“The Saga of Rex” by Michel Gagné

It’s hard to draw three-dimensional movement on a flat two-dimensional page. If you want to learn how to draw motion, have I got a book for you!

Credits In Motion Stay In Motion

This isn’t a European comic, though Gagné does hail from Quebec, so he’s spiritually part-French and this review can fit into this website thematically.

I read “The Saga of Rex” when it was originally serialized in the pages of the much-loved and much-missed “Flight” anthology series. I enjoyed it and appreciated it at the time.

Looking back on it now, fifteen years later, my enjoyment and appreciation for the book has only grown. With those additional years of reading and analyzing comics, I’m naturally a different reader and commentator. I can see things from new perspectives and, perhaps, just a little more deeply.

“The Saga of Rex” is a much stronger book than I believe I originally gave it credit for. The story it tells, the mood it creates, the imagination on display on the page, and the artistic skill that sells this story add up to something greater than the sum of its parts.

This singular trade paperback is an imaginative romp that drags you into another world and surrounds you with details and feelings that carry you through the book. On reading this today, I’m not looking for plot holes or foreshadowing or any of the traditional things I might pick up on from a book written in a three-act structure. I’m surrendering to the world that Gagnè creates on these pages and absorbing every moment as it comes. I’m not trying to predict what will come next, because Gagné has no problem with shifting things in any way he wants.

There is a story arc by the end of the book, but remember that this book is a collection of stories serialized over seven years. Each one had to stand alone. In a world where every trade paperback is a collection of six (or now five) issues that tell one story, this is more a collection of short stories that tells a larger story of transformation in the end.

A Musical Tangent

I’ve been revisiting the R.E.M. music catalog recently. There’s something similar at work there. In the earliest albums, Michael Stipe’s lyrics are incoherent, but the vibe that the albums create is an enjoyable one. The percussive styling of his voice overcomes any issue you might have with not hearing the exact words. And, as it turns out, quite often he’s applying words to a song to create a mood more than to tell a story.

For sure, Gagnè is telling a story here and he’s very clear with it. But it does feel like it zig zags in whatever direction it needs to for Gagné to have something visually interesting to draw from chapter to chapter. Rex metamorphizes, dies, and reincarnates. Planets get cut up and explode. Alien societies show up and go away.

This book is very, very visual. After the first chapter, the book is entirely silent. That is, there’s no text. There’s plenty of sound to be had in the pages. You can hear them as you read. Gagné is that good at telling a story visually. It’s like a mini-movie. (In fact, Gagné is working on a movie of it.)

The exception to this is the first chapter, which is heavily narrated to set things up and guide the reader along, but it’s in broad strokes so you get the gist of the story, not all the minute details.

But let’s look at those visuals and enjoy how creative, how consistent, and how colorful they all are. Every page is soaked in Gagne’s style. It’s a unique soft and rounded style where any straight line jumps out immediately to you as something bizarre and foreign.

Gagne works in animation, most notably in special effects animation. Once you know that, you’ll understand a lot of why you see things on these pages that you don’t see other comic book artists even attempt. He is animating on the page here. It’s not just ships flying across the page or planets exploding in ways that you’ll easily hear the sound effects in your head. It’s the energy strikes and the cloud swirls and the ground being torn up by a passing creature. These pages filled with static images move.

That’s actually what brought this book to mind for me. Someone on Twitter asked about who drew the best explosions in comics. The first thought to jump to my mind is Todd McFarlane. Crack open “Torment” sometime and see how he draws the building blowing up. That picture is burned into my mind. (And then check out The McSpidey Chronicles, where I am reviewing all of McFarlane’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” run.)

But then I remembered Gagné and “Rex.” While McFarlane could pull off a superhero comic explosion every once in a while, Gagne draws similar things in every chapter of this book, but with a wide variety of looks and feels.

You’ll get no better example of drawing motion and special effects on the comic page than you will with “Rex.”

“Rex” is also, as the kid’s say, a vibe. It’s a well-told silent story in a science fantasy world with a ridiculous cute dog-like creature as the lead. But the reading experience here is more about getting lost in Rex’s world, and enjoying every crazy thing Gagné throws at. It’s about feeling the whirling effects around you and moving with the motion of not just the characters, but also all the inanimate objects that Gagné brings to life.

Don’t look for subtext and simile and deep literary readings. Soak it in, get lost in the experience, and enjoy being transported to another place. It’s just as valid a reading experience, but different.

Gagnè has a strong sense of composition, as well. When you look at his panels, you can see how he considers foreground, midground, and background when introducing a new location or trying to show Rex is exploring a new environment.

More importantly, when seeing a sequence of panels, you can see how the action moves from panel to panel clearly while still creating isolated images that are important and enjoyable.

You will fall in love with Rex along the way. He’s super cute, and Gagné draws him in all the emotions. He also runs fast, explores, discovers, seizes the moment, meets new friends, and undergoes a lot of challenges along the way. It’s not just about the whizbang energy zooming across the pages. Rex, himself, is an interesting character to watch.

It’s an exceptional comic for reasons I didn’t fully get more than a decade ago. Today, I appreciate the book so much more.

The Physical Object

The book is not available digitally. I doubt it’s even in print anymore, though Amazon has it readily available in new and used copies. (Yes, that’s an affiliate link.)

The trade paperback that I’m reviewing this from was printed in Canada and has a nice heavy paper stock to it. The page has texture to it. It’s not super slick and shiny. It’s the perfect stock for the style of art Gagné is using. The colors soak into the page, but that works here. The soft edges blend nicely into the white pages.

I do admit that part of me wonders if that’s also not a limitation of early Photoshop work. Gagné does a lot of work in the coloring, making it feel almost painted rather than cel-shaded. It’s successful, but I do wonder if he’d change things today, including the blurry panel edges that he has instead of black lines.

The book, itself, has a heft in your hand that makes it feel substantial. It’s 200 pages, so it’s definitely bigger than the 144-page trades you might be used to. (Or, heaven forbid, the barely 100-page trades that collect five-issue story arcs these days.)

One last note: Becasue I don’t have a digital copy of this book, the images in this review are pictures taken of the book. I wish they were a little crisper/cleaner and less skewed, but I’ll have to live with what I have here.