I’m the Odd Man Out as GNG Takes on Roaming
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains details from the graphic novel Roaming, so if you value surprise stop reading right now! Here’s the rundown on the most recent meeting of the L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group, which was held Saturday, July 12. The book: Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s Roaming, which follows three Canadian first-year university students on a five-day trip to New York City. The discussion: In short, I was in the minority as the only GNG member who really enjoyed the book. Odd man out, as usual! GNG has a custom of choosing a Canadian comic for our July meeting, so we honoured that tradition with this selection. (By sheer coincidence, it comes on the heels of two other books by Canadian creators in May and June.) I, along with one other member of the group, pitched Roaming back in January. While I love everything by the Tamakis, other members of the group strongly disliked Roaming, including someone who couldn’t even finish the thing. The thick volume centres on Dani, Fiona, and Zoe, three university students who take a trip to New York for a brief holiday from their studies. It’s very much a story about the problems of young people, which I think is where most of the antipathy comes from. No one at the table said it wasn’t a realistic portrayal of characters in their late teens/early twenties – in fact, the problem seemed to be it was too accurate. Carol Vandenberg, co-owner of L.A. Mood, said Roaming didn’t work for her because it isn’t leavened with humour. The trio of characters see Big Apple sights, go to bars, get coffee, eat pizza, and of course there’s a drama because Fiona is an interloper who threatens Dani and Zoe’s friendship. Spats ensue. Carol made the point that if you’re going to tell a story about young people, a better approach would have been the one John Hughes adopted with the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Play the foibles of youth for laughs. Gord Mood, L.A. Mood’s other owner, echoed that sentiment, adding the example of another funny coming-of-age comedy, Dazed and Confused. Several elements prevented GNG members from enjoying the travel tale including the ending, which doesn’t wrap anything up. Other members said the art was prosaic, and that a flashback scene – in which we observe Dani and Zoe at a high-school party – wasn’t introduced in a way the reader could understand. Why do I feel differently? Part of my reason for pitching the book was how the character of Fiona is a huge drama queen. Very early in the book, there are signals to readers to treat anything she says with skepticism. The question in my own mind was, “Can we appreciate this book even if one of the leads is an awful person?” After all, if an artist and writer can create a comic with a character who turns you off, isn’t the fact you reacted to a fictional character like you would to a real person a sign the creative team has done a good job? (Would be interested in any opinions on this question in the comment box below.) I also believe there’s something darkly funny about a group of friends whose relationship revolves around avoiding roaming charges on their cellphones. As it turned out, Fiona was just one of the reasons GNG members didn’t enjoy the book, although someone suggested a comic depicting the same characters once they are out of school and taking on careers might make for a better read. Further reading: If you aren’t daunted by now, two other graphic novels by the Tamakis come to mind – Skim (it follows high-school friends) and This One Summer (which features a tween lead). L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of each month. Next month’s selection is I Am Stan, Tom Scioli’s graphic biography of the one-time Marvel Comics editor-in-chief. You might have heard of Lee before! We will reconvene August 9 at the gaming tables in the store at 11 a.m. You are invited to come join the discussion! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Delisle Goes in new Direction with Muybridge
By Dan Brown Muybridge is a funny, thought-provoking portrait of a little-known historical figure that represents an interesting departure for Quebec comic maker Guy Delisle. Delisle, who lives in France, originally made his name with travelogues – like Pyongyang – and his volumes about sloppy parenting. In Factory Summers, he told the story of his teen years. With the exception of 2017’s Hostage, he has not focused on a main character other than himself. Now comes Muybridge, an inventor who was unknown to me before now. Published this spring, the new release is a biography of one of the pioneering minds who helped usher in the age of the photograph, as well as moving pictures – Englishman Eadweard Muybridge. I loved it. I should put my cards on the table: I feel the same way about pretty much all of Delisle’s output. His work has always been strong, in my opinion. And Muybridge – the book, not the man – may also be a bridge to a new kind of storytelling for Delisle. The most interesting bits of the narrative are the parts where Deslisle admits the historical record is incomplete. He does the best he can to recreate Muybridge and his times, but there are moments when he calls attention to the constructed nature of his account. There’s also no question Delisle imbues his central character with some of his own traits. That’s part of the fun. At one point, Delisle says the death of Muybridge’s wife “must have weighed heavily on him,” yet he doesn’t know for sure what he was feeling in that moment. Muybridge was one of the key innovators who helped solve a hotly debated question in the 1800s: Do a horse’s four hooves all leave the ground at the same time when the animal is at full gallop? You and I are used to a