Michel Rabagliati grew up in Quebec. A fan of European comics like Asterix and Tintin, he won a Best New Talent Harvey Award in 2000 for the first in his series of books about the young Montrealer Paul, entitled Paul In The Country. With these two graphic novels we see Paul growing up and moving on.
Paul is an average high school student, with below average marks and an interest in art, when we meet him in Paul has a summer job. He is working as an apprentice press operator in a downtown print shop. And not very successfully. His marks and attitude lead the school to ask him to leave. He seems almost doomed to have to continue work as a pressman when a friend calls and offers him a job for the summer as a counsellor at camp. It’s off to the woods for Paul, black flies, latrine digging, and bunking in with a variety of campers in a leaky tent. The adventures Paul experiences are exactly like any first-time counsellor might run into, and Ragabliati’s fluid ink and brush technique is perfect for the sensitive and delightful illustrations. He also has a way with the story that is humourous and involving.
He captures the era wonderfully. Paul carries his guitar with him, and uses it to endear himself to counsellors and campers as he leads singalongs of campfire songs, as well as a little Led Zeppelin (and Paul’s own favourite, French singer-songwriter Georges Brassens). The campers range from a group of troubled teenaged boys, who wreak havoc in the camp, to a younger group of kids, in which group Paul is drawn to care for a little blind girl. He discovers his own abilities in caring for children as he is thrown into the situations with very little training. It is a beautiful and subtle story about growing up … and first love. Of course there is a love story … there is always a love story when first we go to camp! And this one is tender, and true.
There is a marvelous epilogue in which an older Paul returns to the lake, unknowingly and discovers a remnant from his youth. Sensitive and entertaining, a perfect marriage of story and graphics. This marriage of line and language continues in the newest volume, Paul Moves Out.
Set somewhere between the adventures at the camp, and the epilogue of Paul Has A Summer Job, Paul Moves Out finds our hero (and his partner Lucie) moving into their own first apartment. The book covers, through flashback, their meeting at Design School, and follows them up to the point where they are deciding to have a child. Again, Rabagliati conveys the time brilliantly. The first words on the page are Boy George singing ‘Do you really want to hurt me. . . .’ from the radio as Lucie and Paul paint the apartment. It is Montreal in 1983. Each panel is a detailed treasure to be studied. But you’ll first want to finish the narrative, and then go back to soak up all the details. McDonald’s arches, the Patisserie, the headlines on L’Actualite, and the Vietnamese shop owner, are all portrayed in loving closeups.
The dialogue between the lovers is real, even down to frames of silent moments in the car. There is true joie de vivre in every panel. Both books conclude with a photograph from the artist’s collection, showing that there may be more autobiography in the books than we know! I’m currently searching for the first book of the series to complete my collection, but until I find it, I’ll have to make do with the two. So should you.
(Drawn & Quarterly, 2003)
(Drawn & Quarterly, 2005)
