However, at her lowest point, a journey into a bleak and terrifying fantasy world offers Clara revelation and perspective to balance the loss and grief and provides a chance of working out for herself the mystery of being left behind…

Balancing the largely unformed emotions of a child suffering bereavement with the escapist fantasy of saving a cherished toy is not a new concept, but it’s done here with style, aplomb and scrupulous sensitivity. Lemoine & Cécile focus clearly and efficiently on their message that death is not abandonment: accepting that kids do not process reality the same way adults do, but never sugar-coating or downplaying the tragedy.

Clara is a powerful tale impeccably told and one many adults would be well-advised to add to their armoury of learning aids to life…
© 2016 – LE LOMBRD – CÉCILE & LEMOINE. All rights reserved.

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Giant


By Mikaël, translated by Matt Maden (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-253-3 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-254-0

As a purported land of promises and untapped opportunity, America has always fascinated storytellers – especially comics-creators – from the “Old World” of Europe: an inclination and interest that has frequently delivered potent and rewarding results. This continentally-published yarn – by self-taught, multi-disciplined, multi award-winning French-born Québécois auteur Mikaël (Junior l’Aventurier, Rapa Nui, Promise) was first released by Dargaud in 2018 as two European albums and now breaks into English via a monolithically oversized hardback (229 x 305mm) edition that gets the entire story done-in-one.

Everything about this stylish Depression-era drama is big and powerfully mythic. In March 1932, with poverty wracking the nation and the world, and Herbert Hoover dreading the upcoming Presidential election, immigrants and natives flock to Manhattan and the bustling, dangerous construction site that will one day be Rockerfeller Center. Casualties are high as we focus on the Irish contingent rushing daily into the skies to rivet and weld a concrete and steel colossus into New York City’s ever-changing skyline.

The story unfolds through the eyes of fresh-off-the-boat new recruit Dan Shackleton who joins the crew after the death of “high-steel” man Ryan Murphy. Dan is a garrulous, easy-going son-of-the-sod, but even he has difficulty befriending the taciturn, thoughtful, barely-human behemoth everyone calls Giant. A formidable worker, Giant lives in a grubby flop-house and keeps to himself, but affable Dan persists and eventually the big man almost-imperceptibly thaws – at least enough that Shackleton becomes unwitting witness to a strange ritual…

Hiding a tragic secret that dates back to the recent Irish War of Independence, the Big Man is a solitary creature of fiercely controlled passions who keeps his every opinion to himself. A dutiful worker, Giant was given the task of informing Murphy’s widow in Ireland when he died. Instead, he began impersonating the dead man in a string of letters containing the bulk of his own carefully-hoarded wages and savings. Over months, a bizarre one-sided relationship develops that metastasizes into a full-blown crisis after the silent bruiser falls foul of organised crime. When the letters and money stop, Mary Ann Murphy and her children take ship for America to be reunited with her beloved husband. As the wounded colossus recuperates, he has no idea of the troubles that are heading his way…

Tapping into a wealth of powerful socially-crusading movies that have immortalised pre-WWII America and packed with period detail and mythology, pungent political commentary, a broad cast of moving characters and timeless drama, this is a human-scaled tale playing out amongst mighty edifices – both human and architectural – with warmth, passion, humour and beguiling humanity.

Supplemented with an Introduction by Jean-Louis Tripp and a stunning selection of production sketches, covers and other art, Giant is a stunning saga of uncommon folk in perilous times and one no lover of grand stories could possibly resist.
© 2018 Dargaud-Benelux. © 2020 NBM for the English Translation. All rights reserved.

Giant is scheduled for UK release April 23rd 2020 and is available for pre-order now.
Most NBM books are also available in digital formats. For more information and other great reads go to NBM Publishing at nbmpub.com.