media-saturated world in which there are movies about horses, and races like the Kentucky Derby are televised. So keep in mind this was a period when good, old-fashioned painting was only gradually losing its status as the most important representation of reality. The story begins with the advent of early photos such as daguerreotypes. The same guy was also the accused in one of the most sensational murder trials of his day. In Delisle’s telling, he is tenacious and adaptable. Dealt a setback, it’s only a matter of time before he rises again. Along the way, Delisle refuses to play at omniscience in his narrative, reminding the reader multiple times of the gaps in his knowledge. On an early jaunt to France, for instance, Delisle depicts Muybridge peering in the window of a camera studio. Delisle asks, “Is that when he began practicing photography? We don’t know.” (If you’ve ever read Alice Munro's short stories, you’ll have noticed the same kind of narrative uncertainty, so it may be one of the writing quirks that marks Delisle as distinctively Canadian.) Muybridge lived from 1830 to 1904. We may think of those decades as somehow uneventful or idyllic, but it was an age of rapid change. It saw the invention of mass-market photography, recorded music, the paint tube, motion pictures, naughty photos, the phonograph (if the book has a villain, it’s Thomas Edison, who doesn’t come off well), impressionism, colour photography, and animation. I also enjoyed the parts in which Delisle uses comic panels to represent individual frames of a moving picture – he even gives a nod to the film The Matrix as one source of inspiration, driving the point home that Muybridge’s contributions were foundational. As I said, I wasn’t aware of Muybridge until I picked up the book. I recommend it. The truth is, I don’t believe there’s a person or topic Guy Delisle couldn’t make interesting. If you haven’t read his stuff, check him out. This comic creator is a national treasure. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
GNG Assembles to Talk Mister X
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains plot details from Dean Motter’s Mister X: The Modern Age, so stop reading right now if you value surprise! Here’s the lowdown on the most recent meeting of the L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group, which was held Saturday, June 14. The book: Dean Motter’s Mister X: The Modern Age, which collects all of the Mister X stories published by Dark Horse Comics. The discussion: The full range of opinions was represented around the table. There were people, like me, who love the book. There were others who felt meh – who didn’t give the book a thumb up or down, but a sideways thumb. And there were some who didn’t even feel motivated enough to finish reading the 360-page tome. Gord Mood, L.A. Mood’s co-owner, argued for including Mister X on the 2025 reading list at our January pitch meeting. He is among those who love it. Gord also brought some examples of Motter’s early work from Media 5 when he was a student at Fanshawe College. (Late Town Crier Bill Paul published that sci-fi fan publication.) I knew very little about the character beforehand. Knowing it had been praised for blending film noir, Art Deco and German Expressionism, I was expecting something ponderous and pretentious. Wrong! In my view, it’s an amazing graphic novel. DC can only wish that Batman were as cool as Mister X! It takes place in Radiant City, where it always seems to be 4 a.m. Its nickname is Somnopolis, because of the large number of residents who can’t sleep. The title character is possibly one of the original architects who founded Radiant City, it’s never made clear. The closest he gets to revealing his identity is when he states, “I want to fix my city. I want it to run as designed.” The problem? The city’s architecture is driving its residents insane. None of this, of course, is meant to be taken literally – which Gord’s business partner Carol Vandenberg touched on when she mentioned the humour of the book. The key, for me, was to not take anything in the book at face value. I appreciated how Mister X is a riot of invention. Some members of the group pointed out the many references in the story. For example, one robot who shows up is an homage to Gort from The Day The Earth Stood Still. 1984 is referenced, as well as CanCon icon Nash the Slash. The characters have the clipped speech of detectives in films from the 1940s: “You’re the man without a name,” an interrogator tells Mister X. “That’s what I’m called,” the mystery man replies. Even better, Motter adds his own creative touches, elevating The Modern Age to a level above a mashup. Mister X is an insomnalin addict, meaning if he doesn’t feed his habit, and falls asleep, he will automatically die. There are insomnatoriums on each block. Zombycillin is a drug that can bring the dead to life. Pscychetecture describes the style of buildings in Radiant City and how they torture the human mind. Further reading: Instead of reading, I would say watch Blade Runner or episodes from Batman: The Animated Series, as well as Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie. L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of each month. Next month’s selection is Roaming, by cousin creators Jilliam and Mariko Tamaki. We continue our streak of Canadian books established in recent months! We’ll reconvene July 12 at the gaming tables in the store at 11 a.m. All are invited to come join the discussion! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Boyd’s New Graphic Memoir is so Groovy
