Reads 2

The Essex County trilogy by Jeff Lemire is a haunting piece of work.  I say that because it has been stuck in my mind, creeping in in unexpected ways since I first started the trilogy back in the spring.  The graphic novel trilogy includes the books Tales from the Farm, Ghost Stories and The Country Nurse.  The stories in these books are connected to each other through family relationships and span several generations and decades.  The stories are compelling, touching and somewhat somber in tone.  Lemire is a master at touching the universal in very subtle ways.   

Lemire is a great visual storyteller.  His artwork may not be immediately accessible to everyone but the way he uses images to advance the narrative, show emotion and connect story elements seems effortless and intuitive.  He has a gift for letting images tell the story and text in the story is sparse.  One must be careful to slow down and let the images work the narrative, they are relatively quick reads, and if one does not pay attention to the images the previously mentioned subtlety may slip right by.

Thematically the story concerns rural life in Essex County, Ontario, Canada. The first book, Tales from the Farm, is about a farmer who is raising his nephew, a superhero obsessed pre-teen, and their strained relationship.  They connect on some levels and there is love there but it is hidden and confused.  It is an ex-hockey playing convenience store clerk that connects with the boy and may have a deeper connection that is hinted at in the story.  

The second book, Ghost Stories, is about hockey playing brothers who share a brief moment of camaraderie and joy.  Later they part ways and have a troubled secret between them.  In this book Lemire hits his visual storytelling stride, using many images to express deep emotion and connect current events to recollection.  In one image a character, recalling the past, has his tears turn into the ice that forms a frozen lake on which the brothers, in their youth, had practiced hockey.  Very powerful image, working on a deeper level than words.

The final book, The Country Nurse,  is about a nurse that travels the county seeing to elderly patients.  Her story is intertwined with the characters of the previous two books.  The narrative stretches decades to the past and also contains a dark secret.  Again the emotion is raw and the images do as much or more than the words to express it.

This trilogy had a powerful impact on me.  I feel the pulse of it more than remember specific events.  The author is from Essex County.  He says the story is not factual but meant to capture the feeling of what it was like to grow up and live in this part of the world, sort of a fictional biography of a place, very interesting.  I have come away from this work with an interest in hockey, an interest in rural Canada, a focus on the emotional subtlety that underlies all life events and how tenuous connections can be and a vow to read everything that this amazing young creator touches.

creators

Will Eisner is responsible in a large way for establishing the medium of comic books the way that we know it today.  If you are a fan of comics and have not read anything by Eisner you owe it to yourself to check out his work.  His career spans the most important years in the medium starting in the 30's and continuing until his death in 2005.  He was active throughout, pausing perhaps for a brief stint in the military during WWII.  The work that he did explored the possibilities of the medium, pushed the boundaries of conventions and established the vocabulary that still helps define the art form to this day.

In the 30's Eisner was approached to create a weekly feature for a Sunday newspaper comic book insert, the only one of its kind ever in existence.  He left the comic book company that he had created in order to embark on this endeavor.  Comics were about to get a shot of creativity equal to the shot the Beatles gave rock and roll.  The strip he created was called The Spirit.  

This strip ran seven pages every Sunday from 1939 to 1952.  Eisner decided to use the strip to explore ideas that he had for expanding the possibilities of the medium.  Techniques that are now commonplace in sequential art storytelling such as the use of light and shadows, splash pages, use of lettering and innovative use of word and thought balloons and many other innovations were first experimented with by Eisner in The Spirit.  The stories are very readable even to this day.  They are all available in The Spirit Archives collections which I believe is now approaching 26 volumes published by DC Comics.  I have read volumes 1 and 17.  Reading them in this way shows just how far he got in his development of the art in just ten years.  The only criticism I have is the specter of the racist stereotypes of the era rearing its ugly head.  Eisner later in his life acknowledged that his strip was indeed racist and apologized.  He is as guilty as any film maker, radio show producer or writer of the era that resorted to such practices.  As adults we may be able to rationalize these things but always use caution when exposing these things to children lest we perpetuate hurtful and just plain wrong ideas about who we all are.

For some reason Beatles comparisons come to mind with me when I think of Eisner.  It is often said that the Beatles really jelled as a creative force in their time playing in Hamburg.  In that time of playing several shows a night several nights a week they came to know each other well as musicians, explored and expanded the boundaries of convention and established the foundation of the most important pop cultural event in the 20th Century.  The results of their efforts established rock as a viable and recognized art form.

The same can be said of Eisner and his work on The Spirit.  The grind of putting out seven pages of comics a week is intense.  Doing this with so much focus helped push the innovations for which he is responsible.  It also helped the medium gain respect from the artistic community and is now having a belated effect helping comics gain respect from the public at large.

If The Spirit was all that Eisner had done it would have been enough to secure him as the grand innovator of comics but he did not stop there.  He is also credited as the father of the graphic novel with the publication of A Contract with God.  This work is drawn from his experiences growing up as a Jewish immigrant in New York City.  He went on to craft two more stories drawn from the same influences collectively known as The Contract with God Trilogy.  This work is filled with the same masterful sequential art storytelling techniques of The Spirit and influenced a generation of artists anxious to create work outside to the limitations of the superhero confines imposed by comics super powers DC and Marvel.

