I don’t know how it escaped my notice last year, but Lorenz Peter’s Moon Boots was one of the best graphic novels to emerge in 2023.

On one level, it’s a straightforward tale of a cowboy-boot-wearing troubadour who goes on a road trip from Northern Ontario to the prairies to Calgary. 

On another, it’s a magically realistic trip about an individual who stretches out of his comfort zone, finding moments of surrealistic beauty and heart-warming friendship along the way.

However you define it, it’s worth reading.

Published last April by East Coast comic champion Conundrum Press, it follows other books by Peter such as On Vinyl, which I chose as the best graphic novel of 2018. The subject of that one is the “vinyl resurgence” we’ve heard so much about.

In Moon Boots, the author/artist extends his preoccupation with music, only now he’s focusing on how one eccentric cowboy creates it.

Lester Lafleur is the kind of natural songwriter who, moments after being kicked out of a small Ontario town, begins composing a tune about the police officer who escorted him to just beyond city limits: “I met her in the station, doo bee doo, she had nothin’ to do.”

What comes next is Lester finds a path in the woods, which he calls an “ideal setting” to get inspired. Strumming his guitar under a tree, an audience of woodland critters gathers, with the owl perched on a branch above asking, “Hey, do you know any Lightfoot?” “Cockburn was a better guitar player,” another bird responds. 

If that sort of surrealism delights you, you’re in for a treat. 

The whole point of reading Moon Boots is not to anticipate whether Lester will succeed in his quest to form a band, then record an album, but to enjoy the journey he’s on.

Along the way, there are moments of perfection, such as the three-page wordless spread that details the countryside – lakeshore, swamp, dragonflies — Lester is passing through as the hitchhiking passenger in a tractor trailer.

The collision between town and country is another thread running through Moon Boots. As the miles unfold, Lester reveals that he couldn’t deal with living in Toronto: “I just couldn’t hack it in the city. I’m better off on the road.”

Passing through different communities, a picture emerges of midsize Canada, a place rife with Tim Hortons locations. In fact, the singer’s truck-driving companion is a big believer the coffee chain should bring back it’s flip-lid cups: “You know, I remember a time when coffee lids didn’t spurt like a dolphin. Whole world’s gone to hell.”

There are also restaurants like Crabby Moe’s and bars that host Shania Twain tribute acts –  the one Lester opens for is called Twain Wreck.

This is the urban landscape that comes after everything in the country has been turned into a mall. 

Moon Boots is a funny, touching book, with quirky touches. Think Spinal Tap meets Salvador Dali.

There’s an RV – called an Eon-cation Omega Comf Wagon – that is so long it takes two hours to pass on the highway. When a Sheryl Crow tape gets eaten by the truck’s tape deck, the cassette sprouts wings, ascending to the heavens.

And when our hero reaches the wide prairies and gets a deflated tire in a car a friend has borrowed, a spare comes bouncing across the flat terrain, sent by unseen roadside-assistance helpers miles away.

There are no evil or untalented characters in Moon Boots, just surprising relatable individuals doing the best they can with what they have, like the queer homeless teenage goth who joins Lester as his drummer, photographer, driver and manager. 

Being a dog lover, I felt an instant pang in my heart reading one scene in which a decrepit canine sits exhausted on a farm front porch. The pitiful creature doesn’t even have the strength to bark properly at Lester, croaking only a “Harf, sputter,”’ as a greeting. 

I nearly cried.

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 31 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.