MadInkBeard

My Boy (Mon Fiston) by Olivier Schrauwen. Bries, 2006.

Following last week’s review of The Hero’s Life and Death Triumphant, I’ll take a look at a second book from the Belgian publisher Bries, this time translated into English.

My Boy is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is in black and white borderless panels, in a style that has the appearance of something from the early part of last century (or the late part of the 19th). The brief pantomime story shows a pregnant woman killed by an incompetent doctor. Her husband breaks down crying while carrying her coffin, the coffin breaks, and the woman falls out, as well as her very tiny child. I can’t quite place what the style is that the story reminds me of, but it is reminiscent of an old silent film or one of those old …scope pre-films.

This opening chapter, which precedes the title page, sets up the rest of the book. The other chapters involve the husband and his tiny son. The boy is unnaturally tiny, drawn like some kind of large-eared doll whose head is as big as his body. The father is a large Hemingway-esque figure who carries his son around in his hand or on his shoulder. In the second chapter, entitled “My Boy Talks”, we are introduced to the two characters as the father takes his son (“my boy”) out to see architecture, play golf, and meet his friends. The father teaches his boy a few sentences. The third chapter, “Bruges Horror”, has some bloody events occur while the father and son visit Bruges, mostly based around the boy’s sneezing. The fourth chapter, “At the Antwerp Zoo”, involves the boy in a riot at the zoo involving pygmies and animals escaping their cages and fighting with the zoo guards. The final chapter, “My Boy Grows Up”, shows us one of the father’s dreams, involving the boy growing up so rapidly, he gets old and dies right before the father’s eyes.

The style of the art is a kind of retro-pastiche of the early 20th century, immediately reminiscent of Winsor McCay. The colors are the most immediately noticeable and remarkable aspect of the style, with the richness and variety of old Little Nemo strips and the texture of a newspaper. Schrauwen’s panels are drawn without gutters and keep an rectangular, tiered structure that utilizes a variety of panels per strip, again reminiscent of McCay. The panels have a flat appearance, using mostly atmospheric perspective with only the occasional architectural use of linear perspective.

Schrauwen’s breakdowns are similarly reminiscent of McCay, with a frequent use of the moment-to-moment transitions that keep a steady perspective on the subject as it moves. Something one sees consistently in McCay’s pages of transformations.

One can find further connections to McCay in the stories. The boy’s sneezing fits in “Bruges Horror” bring to mind “Little Sammy Sneeze”. The last dream chapter reads like an extended episode of “Dreams of a Rare Bit Fiend,” right down to the slow transformation of a character (in this case aging). The boys’ adventures with a pygmy in the zoo chapter makes me think of Little Nemo and his companion the The Imp. I get the feeling there would be more connections to find if I were more versed in McCay’s work.

Most of the episodes in the book have the feeling of comedy, but I didn’t find them particularly funny. This book, in the end, comes off as something too pastiched, more like an academic exercise than anything else. I didn’t love it as much as Bart Beaty did (where I originally heard of this book), who says of the zoo chapter: “As a story it is witty and sharp. As a commentary on the origins of the medium it is powerful and trenchant.” I’m not sure where the commentary of comics’ origin comes in. I find the book mostly interesting as an impressive stylist feat (particularly the colors).

There are two sequences that stood out for me that I’d like to share. First, the boy is grabbed by a bird:

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Schrauwen cleverly switches our perspective on the scene by spinning the reader’s view with the bird. This mirrors the disorientation of the bird as its eyes are covered.

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I just love the way he shifts the scale from one panel to the next in this example.

This kind of play with scale and perspective is typical of McCay and not something you see elsewhere very often. Schrauwen does a exemplary job in bringing these traits forward.