Book Review | The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins

The job of the skin is to keep things in…

On the buttoned-down island of Here, all is well. By which we mean: orderly, neat, contained and, moreover, beardless.

Or at least it is until one famous day, when Dave, bald but for a single hair, finds himself assailed by a terrifying, unstoppable… monster! Meaning: a gigantic, evil beard!

Where did it come from? How should the islanders deal with it? And what, most importantly, are they going to do with Dave?

***

Beneath the skin of everything is something nobody can know. The job of the skin is to keep it all in and never let anything show.

So begins The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil, award-winning cartoonist Stephen Collins' first graphic novel proper, and it is as dark and charming a parable as the poetry of its first panels portends.

The eventual originator of the evil beard is a drone called Dave. Not literally a drone, however his behaviours are practically mechanical. In that, Dave is not dissimilar to the other strangely hairless inhabitants of Here; like them, he lives in almost constant fear of There.

Happily, his job at A&C Industries occupies his thoughts during the day, and in his downtime, Dave draws. He draws the pedestrians that pass his house; he pencil sketches pets and post boxes; but by and large his subject is the street. "It was just so neat," you see. "So... complete."

Not such a remarkable fact, that, for "Here, every tree was perfect. Every street was perfect. Even the very shape of Here was perfect." Tellingly, the island bears a certain resemblance to an immense egg—and a delicate thing it is, protected by a shell only so strong.

It wouldn't take much to break it, basically, and the imagined mayhem of There is no more than a stone's throw from the coast:

The houses [Here] were rock-bottom cheap and showed windowless walls to the great dark deep for a very good reason. Because Here, the sea was a thing to fear. The sea led to There. There was disorder. There was chaos. There was evil.

Or so They say. Though "nobody had ever even been," really. "No one alive, anyway. The stories were enough for most people, including Dave." Like the one about the fisherman's son who stole a boat on a boast. "They said There took his tidiness away. Swallowed his boundaries whole. Mixed his [...] befores with his nows with his nexts." Thus the state of perpetual terror Dave and the other people who live Here exist in.

Comic Book Review | The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire

Fancy having your heart broken, folks? Look no further than The Underwater Welder!

If there's a contemporary comic book creator in greater demand than Jeff Lemire is these days, then I pity the poor person. The Canadian writer and artist has been busier than ever since DC reinvented itself with the New 52 late last year: in addition to his dual duties on Sweet Tooth, he committed to scripting several other monthlies, and as much as I've enjoyed his take on Animal Man, and to a lesser extent Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE - the jury's still out on Justice League Dark - this original graphic novel is emblematic of Lemire's inimitable talents in a way nothing has been since The Nobody in 2009.

In point of fact, Lemire was hard at work on The Underwater Welder as early as ought eight, even before his meeting of minds with the editors at Vertigo. This, then, is a labour of love, and how apt it is that this sublimely soulful story about the love lost and won between fathers and sons has heart from the start.

Jack Joseph works as an underwater welder on an oilrig off the coast of Nova Scotia, repairing pipes and the like on the ocean floor, the only place he knows he can go to be at peace. At peace with his tortured past, his high-pressure present, and all the responsibilities of tomorrow... because Jack has a baby on the way, and a partner who needs him - now more than ever - at home.

But home is not where Jack's heart is, so before the baby is born, he slips off for one last dalliance in the sea's deep darkness. So ensconced, and starved of oxygen, he spots - or not - the strangest thing: a rusted old pocket watch that reminds him of the only real gift given him by his drunken dad, who died while diving for forgotten objects on Halloween twenty years ago.

I don't want to say much more about the plot of Lemire's latest, and in any event, The Underwater Welder's core focus is on character. On a man out of his depth, and floundering; a man coming to terms with the loss of his father on the eve of becoming a father himself. Come to that, calling him a character simply doesn't cut the mustard: Jack Joseph rings so absolutely true that he feels less like a creation than a memory - a feeling, even - given form and voice. He has haunted me ever since I began this incredible graphic novel.

As has Lemire's harrowing art. His pencils and inks are not now, nor have they ever been, for everyone. You could say they're an acquired taste: some panels look like raw roughs rather than finished images, and rendered in stark black and white, as they are in The Underwater Welder, I'm afraid there's no getting away from this issue. Everything is on display in this 200+ page paperback — for better or for worse, depending upon your preference.

For me? For better, for sure. I wouldn't trade Lemire's art for all the Alex Ross in the whole wide world. His mastery of atmosphere is unparallelled; his sense of composition truly beautiful to behold. There are astonishing spreads at the beginning and end of each the four sections. There is imagery - of ripples in water, the lost pocket watch, and our man examining himself in the rear view mirror - imagery that becomes exponentially more powerful with every recurrence. And in the interim, a quiet riot of unassuming panels that wordlessly tell The Underwater Welder's tale as adeptly as any amount of text.

I was not prepared to be as affected as I was by The Underwater Welder, nor will you be, no matter how many times I tell you that it's as seminal as comic books come: a subtle thing, all suggestion and implication, yet markedly more moving than it would otherwise be because of the magnificent way Lemire leaves the most meaningful things about it unsaid.

Make no mistake, The Underwater Welder is the greatest work to date of one of the greatest talents in the industry today. It's all I can do to urge you: read it - and if you're anything like me, weep - immediately.