What to Read After Reading Ducks
by Joe Ollmann
When the book Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton recently won the Canada Reads literary contest televised on CBC, it was the first time a graphic novel had made it past the first elimination and it created a new wave of first-time graphic novel readers. (Also, it’s a crazy and remarkable thing that we have an annual, televised literary contest that is widely anticipated and watched!)
The graphic novel has been gaining acceptance in the literary mainstream in recent years with Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, nominated for the Booker Prize in 2018 and Seth’s Clyde Fans making the Giller long list in 2020 and Joe Ollmann’s Fictional Father, the first graphic novel on the Governor General’s Award for adult fiction. (Yes, that last one was me and all of those books lost those awards.)
Kate Beaton’s book Ducks, about her time as a young woman in an oil sands camp, won many first-time graphic novel readers over with its complexity and nuanced writing that truly deserved the term novel. But what’s a good graphic novel for someone new to the form to read next after Ducks?
Here are a few possible second graphic novels for all those first-time readers looking for more.
Roaming
by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki (Drawn and Quarterly)
Roaming is the third collaboration between cousins, Mariko and Jillian Tamaki and I think it is their best. This graphic novel of three university-aged women in New York City for a spring break trip in the 90s gets everything right. It really captures the awkward negotiations of travelling with other people. It’s about friendship and romance and jealousy, and the expectations and realities of going to a place you’ve always dreamed of going to like New York City. The dialogue is smart and funny and the characters are very real and they’re all given time to shine. The period details are perfect (the title is a reference to how expensive roaming charges were when traveling in the 90s, a running gag in the book) and accurately portrayed.
Roaming is gorgeously drawn and Jillian makes the entire thing cinematic with her masterful drawing and pacing.
The Field
by Dave Lapp (Conundrum Press)
The Field is a wonderful memoir that is some of the most authentic-feeling recreation of a childhood summer that I’ve read in a long time. Dave Lapp’s work is almost always observational, real-life stories. He takes small, insignificant stories and spins them into larger magic as only a great writer can do. The book takes place over a summer in the 1970s, following a group of suburban kids left to their own devices in a field at the edge of their subdivision. It’s not quite Lord of the Flies, but The Field masterfully displays the wide-eyed, casual cruelty of children. It’s an unblinkingly honest book that really shows what it was like being a kid in the 70s; the unsupervisedness, the access to matches, sharp objects and other dangers. I was astounded by the level of detail of Lapp’s recall of fifty years ago. It’s a book that is structured around this being the last year before the field will be covered in new homes and, as Dave’s parent’s family life, is also on its last legs. Drawn in stylized, elegant black-and-white cartooning, The Field is both a beautifully sad and incredibly funny book.
Portrait of a Body
by Julie Delporte (Drawn and Quarterly)
Montreal’s Julie Delporte has built a body of unique feminist comics over the years. Poetically written, drawn in coloured pencil and sometimes feeling more like essays illustrated with abstract imagery. Her work is about being a woman in the world, anxiety, the body and health. Her writing is deeply introspective and wise, sometimes with a wry, cynical humour, but also kind and deeply human. Her latest book, Portrait of a Body, has few images of bodies, as Delporte chooses to mostly juxtapose her musings on the body, sexuality, past trauma and her late-blooming lesbian coming-of-age with colourful, abstract images of nature and seemingly random images. They aren’t random of course and the intriguing combinations of word and image are clever and work perfectly for the sometimes difficult themes she writes about.
K is in Trouble
by Gary Clement (Hachette/LB Ink)
This graphic novel for middle school readers – though I’m not of that demographic – was actually right up my alley. K is in Trouble is several connected stories with the hapless young K being misunderstood and accused of wrongdoing by officious adults. He’s a terrifically anxious, polite little kid being unfairly brutalized by all the adults in the book and by fate as well. There is more than a little homage to Kafka in here, there’s even a story with a cockroach. It’s the perfect kind of kid’s book that’s successful for audiences of any age because it doesn’t pander and respects the intelligence of younger readers and so it’s genuinely funny.
Degrees of Separation
by Alison McCreesh (Conundrum Press)
Alison McCreesh is a really unique and talented cartoonist. She works in beautifully shaded pencil drawings and has mostly written about her life in the north of Canada and elsewhere. Degrees of Separation is about ten years of living in the North, from an off-the-grid community of cobbled together shacks in Yellowknife, to artist residencies in Greenland, Iceland and Russia. It also traces and compares the carefree young traveler’s life with being a parent and living off the grid with little kids and pets. This is a fascinating look at someone who wants to live life to the fullest and not buying into consumer corporate lifestyles. McCreesh is a writer who can carry off great emotional depth simultaneously with the terrifically funny, and the book will make you laugh and move you deeply. (Alison also does strips about her and her kids that are wonderful, kind of like, what if The Family Circus was good? Find them at: www.instagram.com/shortyearscomics/.)
Are You Willing To Die For the Cause?,
Chris Oliveros (Drawn & Quarterly)
This is a nonfiction graphic novel about the October Crisis and the FLQ bombings in Quebec in the 70s. The best kind of nonfiction comic, totally engaging; it doesn't read like exposition, but still stays meticulously close to facts. It’s the first of two volumes and even if you’re well versed in Quebec history, you will learn a lot from this book.
A Guest in the House,
by Emily Carroll (First Second)
Emily Carroll is the only cartoonist who has ever made horror comics that actually frightened me. This is a great horror novel – suspenseful, scary, and with a step-father villain you really can’t wait to get come-upped.
Palookaville 24,
by Seth (Drawn & Quarterly)
The cartoonist Seth puts out these volumes every year, showcasing what he’s working on, new comics, sketchbook comics and other art and design projects. It’s a real glimpse into what one of the world’s great cartoonists is working on. I sometimes think we take these Palookavilles for granted, waiting till they're compiled into a graphic novel some day, but Seth is doing some of the greatest writing of his career in here. It's a deep dive into memory and reflection, and it's beautiful stuff.
Joe Ollmann lives in Hamilton, the Riviera of Southern Ontario. He is the winner of the Doug Wright Award for Best Book in 2007 and loser of the same award many other times. Author of 7 books, Chewing on Tinfoil (Insomniac, 2001), The Big Book of Wag! (Conundrum, 2006), This Will All End in Tears (Insomniac, 2006, Winner of the 2007 Doug Wright Award for best book), MID-LIFE! (Drawn and Quarterly, 2011), Science Fiction (Conundrum, 2013), Happy stories About Well-Adjusted People (Conundrum, 2014) and The Abominable Mr. Seabrook (Drawn and Quarterly, 2017). CBC Radio has said of him: “Joe Ollmann is to graphic novels what Alice Munro is to fiction: a master of the short story form.” Which is ludicrous hyperbole, but he'll gladly reprint it here.
