The Complete Essex County

AUTHOR: Lemire, Jeff

ARTIST: Jeff Lemire (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Top Shelf Productions

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2007-2008

Publication History

Published in three volumes from 2007 to 2008—Essex County, Volume I: Tales from the Farm Essex County, Volume II: Ghost Stories; and Essex County, Volume III: The Country Nurse—Jeff Lemire’s Essex County trilogy was collected as The Complete Essex County in 2009. The collected volume includes an introduction by cartoonist Darwyn Cooke and two previously uncollected stories from Essex County: “The Essex County Boxing Club” and “The Sad and Lonely Life of Eddie Elephant-Ears.” The 2009 collection also includes early drawings of the Essex County characters as well as some promotional materials.

Plot

The Complete Essex County tells the stories of four generations of the LeBeuf family, settled in Essex County, Ontario, Canada. In this book, interdependent and interlocking stories from four generations are told through memories and present-day action. Tales from the Farm focuses on Lester Papineau, living with his Uncle Ken after the death of his mother from cancer. Lester does not know who his father is and withdraws into a fantasy world, reading comics and often wearing a cape and a mask. His uncle admonishes Lester and orders him to take off the mask and cape, but Lester refuses. Against his uncle’s wishes, Lester befriends Jimmy LeBeuf, who owns the local gas station.

Jimmy briefly played hockey for the Toronto Maple Leafs but retired early because of an injury. Lester and Jimmy run into each other at the creek owned by Ken, and Lester lets Jimmy in on his fantasy: He is watching for an alien invasion. Jimmy actively engages in Lester’s play world and offers to help him build a lookout tower. Lester’s relationship with his uncle is rocky. He continues to be drawn to Jimmy. The two meet at the creek regularly, and Lester shows Jimmy a superhero comic book that he drew himself. Jimmy appreciates Lester’s work and then lets Lester in on his fantasy: He is still a professional hockey player. Lester plays the part of Jimmy’s opponent, while Jimmy skates around him.

Uncle Ken learns that Lester and Jimmy are meeting and refuses to allow Lester to see Jimmy. He also confronts Jimmy one night at the gas station. Jimmy denies having anything to do with Lester. Lester runs away, and, unable to find Jimmy at the creek, goes to the gas station. Jimmy is curt with Lester, and Lester leaves, spending the winter night in an unheated barn.

Spring arrives. Lester remembers seeing Jimmy crying from a distance at his mother’s funeral and realizes that Jimmy is his father. He runs into Jimmy in the fields and asks Jimmy to tell him what it was like to play professional hockey. Jimmy starts to answer, but the aliens for which Lester has been watching finally arrive and shoot Jimmy in the chest, mirroring his hockey injury. Lester is suddenly empowered with flight and destroys the alien ship in the air.

Jimmy gives Lester his most prized possession, a hockey card of himself, and both Jimmy and Lester acknowledge that they are father and son. Lester goes home, able to make peace with his life with his uncle, and takes off his mask and cape.

In Volume II, Ghost Stories concerns characters related to Lester and Jimmy. The volume opens as deaf seventy-year-old Lou LeBeuf (Jimmy’s great-uncle) returns to the family farm, reliving his life through memories. Lou is cared for by his nurse, Anne Quenneville.

As young men, Lou and his brother Vince played hockey for the Grizzlies, a semiprofessional hockey team in Toronto. Lou was a good player, while Vince was the team star.

As a result of the LeBeuf boys’ play, the Grizzlies perform well and make the playoffs, but are defeated by Brampton. After the season, Vince marries Beth, retires from hockey, and returns to the family farm. Unbeknownst to Vince, Lou and Beth have a one-night stand.

With Vince gone, Lou stays in Toronto and plays a few more seasons; a knee injury eventually ends his career. Following his time as a hockey player, Lou becomes a streetcar driver, drinks too much, and does not return to the family farm until his mother dies, twenty-five years later. At the funeral, he is reunited with Vince and Beth and meets Mary, a child who may be the result of his one-night stand with Beth years before. After the funeral, Lou returns to Toronto and retires. When he learns that Vince is critically injured in a car accident that kills Beth and Mary, he returns to the family farm to care for Vince. Vince and Lou make amends; Vince dies, leaving Lou alone on the family farm.

