Broken Frontier

One item that has been on the top of many best of 2009 lists is actually a bit older.  Part of the reason that Essex County is getting so much attention this year is because of the critical and commercial success of Jeff Lemire's newer works.  Last year saw him begin a relationship with Vertigo where he published his Midwest reimagining of H.G. Wells in The Nobody and began his post-apocalyptic tale Sweet Tooth.  Nothing like a high profile gig at a more mainstream publisher to bring people to work from two or three years ago.

While those stories are filled with imagination and fantastic art.  I think what is most striking about the artist’s catalog to date is that they all deal with isolation.  They even do it in strikingly different ways; the feeling of being by oneself in his work may be imposed by one’s self, nature or geography.

The life of those new works worked out fantastically for Top Shelf’s collection of The Complete Essex County.  In a larger and more handsome volume, the collection binds together the three graphic novels that make up this epic trilogy of Canada, Hockey and family.  There are also two mini comics that the writer published himself in between Ghost Stories and The Country Nurse as well as an introduction by Darwyn Cooke, rare/never before seen promotional pieces, behind-the-scenes fare, and the odd deleted scene or two.  Matt Kindt even pitches in to help his friend with a beautiful overall book design.

This work has already received much attention and many plaudits.  It has been highly regarded in every incarnation from Tales From The Farm’s first publication in the spring of 2007 to its conclusion in October of 2008.  It has been nominated for Eisners, Harveys, and even more literary awards.  All of this is a testament to its haunting and powerful story.  Thankfully Lemire’s masterwork has been liberated from the obscurity of the Comics Journal set and is in the hands of more people.The books are set in a rural farming community in Canada.  It follows the lives of two families over the better part of a century.  The triumphs and failures of the human condition are explored from the imagination of a budding cartoonist to the fragile memory of a man close to death’s door.  In a deeply personal work, Lemire recalls the full spectrum of life in one of the most brutally honest narratives ever seen in literature.

There are many things that the larger chunks of the story have in common.  I will focus on three that have particular relevance to the work as a whole.  First, there is a crow that is present at those most important moments.  It watches and guides as need be.  Seemingly flying throughout the years only to exit when the story has reached its natural conclusion.  Hockey is also ubiquitous as the glue of a nation.  Whether the characters play it, watch it on television, or listen on the radio, the sport is in every nook and cranny of their lives.  It is as much a part of the characters’ identity as it is the nation's. 

Finally, there is the sprawling countryside that exudes the isolation that permeates every facet of these people’s lives.  Not just removed from society, these folks are removed from each other, unable to even comprehend those that should be most familiar to them.  Be the end, the reader has become intimately familiar with these two families.  The matriarch becomes a potent symbol binding the community through out time.  But those three things bind all the books together and create a world according to Lemire.  History, community and location are a vital part of his pen and those are how he expresses it.

His art is expressive and chunky.  At moments the panels seem to come alive like a Plimpton animation.  The next, the vast stillness of a field of crops makes the reader feel insignificant.  All the while the warmth of true human companionship is there to overcome the cold of the great white north.  It is subtle and surprising at the same time, just like the narrative it accompanies.

Lemire is a prodigious talent and he is only at the beginning of his career.  He has already given comicdom some of its most powerful stories.  None are better than the entirety of this second epic, which seems to have put him on the map.

The Complete Essex County published by Top Shelf is availble for $29.95 and up at retailers everywhere!