By Dan Brown. If you’re a child of the 1970s, you’re going to love D. Boyd’s Denniveniquity. This new graphic memoir covers the years 1977 to 1980 in the comic creator’s life growing up in Saint John. Boyd, now a Montrealer, captures the Me Decade better than any other artist, on par with filmmaker Richard Linklater – the guy who directed Dazed and Confused. The book begins when button-nosed Dawn is in Grade 7. She has a crush on movie star Gene Wilder and has seen Star Wars three times. Her favourite band is Trooper. Boys like to grab her developing breasts – “WONKA WONKA!!” one yells as he assaults her in the school hallway. Her mother is relentlessly negative. “You’re too young to look so matronly,” she chides. “Boys are only going to want one thing from you.” The book follows Dawn as she navigates each new grade. There are moments of glee, as when classmate Robbie Allen calls her on the phone at home. And moments of frustration: “Isn’t there anything I’m good at?” she wonders after failing to master downhill skiing. Denniveniquity rewards close reading. Each panel is carefully crafted to reinforce the feel of the era in which Dawn grows up. If, like me, the first full decade you lived through was the 1970s, this book is going to be a thrill. Boyd packs each panel with detail. There’s an April Wine T-shirt. A scene at a Trooper concert (there’s also a discussion of the proper way to pronounce lead singer Ra McGuire’s first name). Keen-eyed readers will also spot a reference to Meco’s galactic funk on the back of a newspaper page. Farrah Fawcett-Majors gets a mention, as do TV shows like Soap and Grizzly Adams, and the Hamilton band Teenage Head. It was the decade of faux wood panelling on station wagons, Participaction, KMart, Joe Clark, Jimmy Carter, the Amityville Horror, and Fotonovels. In one explosive splash panel, as the New Year’s countdown approaches and 1980 beckons, Dawn sees the pop culture of her childhood flash before her eyes. “Wow, the ’70s are over,” she marvels. “That was most of my childhood.” And, of course, Dawn gets drunk for the first time by invading her parents’ liquor cabinet in the basement bar. Nor can her young mind understand the unwritten rules of friendship and dating. “Whatever I like about him seems to be the same thing I hate about him,” she says of her on-again, off-again boyfriend Nick. But more than getting the specifics of the 1970s in Canada right, Denniveniquity nails the sensation of how time passes for a young person. Boyd pulls this off by omitting clunky transitions, just as the developing brain does. She glides effortlessly from one scene to the next, and the reader never feels something is missing. It all makes sense. The only other comic creator who was able to do the same as masterfully is Gilbert Hernandez with his childhood recollections in Marble Season. Denniveniquity covers some of the same ground as Boyd’s 2019 book Chicken Rising, but don’t let that deter you. It is also published by the East Coast’s Conundrum Press. I give it my highest recommendation. This book belongs in the same conversation as Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s This One Summer, Michel Rabagliati’s Paul Moves Out, and Seth’s ongoing Nothing Lasts in Palookaville. With Jeff Lemire’s new autobiography looming in July, this is shaping up to be a landmark year for graphic memoirs by Canadian comic creators! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
GNG Meets to Talk About Toronto Coming-of-age Memoir
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains plot details from Maurice Vellekoop’s I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together, so if you value surprise, stop reading now! Here’s the rundown on the most recent meeting of the L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group, which took place Saturday, May 10. The book: I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together by Toronto graphic artist Maurice Vellekoop. The discussion: The book we all read falls squarely into the Canadian school of graphic memoirs – for some reason, homegrown creators are really good at telling their own origin stories. In fact, they are the best in the world. In this particular case, Vellekoop puts the focus on his own upbringing as the son of religious Dutch immigrants who settled in Toronto. L.A. Mood Comics & Games co-owner Carol Vandenberg pitched the book in January for our 2025 reading list as she, too, is the child of a Dutch immigrant family. Carol said she recognized a bit of her experience in the book’s details, like Vellekoop’s mother making clothes for her children and his childhood home being decorated with Rembrandt and Vermeer paintings. It was the Walt Disney movie Fantasia that sparked Vellekoop’s imagination as a child. He attended a screening with his father, who is a central figure in the artist’s story. One moment his dad is spanking him, the next spoiling him. Talk about mixed messages! During our opening lightning round – everyone around the table gets two minutes to share their initial thoughts – almost every group member said they enjoyed or appreciated the book. We did talk about the graphic nature of the story – there are a number of sex scenes as Vellekoop embarks on his voyage of self-discovery. We briefly discussed how much of a creator’s personal life the reader ought to see, with some members noting how Vellekoop wanted to be transparent about his identity. One central paradox runs through the whole story: According to their religious beliefs, his parents indicate it’s fine for Vellekoop to be gay, but he can’t get into heaven if he ever acts on his sexuality. Naturally, this contradiction messes him up. Later in life, Vellekoop goes into therapy. After a number of tries, he finds a therapist who helps him make sense of his feelings about his mother and father. Vellekoop is more than up to the challenge of making the process of therapy – therapist and client sitting and talking – visually interesting for the reader. In the hands of a lesser artist, those sections of the book might not have been as