Joff Winterhart’s previous graphic novels (Days of the Bagnold Summer and Driving Short Distances) have been explorations of the relationships between characters separated by both generations and attitudes. In his third outing, Dear Historian, he returns to this theme by examining the unlikely friendship between set-in-her-ways university lecturer Margaret (a 70-ish historian) and television producer Lucy (a more proactive thirtysomething).
Lucy is convinced that Margaret – whose speciality is an obscure 17th century polymath named J.W. Preece – would be the perfect choice as a presenter for a TV series for Giant Past, the company she works for. Her colleagues do not necessarily share this viewpoint though. What follows is a tender and nuanced character study, as the two women’s bond develops and evolves in different and sometimes unexpected ways.
Winterhart has always been a subtle storyteller. His past work has, indeed, been unflinching in its portrayal of the clash of ages. But it’s what’s not said though – what’s left to the reader’s inference and consideration – that is just as powerful as what is more forcefully communicated. Here we have two women from two very different worlds who, nonetheless, begin to discover they have as much in common as they do what separates them.
It’s a beautifully told piece, from the comparisons between the reserved but kindly Margaret and Giant Past’s Allan Hands – an ageing former YouTube historian with a rambunctious and often obnoxious approach to television presenting – to the senses of loss in both Margaret and Lucy’s lives that gradually bind them together. Dear Historian is also a very funny book in a quiet and sometimes slightly dark way. Winterhart, as ever, adept at the most wry of observational humour regarding his characters.
While his visual storytelling, in terms of page structure, conforms to fairly traditional panel layouts it’s Winterhart’s visual characterisation that carries a lot of the narrative here. So much about a character’s feelings, or a situation they find themselves in, is said in their body language or expressions. His smudgy, layered panels somehow keeping one foot in realism and the other in a slightly distorted caricature throughout Dear Historian.
It’s been a long time between graphic novels for one of comics’ most studious observers of human nature but Dear Historian was worth the wait. A sensitive and charmingly underplayed piece of the most thoughtful drama.
Joff Winterhart (W/A) • Jonathan Cape, £20.00
Review by Andy Oliver
