> GRAPHICS
Supergirl: Being Super By Mariko Tamaki and Joelle Jones DC Comics, 208 pages, $22.99
Supergirl’s a teenage girl. It’s kind of her thing.
So it’s remarkable how rarely we see her depicted in a way that might be of interest to other teenage girls, instead of 40-something men who had a thing for the girl next door long ago. It’s taken Canada’s own Mariko Tamaki to give us this perspective, and the result is superb.
It’s an origin story, of course, because that’s what being a teenager is all about. While small town girl Kara Danvers is learning to be an adult, she’s also coping with developing the same abilities as Superman … and with people who want to exploit her.
Depictions of teens in comics vary in quality but, as she showed with the multiple-award-winning This One Summer, Tamaki can craft a coming-of-age tale like no one else. And Joelle Jones is one of the most remarkably talented comics artists around.
Wild’s End: Journey’s End By Dan Abnett and I.N.J. Culbard Boom! Studios, 160 pages, $25.99
This overlooked gem of comic books reaches its violent, charming conclusion with an original-content graphic novel that rounds out a three-part series. And, if any book proves comics are a unique way of telling stories, this is it.
Wild’s End is a slow-burning tale of alien invasion in a sleepy rural part of early 20th-century Britain. It’s a little like War of the Worlds, except every character is also an anthropomorphic animal in that unusual tradition of some newspaper comics, or books such as
Grandville, Blacksad or even Maus. If that makes little sense, don’t worry because it works if you run with it.
Culbert’s beautiful line work and subdued colours join Abnett’s subtle character development to create one of the highlights of recent comics. Everyone should be buying this, and seeking out the previous parts, First Light and Enemy Within.
Frank By Ben Rankel Renegade Arts Entertainment, 112 pages, $21.50
Tiny towns struggling to survive have always been part of the Canadian story. In Frank, the town of the title, the struggle became tragic in the historical events of 1903, when what’s now known as the Frank Slide killed at least 70 people.
Still the deadliest landslide in Canadian history, it’s the setting for this fictionalized story of Eve Lee, who is searching for answers about the disappearance of her lover and working practices in the local mine before the disaster. So she takes on the role of detective despite her own personal problems.
This is the first graphic novel by Ben Frankel, whose wife Fiona Staples is the phenomenally successful artist on Saga, among many other projects. It has rough edges including unusual sound effect and colour choices but, regardless,
Frank is excellent, absorbing and very, very Canadian. The Strange By Jerome Ruillier Drawn & Quarterly, 160 pages, $24.70 The experience of being different in an unfriendly country is brought home in this affecting work by Ruillier, who’s originally from Madagascar but lives in France.
It follows an undocumented immigrant to a new home in the west, but only tells his story through the eyes of others. The neighbour, the advocate, the friend and so on, each time giving a different perspective. The main character has no name, no voice. He could be anyone. It’s clever, and even a little shocking.
A story of xenophobia and the slimmest of hopes, The Strange is rendered in a rough art style, too, adding atmosphere with just minimal colour. Everyone’s a near-scribbled animal figure and the effect is profound.
In today’s world, where talk of borders is never missing from the news cycle,
The Strange is an important book. Everybody’s strange somewhere.