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A review by _jmrz_
The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire
5.0
http://bibliophileblather.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-underwater-welder-jeff-lemire.html
As an aficionado of Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth series, I was thrilled to learn that he had written a new graphic novel..and The Underwater Welder has made me more of a Lemire aficionado than ever before.
The laugh-out-loud introduction to the novel by Damon Lindelof perhaps says it best - it reads like an episode of The Twilight Zone that was never produced. No plot spoilers, but the tale has a somber, eerie tone that brings on a strong mood of melancholy and a subtle essence of haunting. You are addictively drawn into the plot out of a sense of pity for Jack's (the main character) plight created by his self-constructed missteps but also due an unexplained attraction to spectral nature of his life.
The dialogue and narrative are not over-done, but are, in Hemingway-like fashion, concise, which makes some lines particularly powerful and punchy:
But now I am nothing. And I'm nowhere.
We never get tired of running from ourselves.
I wasted so much time looking back that I haven't let myself look forward...
The Underwater Welder has the same wispy, Dali-esk, unpolished illustration style that is the trademark of Lemire. The characters look frail and gaunt, almost tortured, which makes them instantly worthy of your sympathy and fixed fondness. In short: you care about the characters before you even know them. More than anything, I appreciate the variation of the panel layout. Some spreads are in traditional, sequential squares, but more often a single image will bleed through two cells, or a big spread with a main image will have several other images embedded within, in a seemly sporadic layout that still somehow lends itself to be 'read' in a fluid flow. Some panels, in traditional fashion, focus on a larger scene but Lemire is master of driving storytelling through illustrating the minutia and emphasizing the normally overlooked details (wrinkles around an eye, a droplet of water in sink full of water, etc.)
Anyways, I am biased because I was already a Lemire fan, but I don't believe The Underwater Welder will disappoint anyone who speaks the language of somber storytelling and who understands the haunting nature of memory. Further more, the novel stands as a good reminder of what can be lost if we permit regret or nostalgia to shepherd our present and future.
http://bibliophileblather.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-underwater-welder-jeff-lemire.html
As an aficionado of Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth series, I was thrilled to learn that he had written a new graphic novel..and The Underwater Welder has made me more of a Lemire aficionado than ever before.
The laugh-out-loud introduction to the novel by Damon Lindelof perhaps says it best - it reads like an episode of The Twilight Zone that was never produced. No plot spoilers, but the tale has a somber, eerie tone that brings on a strong mood of melancholy and a subtle essence of haunting. You are addictively drawn into the plot out of a sense of pity for Jack's (the main character) plight created by his self-constructed missteps but also due an unexplained attraction to spectral nature of his life.
The dialogue and narrative are not over-done, but are, in Hemingway-like fashion, concise, which makes some lines particularly powerful and punchy:
But now I am nothing. And I'm nowhere.
We never get tired of running from ourselves.
I wasted so much time looking back that I haven't let myself look forward...
The Underwater Welder has the same wispy, Dali-esk, unpolished illustration style that is the trademark of Lemire. The characters look frail and gaunt, almost tortured, which makes them instantly worthy of your sympathy and fixed fondness. In short: you care about the characters before you even know them. More than anything, I appreciate the variation of the panel layout. Some spreads are in traditional, sequential squares, but more often a single image will bleed through two cells, or a big spread with a main image will have several other images embedded within, in a seemly sporadic layout that still somehow lends itself to be 'read' in a fluid flow. Some panels, in traditional fashion, focus on a larger scene but Lemire is master of driving storytelling through illustrating the minutia and emphasizing the normally overlooked details (wrinkles around an eye, a droplet of water in sink full of water, etc.)
Anyways, I am biased because I was already a Lemire fan, but I don't believe The Underwater Welder will disappoint anyone who speaks the language of somber storytelling and who understands the haunting nature of memory. Further more, the novel stands as a good reminder of what can be lost if we permit regret or nostalgia to shepherd our present and future.
http://bibliophileblather.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-underwater-welder-jeff-lemire.html