Eisner went on to create many more stories and also wrote several volumes on the creation of comics.  He also did work in the interim between the Spirit and Contract for the US Army creating field instruction manuals in comic form... work continued today by the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning.   The works mentioned thus far are the musts for Eisner if you are a comics history buff. Other works I have read that I can personally vouch for are Life in Pictures, The Plot, Last Day in Vietnam, Life on Another Planet, and New York the Big City.  

If you have the comics bug check him out, this is where it all started.  If you are a casual fan his work is worth reading because he is a damn good storyteller!  

sounds

The Moody Blues are one of my favorite bands.   There I said it.  The seven albums they put out in the late 60's and early seventies constitute one of the most artistically consistent and focused runs in rock history.  Those albums are Days of Future Past '67, In Search of the Lost Chord '68, On the Threshold of a Dream '69, To our Children's Children '69, A Question of Balance '70, Every Good Boy Deserves a Favor '71 and Seventh Sojourn '72.  This could have been one giant album, they are very similar in sound and theme.  In fact I have a hard time keeping track of which songs are on which album. 

While I appreciate growth in artistic vision and sometimes get bored when bands can't break out of a rut, this is somehow different.  I don't think that this was planned but it is almost as if each album is a chapter of the same book.

The songs themselves sound sometimes like the quirky british pop of the era, like the tunes "Peak Hour" and "Another Morning" on Days.  Others are sonic beauties like "Nights in White Satin" from Days and "Out and In" from Children's Children.  And they can often rock as on "The Story in Your Eyes" from Every Good Boy and "I'm Just a Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band)" from Sojourn.

I do understand why they are not accessible to everyone.  They are very much an artifact of their time and if you don't have an ear for that period's music they might be hard to take.  Also their use of a symphony orchestra on Days and being a pioneer in the use of the mellotron, an early predecessor of the synthesizer that could itself sound like a string section or even chanting monks, could be other factors driving people away.  But it is these things about them that I love.

The Moody Blues of this era were very unique.  There is no other act in rock history that sounds quite like them.  They are still together but unfortunately are not putting out much, if any, new stuff (that I know of).  They did put out several albums after this creative explosion, the best of which, in my opinion, is the album Long Distance Voyager which at times sounds like it could have been right in there with these albums but is not nearly as consistent. 

They also had some music production before Days came out, most notably the hit single "Go Now."  This version of the Moodys featured Denny Laine who I believe moved on later to be part of Paul McCartney and Wings.  Denny Laine and I think another key player were replaced by Justin Howard and John Lodge and it was these two that helped drive the creative vision that fueled their amazing output.

It is hard to put out 7 studio albums of new material in 6 years.  Harder still to put out ones that are so consistent in their artistic vision and musicianship.  

They also looked cool.  Checking out their liner note photos is seeing the best of the fashions and hairstyles of swinging London.  Yeah baby... YEAH!

If you are interested I think that iTunes has most if not all of the albums I wrote about, I know I downloaded most of them there.  Start with any of the seven.  Days of Future Past is legendary and belongs in any music library so if nothing else get that!

reads

I am currently reading the manga Phoenix vol. 8 Civil War pt. 2 by Osamu Tezuka.  This is a little past the halfway point in the series.  This series is considered to be Tezuka's magnum opus.  If you are unfamiliar with who Tezuka is, he is considered to be the godfather of manga and anime in Japanese popular culture.  He is probably best known in the US for his creations Astro Boy and Kimba, the White Lion.  He is like the Japanese equivalent of Walt Disney, Will Eisner and Jack Kirby all rolled into one.  His work is being translated into English with gaining momentum by publishers like Viz Media, who publishes this series and Vertical, who published his amazing biography Buddha.

Phoenix is a series of loosely connected stories that go far into the distant past and future. Each story involves the search for a bird, the phoenix or bird of fire, that is said to be able to give immortality if you drink its blood.  The stories are much larger and complex than just that particular aspect but they all involve some character that is obsessed with finding the elusive bird.  In these stories Tezuka examines many themes including love and spirituality and examines many aspects of Japenese culture and history.

Volume 2, The Future, has one of the most amazing sequential art narrative sequences I have ever read.  It follows the extinction of one culture and evolution of a whole new phase of life on Earth while one being, a man granted immortality, watches and encourages the new life forms in all phases of their evolution.  By the time the new life has reached a stage of civilization the beings body has withered away and he has become pure spirit.  The way that Tezuka uses the art form to move this narrative is masterful.  I was blown way when I read it and find myself thinking back on it quite often.  

The volume I am currently reading, 8, is a continuation of the story begun in vol. 7 Civil War part one.  This is a story set in Japan's samurai past.  It involves warring factions and villages in Japan's feudal era.  I am not through it yet but I have to say that it is not living up to the standard that he set in all the previous stories I have read in the series.  Hopefully it will pick up some steam soon.

If  you are interested in this at all you can pretty much start anywhere in the series as each story is self contained.  Even if you just read the second volume it is well worth it. Great action, interesting philosophical ideas, not for children.

Check out Tezuka!