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A review by blackbird27
Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir by Tom Hart
5.0
I expected to be emotionally destroyed by this book, but I did not expect to be so impressed by its formal qualities that halfway through I almost forgot to wallow in second-hand grief and instead luxuriated in the beautiful simplicity and technical accomplishment of the visual choices. Tom Hart's always been a cartoonist's cartoonist, a Zen trickster who can wring a surprising amount of meaning out of rhythm and scribble (only they're not really two different things, they're scribble-in-rhythm, the foundational element on which all the rest of the comics medium has been built). But the degree to which his graphic vocabulary has become infinitely more sophisticated, even as he sticks to the simplified grammar of old-school minicomics, caught me unprepared.
The book is a memoir of a relatively short period in his and his wife's (cartoonist Leela Corman) life: the months leading up to, and the year following, the death of their two-year-old daughter in 2011. It's also, necessarily, a sort of catalog of the art -- music, film, literature, painting, and naturally comics -- that they encounter, or turn to, in the process of remembering and grieving. If that doesn't sound like something you want to read, I guess I can understand that, but what could easily be either numbingly maudlin or gracelessly self-involved in the hands of other, even other very great, cartoonists, is handled with such exceptional deftness, honesty, and patience by Hart that it feels much more like a complete work of art than like the visually-uninspired self-conscious slog that comics memoir has come to mean in the last decade or so.
To some degree this can perhaps be attributed to the Asian influences in Hart's philosophy and, more importantly, craft. I don't think I've seen a more successful synthesis of US and Japanese approaches to comics, ever, and I couldn't quite shake the feeling, which began growing on me about halfway through, that it represents a turning-point in the medium itself. The choppy, ragged line used for most of the book is descended from Gary Panter (it's a change from the more cuddly-crude style Hart became known for some fifteen years ago, used in this book to depict the past, cartoons, dreams, and a recurrent metaphor), and his narrating rhythms are the standard indie-autobio Pekar-via-Schulz rhythms that Chester Brown popularized in the 80s, but the contemplative, unhurried panel layouts, the use of abstraction to represent emotion, and the lush grayscale tones giving the images weight and body are all pure manga.
I very much doubt I'm going to read a better comic this year; I almost certainly won't read a more emotionally affecting one. Because of course I was, as expected, emotionally destroyed by this book. I was also, most unexpectedly, and indefinably, healed by it.
The book is a memoir of a relatively short period in his and his wife's (cartoonist Leela Corman) life: the months leading up to, and the year following, the death of their two-year-old daughter in 2011. It's also, necessarily, a sort of catalog of the art -- music, film, literature, painting, and naturally comics -- that they encounter, or turn to, in the process of remembering and grieving. If that doesn't sound like something you want to read, I guess I can understand that, but what could easily be either numbingly maudlin or gracelessly self-involved in the hands of other, even other very great, cartoonists, is handled with such exceptional deftness, honesty, and patience by Hart that it feels much more like a complete work of art than like the visually-uninspired self-conscious slog that comics memoir has come to mean in the last decade or so.
To some degree this can perhaps be attributed to the Asian influences in Hart's philosophy and, more importantly, craft. I don't think I've seen a more successful synthesis of US and Japanese approaches to comics, ever, and I couldn't quite shake the feeling, which began growing on me about halfway through, that it represents a turning-point in the medium itself. The choppy, ragged line used for most of the book is descended from Gary Panter (it's a change from the more cuddly-crude style Hart became known for some fifteen years ago, used in this book to depict the past, cartoons, dreams, and a recurrent metaphor), and his narrating rhythms are the standard indie-autobio Pekar-via-Schulz rhythms that Chester Brown popularized in the 80s, but the contemplative, unhurried panel layouts, the use of abstraction to represent emotion, and the lush grayscale tones giving the images weight and body are all pure manga.
I very much doubt I'm going to read a better comic this year; I almost certainly won't read a more emotionally affecting one. Because of course I was, as expected, emotionally destroyed by this book. I was also, most unexpectedly, and indefinably, healed by it.