compelling. One of the devices he uses is what I would call “the devil and angel on his shoulders.” Vellekoop gives the two conflicting voices in his head a physical form as clouds of emotion, and finally – at the moment of his biggest breakthrough in therapy – they dive back into his head. Another element group members mentioned liking is the memoir’s depiction of Toronto over the years. In one party scene in the 1980s, for instance, I spotted one of my former Ryerson journalism profs – Vellekoop did not skimp on any details. He got the look and feel of different eras in Toronto history right. Further reading: Check out Seth’s It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, Michel Rabagliati’s Paul Moves Out, and Jeff Lemire’s next book, which will be released on July 15, is called 10,000 Ink Stains: A Memoir. L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of every month. Next month’s selection is Dean Motter’s Mister X: The Modern Age. We are on a roll with Canadian books in recent months! We’ll reconvene June 14 at the gaming tables in the store at 11 a.m. All are welcome to join the discussion! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
GNG Discusses The Road, as Well as New Instalment of Crimson Fall
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains plot details about the graphic-novel adaptation of The Road, so if you value surprise, stop reading now. It also contains information about Derek Laufman’s The Shore Tower, so the same warning applies. Here’s the rundown on the latest meeting of the L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group, which took place Saturday, April 12. The books: Manu Larcenet’s adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. Later, Byron graphic novelist Derek Laufman joined us to discuss his latest book, Crimson Fall: The Shore Tower. The Road is a post-apocalyptic tale of a father and son eking out a bleak existence in a shattered American landscape choked with clouds of ash. The Shore Tower continues the monster-hunter adventures of an unlikely duo in a medieval world. The discussion: We begin our meetings with a lighting round. Each person around the table has two minutes to outline their initial thoughts. Then we follow up with a deeper discussion of the ideas raised at the outset. I kicked off the meeting by saying if the point of The Road was to depress the reader, then it worked on me. I appreciate the detailed art by French cartoonist Larcenet, however I could not get past such a dark depiction of human nature. The story takes place after some kind of apocalypse. The survivors must scrounge to live, so this is a society devouring itself. Literally. The bad guys become cannibals to survive. At one point in their journey, the father and son discover a kind of storehouse full of living humans with parts missing – they are being kept as a source of food. So if you’re looking for an uplifting story, a fable about the human spirit overcoming adversity, this isn’t it. There is a slight note of hopefulness at the end of the book, but not every member of the group read the conclusion the way I did. We also discussed the symbolism of the road itself, which is a relic from the previous civilization that looms large in the story. The father character is compelled to keep himself and his son walking, never settling in any safe haven for long. Even though Larcenet’s illustrations are amazingly detailed, the art couldn’t save the book for me. It’s too far from my own view of human nature. Halfway through our hour-long meeting, Byron comic creator Derek Laufman, who has worked with such companies as Marvel and Hasbro, sat down with us to talk about his latest project, Crimson Fall: The Shore Tower. It shows what happens when a knight and priest, at the behest of a local ruler, head to an island cloaked in mystery to find out why the lighthouse isn’t working. The book is pretty straightforward, although there is at least one big twist. Laufman described how, even though the finished product follows a straight line, he spent months trying to make a more complicated version of the story work in his imagination. After months of thinking, he couldn’t pull it off, so he went with a streamlined premise – although some of the elements from that earlier version are still present. Laufman talked about the joys of working on his own intellectual property, as opposed to illustrating characters like Spider-Man (one time, Laufman even designed the Marvel Christmas card!). He also explained how the leads in Crimson Fall are really the two halves of one persona – half is wise and thoughtful, the other impatient and action-driven. Further reading; I don’t think I’ll be picking up the original novel version of The Road, or checking out the motion picture starring Viggo Mortensen. But I do recommend the prose novel Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle – like The Road, it takes place in a crumbling post-apocalyptic society in which some people have reverted to cannibalism, but there’s an equally powerful group of survivors fighting to restore order and technology. That’s more like it. As far as Laufman’s work goes, he has several other titles worth ordering: RuinWorld, the Witch of Wickerson, Bot 9. I would recommend any of these if you are a parent whose child is interested in fun adventure stories. The language used in his Crimson Fall books, on the other hand, is decidedly adult. L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of each month. Next month’s selection is Maurice Vellekoop’s memoir of growing up gay in Toronto as part of a strict Dutch family, I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together. We’ll be meeting May 10 at the gaming tables in the store at 11 a.m. All are welcome to join the discussion! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
