Manu Larcenet’s “Almost”

“Almost” is a stark autobiographical tale of a cartoonist at his lowest real life moment.  Manu Larcenet again plays with his style to draw the reader in and to illustrate a very specific story in very broad brush strokes.

Serve Your Country?  Not for Everyone.

Serving in the military is not for everyone. Pardon the generalization, but it’s easy to see how a more artistic person might have troubles dealing with the kind of system the military puts into place.

So when Manu Larcenet’s “Almost” begins with his explanation for why the military didn’t suit him and how he instantly hated being in it, I chalked it up to that. If you can’t give up your own personality for the good of the group, the military won’t be your thing. Comformity isn’t an easy thing.

After an excruciating explanation of all the reasons why military service made him miserable and how nobody would listen to him, Larcenet ends with an almost unbelievable story of an exercise he took part in that went horribly wrong.  It’s not that I don’t believe the story, but just that it’s a crazy thing that happens that you won’t necessarily see coming.

Telling the Story

The story starts with Manu Larcenet at his drawing board. It’s seven years after the events told in this book, and he’s explaining to the reader why he’s about to tell this story.   Larcenet narrates the whole thing, which gives the book a perspective with a bit of “hindsight is 20/20”.  And while the events of the story aren’t always neat or happy, there is a triumphant ending of sorts to the book for Larcenet.

This whole book feels like an extended form of therapy for Larcenet, as he works out his issues with this chapter from the past in front of the reader.  It’s not an omniscient narrator carefully telling the events from all sides.  This is pure Larcenet, and everything comes from his perspective. It’s left as an exercise to the reader to see the other angles on the events, or to get in other characters’ heads to figure out what they were thinking along the way.

The bulk of the book is just Larcenet detailing the horrors of serving in the military, from the rough soldiers he was training with and had to deal with, to the jobs he had that involved everything from sleep deprivation to the kinds of mental games that would drive lesser men crazy.

That’s part of every basic training in every military service, though. They break you to rebuild you. They challenge your mind and your body and push you further than you thought you could go.  It made Larcenet miserable, plus he had issues with some of the people around him that you learn about as the book goes on.

Meta Commentary

This book is effectively a reprinting with commentary on that graphic novel.  This edition ends with Larcenet’s commentary on the work, some years later.  It’s done in a more cartoony style, showing himself with a big red nose talking out the reasons why he made the book.

It’s a brutal self-examination in the kind of language you’d expect to read from some high-falutin’ cultural critic’s column. Larcenet is parodying himself here.  But it’s also the best review I’ve ever read of a comic, exploring the very specific influences the author had during the making of the book, how he made specific choices, and why he chose to “spill his guts” like this.

It’s much more interesting to see this spelled out in this cartoony way, rather than half reading about it in an interview somewhere.  Larcenet is very tough on himself and his younger self’s skills, and drawing that out results in a commentary that feels both more honest and entertaining.

Formatting

The book is laid out to work sideways.  It looks great at full screen on your desktop monitor, laptop screen, or iPad in landscape mode.  That also means the storytelling always moves left to right and never up and down. In the main body of the book, there’s not a single case of a page having two tiers/rows of panels.  He’s very consistent on this.  He breaks it in his commentary at the end of the book, but that’s a whole ‘nother style, anyway.

The art is large and in your face.  Larcenet is not subtle in this book. Pages telling his story often contain only two or three panels, with large caption boxes spelling out the story.

It’s a very fast read for these reasons.  It feels a bit like a webcomic, even if this book was done before “webcomics” were even a thing.  It’s a fast-moving book filled with splashy art.  It feels like something he did on the fly, as quickly as possible, even when the art often feels very detailed and lush in its lighting.

Everything is in black and white, with a strong sense of lighting and contrast.  This feels very much like something Frank Miller might have done if “Sin City” took a couple different directions.  (Instead of the negative space of brick walls, Larcenet draws the crosshatching of the metal chain link fences.)

The ink brushed lines suggest more than they often detail, telling the story in broad strokes, and often with what isn’t there more than what actually is there.

In the middle of all this, there’s a sequence where Larcenet returns home and talks to his mother about how miserable he is and how dehumanizing he finds the whole process.  She doesn’t want to deal with it, and puts it off by changing the topic. This short sequence he draws in a very simple cartooning style, closer to ligne clair than the chiaruscuro the rest of the book is done in. It helps break up the book and also to offset two very different tones in the book’s storytelling.

Recommended

Yes, if you’re up for it.  This is not a happy-go-lucky book.  It’s a fairly brutal personal story, but it’s one done with skill and style.  Larcenet plays with his style to bring something extra out of his story.

This is one of a series of graphic novels that recently appeared on Izneo. I’ll be reviewing more of them in the days ahead, because they’re all interesting experiments of their own merits.

— 2018.077 —

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