InVolume III, The Country Nurse, the story of Vince and his nurse Anne continues. On her rounds, Anne checks on Jimmy, retired from the Maple Leafs and running the gas station. Anne reminds Jimmy to visit his uncle Lou, and then she stops to see Lester, while seeing how Lester’s uncle Ken’s arm is healing. Lester is now a hockey player also.

Lou dies, and Anne is overcome with memories of her grandmother, Sister Margaret Byrne, who ran an orphanage in which Lester’s grandfather, Lawrence Papineau, lived. Sister Margaret has an affair with the handyman, Charles Gerrard, and orders him to sleep in the barn. When the church catches fire, Charles dies while saving one of the orphans. Sister Margaret bears a child, Catherine, who becomes Anne Quenneville’s mother.

Anne Byrne’s memories are prompted by her involvement with her patients; she questions whether or not her work has value. When she informs Jimmy that Lou has died, Jimmy takes the opportunity to make amends with Ken and Lester and make a fresh start as a family.

Volumes

•Essex County, Volume I: Tales from the Farm (2007). Tells the story of Lester Papineau; he lives with his uncle after the death of his mother and forms a relationship with his father, Jimmy LeBeuf.

•Essex County, Volume II: Ghost Stories (2007). Tells the stories of brothers Vince and Lou LeBeuf, who set out to play professional hockey. After one season, Vince retires and moves back to the farm. Lou stays in the city.

•Essex County, Volume III: The Country Nurse (2008). Focuses on Anne Quenneville. As a nurse, she checks on patients Lou LeBeuf, Ken Papineau, and Jimmy LeBeuf.

•The Complete Essex County (2009). Contains Volumes I-III and includes additional Essex County stories “The Essex County Boxing Club” and “The Sad Lonely Life of Eddie Elephant-Ears,” along with other material.

Characters

•Lester Papineau is the ten-year-old child of Claire Papineau and Jimmy LeBeuf; however Lester initially does not know that Jimmy is his father. When Claire dies of cancer, he goes to live with his uncle Ken. He is an imaginative boy who dresses in a mask and cape and draws and writes comics.

•Ken Papineau is the brother of Claire Papineau. When Claire dies, he takes her son Lester into his home. Ken refuses to allow Lester to interact with Jimmy LeBeuf.

•Jimmy LeBeuf is a onetime star of the Toronto Maple Leafs. After a blow to the head, he retires and buys an Esso gas station in Essex County. He is Lester’s father. Jimmy befriends Lester, plays imaginary games with him, and supports his interest in comic books. After Lou LeBeuf dies, Jimmy is welcomed into Ken Papineau’s home.

•Lou LeBeuf played hockey for the Toronto Grizzlies. After a knee injury ended his career, he drove a Toronto streetcar. He has a one-night stand with Beth Morgan and may be the father of her child. After Beth is killed in a car accident and his brother Vince is critically injured, he returns to the family farm to care for Vince. After Vince dies, he spends his days reminiscing.

•Vince LeBeuf was the star of the Toronto Grizzlies, but after playing only one season, he marries Beth Morgan and returns to the family farm, where he helps raise Beth’s daughter, Mary. Mary and Beth are killed in a car accident in which Vince suffers debilitating injuries; afterward, he is cared for by Lou until his death.

•Beth Morgan is the wife of Vince LeBeuf. Beth had a one-night liaison with Lou, and Lou may be the father of her daughter, Mary. Beth and Mary die in a car accident.

•Mary LeBeuf is the daughter of Beth Morgan. It is unclear who her father is; it may be her “uncle” Lou. When Mary meets Lou for the first time as a young woman, she expresses great interest in him and wants to visit him in Toronto. A few years after meeting Lou, Mary dies in a car accident that also kills her mother and seriously injures Vince, her mother’s husband.

•Anne Quenneville, the granddaughter of Sister Margaret Byrne, is a country nurse. She has cared for Claire Papineau, Jimmy LeBeuf, and Lou LeBeuf. Anne’s husband has died, and her son is a problem for her. Her satisfaction in life is derived from caring for the residents of Essex County.

