Glorious Summers v4: “The Runaway”

The Falderault Family is about to descend from Belgium into France again.  Only this time, one kid is staying home, and the other is rebelling.  

This is not going to be pretty…

Running Away from the Credits

A Reviewer’s Prelude

There are books that you read and don’t fully “get” the first time. It’s not that they’re particularly good or bad, but that there’s not a specific thing in them that you responded to.

You read it. It was good. You moved on.

Then something magical happens. You can’t stop thinking about the book.  You find yourself driving down the road and wondering why that character did that thing. You think about what the writer was trying to do when he structured the story in a specific way.  You compare the book to another similar or dissimilar book and draw new and interesting conclusions.

It’s like that album you just listened to for the first time and didn’t really love, but it’s the one you can listen to endlessly years later.  That’s as opposed to the album you loved at first listen and then burned out on within 10 plays.

The fourth volume of “Glorious Summers” is one of those books.  I wasn’t sure what to think of it at first, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  I reread it, and soaked in every page, and got it.

This isn’t a particularly bombastic book.  There’s no great twist ending. You don’t get the clever fills in the overall time frame. But if you’ve been reading this book all along, you’ll appreciate what’s going on here. And maybe, just like me, you’ll keep thinking over it until you’ve spotted all the good bits.

Change Is the Only Constant

That sounds like a peculiar thing to say in reference to a book about a family taking the same vacation every year, doesn’t it?

That’s the brilliance of Zidrou with this series. He’s building a puzzle and picking the pieces to show you with each book. There’s a larger picture, for sure, but he’s only giving you the parts that matter in each story.  You can piece it all together as you go, if you wish. You likely will.  You’re a comic reader.  You’re probably a continuity nut.  Your mind can’t help but to try to fill in the gaps.

The trick is that the larger over-all story isn’t the main story.  It’s the structure under which all these smaller stories happen.  Pierre’s struggles as a comic book creator are interesting and impact each story, but it’s not the point of the series. 

Instead, it impacts each of these vacations, and if you pay attention you can see Pierre’s career develop over time.  That’s great for the dedicated reader, but the more casual reader still gets a good story with just enough background material to inform it.

While the backdrop of each book is a family vacation, the one thing that makes it interesting every time out is the change.  The family is always changing. This book might have some of the biggest changes yet.

In this story, for the first time, the vacation already happened.  It was a failure for all the reasons you might predict: Pierre is attached to his drawing board, delaying the vacation until it’s half over. By the time they get out there, they’re rushed and the weather is awful.

Secondly, the kids are growing up. It’s 1979 and they’re getting to be a difficult age.  The exception there is Peaches.  She’s the remaining cute and cuddly kid who’s slightly precocious and still operating at the whims of her parents.

As we saw in the previous book during the flash forward to the early 1990s, though, she’ll eventually grow out of that, too.

Dammit!

Times Have Changed

(There are spoilers in the updates of the next two paragraphs. I’m not giving the main plot away, but if you want to go in blind, skip ahead to “The car is still…”)

The eldest is in college, studying law.  The middle daughter is on a diet via Weight Watchers, working hard to lose the weight she’s gained.  (I double checked — Weight Watchers was founded in 1963, so we’re good on this part of the timeline.)  The son is interested in the current music of the day — Pink Floyd, specifically — and is hanging out with a questionable crowd.

The frites stand owner is going through a separation.  Pierre’s former boss lays in the hospital, dying.  Mom’s job is untenable.

The car is still there and they’re still in the same house, but their lives through those two things are in a state of constant change, and it’s not always the change of reactions to large events, but the natural evolution of a life lived.

The characters are just growing up. That may be the biggest lesson of this book. The jumps in the timeline help show that off, but this is still about a book with a family that grows and changes, physically and emotionally.  Enjoy it while it lasts, because it always changes.

In this book, an attempt at a family vacation falls off its wheels when the family’s miserable teenager runs away. Not only is there family dissent, but someone is acting up on it. While it’s not exactly a crazy action movie plot or a serious Lifetime movie of the week kind of thing, it is a different interruption to the bucolic family life than what we’ve seen before.

The Falderault family is growing up and that includes those little moments of teenage rebellion.

Let’s Take a Brief Moment to Appreciate This Panel

The whole book is worth reading for this panel, on page 11. If that doesn’t give you the warm and fuzzies, you’re dead to me.

Also, the son is certainly looking more and more like his father, isn’t he?

It’s shortly after this panel, however, that things start falling apart

The Art of Lafebre

The one thing that hasn’t changed a bit about this series is how freakishly good Jordi Lafebre is at drawing it.

The characters have unique designs and shapes.  They can act and emote so well.

You know all those faces that Kevin Maguire likes to draw?  Aren’t they great?  Lafebre can pull off similar tricks.  His characters sell what they’re talking about and what they’re thinking with just the lights in their eyes.  It’s remarkable.

He has everything else in his repertoire, too.  From the local architecture of the various places the family visits to the car they drive in, to a large number of new people they meet along the way, Lafebre does it all. 

He doesn’t hide from any of it.  He takes no shortcuts.

It’s a joy to look at these pages.

The Epilogue

There’s something else new in this book. The story ends on page 48, which means it’s a standard length European album kind of story.

What follows is a seven page prose story with spot illustrations “written by” Paulette (“Peaches”) Falderault. It’s titled “The House That Dreamed of Going on Vacation.” As you might expect, it’s fairly autobiographical from Paulette’s point of view.

It’s about the time around Christmas when the car broke down and money troubles for the family threatened to keep the car from getting fixed. Dad’s suggestion was that they’d just have to let their house fly them to their next vacation, instead. And off Peaches goes on a flight of fancy describing how all of that would work.

It’s a cute story that works as a bonus to the main story. It fits neatly in to the money woes Pierre discusses with his wife in the car earlier in the story. Peaches even references her “stew” from the story.

It’s not capital-I important, but it’s a nice little bonus.

Asterix A’Plenty

In this book, we see the Falderaults reading in bed. Professional comic book artist Pierre is reading “Asterix in Belgium“! That’s volume 24, which was released as an album in 1979. That’s the year this book is specifically titled to take place in.

I don’t know which month the book came out, but it looks like Pierre is in bed reading the latest and greatest volume in the series, soon after it came out.

Smart man. Also, it helps place the book in history for me as an Asterix geek.

Peaches also references France as “the land of Asterix” in her text piece at the end of the book, which is particularly cute.

“Hey, Daddy! If Little Miss Esterel doesn’t get better, how are we going to get to Asterix’s homeland next summer, like you promised?”

Peaches Falderault

This isn’t the first Asterix reference of the series, either. You may remember in volume 2 how Pierre’s wife referred to him as her “very own Albert Uderzo” for his spendy ice cream order.

Yes, Zidrou, we’re paying attention. You keep writing!

Recommended?

While it isn’t my favorite of the four books thus far, it’s still an interesting chapter in the family’s lives that shows how things are changing. Zidrou’s script shows that the kids are growing up and, inevitably, becoming less adorable and cute than they were as toddlers.

And there are pieces to the overall puzzle in the book, notably with Pierre’s career. He’s forced to make a decision about his career. His own unhappiness would help his wife’s happiness. Or would it?

While at first it might not be the most thrilling book of the lot, there’s still a lot in here for dedicated fans to follow, plus moments of pure joy and moments of verisimilitude that are worth engaging in.

It also proves that the “least” of “Glorious Summers” is also still better than the “best” of most everything else out there.

Happily, there’s a fifth volume waiting for a review next…

— 2019.021 —

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