•Sister Margaret Byrne is Anne Quenneville’s grandmother and directs an orphanage. She bears Catherine Byrne, the illegitimate child of the orphanage’s handyman, Charles Gerrard. Catherine is Anne Quenneville’s grandmother. Gerrard dies in the orphanage fire, and Sister Margaret leads the children across a several days’ trek to Essex County.

•Lawrence LeBeuf is the oldest child in the orphanage run by Sister Margaret. When a fire destroys the orphanage, he helps lead the orphans across Canada, where they settle in Essex County. Lawrence is the father of Lou and Vince LeBeuf, the grandfather of Mary LeBeuf, and the great-grandfather of Lester Papineau.

Artistic Style

Lemire’s artistic style is deceptively simple. Generally, pages are divided into a series of small, active panels that focus on interaction between characters. The characters vary in size; if Lemire is making an emotional point, the character crowds into the panel. If the purpose of the panel is to move the story along, the characters are smaller and more casual. When Lemire wants to focus on a single character, he positions that character toward the reader. In moments of isolation, characters occupy a one-page panel alone. If the isolated moment is transformational, the character faces the reader. If it is a sad moment, the character faces away from the reader.

The book is done completely in black and white, which mirrors its somber tone. The backgrounds are mixed; most panels have realized backgrounds where the drawings are representational, but many panels have only white space for background, allowing readers to focus on the character in the panel. Lemire is also a master of cartoon timing; he is able to slow the pace down long enough to allow the reader to linger over a character when necessitated by the story.

Themes

Several themes run through Essex County. One is how the human race is perpetuated in part by illicit sexual liaisons. In the context of the story, in each generation there is one child born out of wedlock: Catherine Byrne, Mary LeBeuf (probably), and Lester Papineau. Another theme is the dual nature of passion, for which hockey stands as a metaphor. Through three generations, LeBeuf family members have a relationship with hockey: Superstar Vince is indifferent to it, while Lou, a lesser talent, finds life meaningless without the sport. For Jimmy, who scores a goal in the same game in which he suffers a career-ending injury, getting injured is worth the thrill of scoring a goal. As Lester begins to recover from his mother’s death, he joins a hockey team.

The characters survive, rather than thrive, and they either come or return to Essex County for sustenance. When Lawrence leads orphans to safety, they walk until they reach Essex County. When Vince wants to live a full life, he stops playing professional hockey and returns to Essex County to farm. When Lou wants to make peace with his brother, he does not bring him to Toronto; instead, he returns to Essex County. After Jimmy’s accident, he, too, returns to Essex County.

Nurse Anne, who has no family except her son, tends to the sick and wounded, and she personifies the healing properties of Essex County. Her caring nature appears to come from the county itself, as she drives from patient to patient dispensing advice as well as medicine. When one member of Essex County dies, the loss is palpable to Anne.

Like the LeBeuf family, Anne takes sustenance from the crows of Essex County, who have watched over both the Byrne and LeBeuf families for generations: Lawrence and Sister Margaret follow a crow to Essex County; when Lou returns to Essex County as an old man, a crow befriends him; and as Lester slowly recovers from his mother’s death, a crow flies overhead.

Impact

Before writing and drawing The Complete Essex County, Lemire was a relative newcomer to graphic novels, producing only a few short pieces. One of them, Lost Dogs (2005), earned a Xeric Award. With the publication of Essex County, Lemire was thrust into the upper tier of cartoonists. Essex County was recognized by the American Library Association. With its recognition as one of the Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Essex County helped elevate the status of Canadian cartoonists.

Further Reading

Lemire, Jeff. Sweet Tooth: Out of the Deep Woods (2010).

Powell, Nate. Swallow Me Whole (2008).

Smith, Jeff. Bone (1991-2004).

Bibliography

Newman, Lee. “Trading Up: The Complete Essex County.” Broken Frontier, January 13, 2010. http://www.brokenfrontier.com/lowdown/p/detail/trading-up-the-complete-essex-county.

Sanders, Joe Sutliff. “Essex County.” Review of Essex County. Teacher Librarian 36, no. 3 (2009): 25.

Weiner, Stephen. “Dreams Deferred in a Harsh Landscape: Essex County, Volume 2: Ghost Stories.” Boston Globe, March 8, 2008.