Hey, Wait . . .

AUTHOR: Jason (pseudonym of John Arne Sæterøy)

ARTIST: Jason (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Jippi Forlag (Norwegian); Fantagraphics Books (English)

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION:Vent Lint, 1998-1999

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2002 (English translation, 2001)

Publication History

Hey, Wait . . . was first published in 1998 by Jippi Forlag in Norway in the comic book Mjau Mjau, issues 3 and 4. It was edited and translated from the Norwegian by Kim Thompson and published by Fantagraphics Books in 2001 and later in 2010 in the collection What I Did, which includes Sshhhh! and The Iron Wagon, also by Jason. It was published in book form in Norwegian in 2002 as Vent Lint.

Plot

Part 1 is a story of two anthropomorphized animals, Bjørn and Jon, who, as close friends, share the innocent joys of childhood. Like all boys from any culture, they create mischief, fly kites, read comics, talk about girls, and consider what they want to be when they grow up—Bjørn a journalist and Jon a comic book artist. They decide to form a Batman club, the membership initiation of which consists of swinging out on a limb over a cliff and then falling back safely on land. Jon performs this feat successfully, while Bjørn waits for another time.

Later, when walking to school, Jon meets a ghoulish creature who waves and smiles at him as he rides by on a bicycle. Later that day, after school, the two boys meet at the cliff for Bjørn’s initiation. Jon sees how frightened Bjørn is and hollers out, “Hey, Wait!” —but not in time to stop Bjørn from jumping out for the limb. Unable to grasp the limb, Bjørn falls to his death. Jon attends Bjørn’s funeral, at the request of his father. As they leave the cemetery, Jon’s mother comments that the accident was not his fault. Jon sneezes and suddenly grows into an adult who walks home alone to an empty apartment.

In part 2, Jon lives an isolated and lonely life as an adult. He lives apart from his wife and their child and works a boring factory job, something that he and Bjørn swore they would never do. His empty life is one of menial activities such as brushing his teeth, walking to work, eating alone, looking out his kitchen window into emptiness, standing at a drill press all day and drilling a hole into cubes, undressing at night before going to bed alone, watching the television game show Jeopardy!, playing tennis, having a short romantic relationship, drinking, and complaining about work (despite staying in the job year after year).

Jon has a dream in which he falls to his death off the cliff where Bjørn died. Death looks down at him and laughs. During one of Jon’s blackouts, after a night of heavy drinking, Death appears before him. They sit at his kitchen table, and Jon describes his life. “Anyway . . . my life didn’t exactly turn out like I expected . . . now if I was being punished that would make sense to me . . . if I was a bad person . . . but I’m not.” There is no reply from Death. He merely stares as Jon bows his head. Death asks Jon to close his eyes and count to three. When Jon opens his eyes, he comes face-to-face with his childhood self who plays ball with Bjørn as though the accident on the cliff never happened. In the last sequence, Jon steps on a bus filled with ghoulish figures and sits down calmly as the bus moves down the road.

Characters

•Jon, the main protagonist, is a dog-like character whose life is reflected in a series of short sequences, from childhood to his lonely adult existence that ends in early death.

•Bjørn, with long rabbit-like ears, is Jon’s best friend who accidentally falls off the cliff as part of an initiation.

•Death, who appears like a ghoulish figure with blackened eyes and wearing a suit, passes Jon the day that Bjørn falls accidentally to his death and later when Jon awakes from a blackout before his life ends.

Artistic Style

In this tale, told in pen and ink, Jason draws each character and object with the same even line, free of shading and cross-hatching. This style is best described as “clear line.” The cartoonist Joost Swarte originally used this term (“ligne claire”) in 1977 to describe Hergé’s style in the comic series The Adventures of Tintin (1929-1976). By using the same even lines, each object and character inside the panels is given an equal amount of concentration. In addition to these consistent lines, Jason provides large portions of white space to focus audience attention on important scenes and objects, such as the tree on the cliff where Bjørn falls to his death. In this example, the white space in the background concentrates the reader’s attention on the tree and the cliff.

Another element of Jason’s style is his unemotional rendering of feelings. Rather than using cartoon gestures or exaggerated facial expressions, which are a trademark in superhero comics, Jason presents his characters with plain expressions no matter the emotion. These unemotional expressions leave characters’ feelings open to interpretation, which involves the audience more intimately with the story. Jason’s simple, static style produces a contemplative reaction to the unfolding narrative of familiar events in the lives of the characters. His effective style—using even lines, white space, and fixed emotional expressions—makes Jason’s story plausible, even when he mixes the real with the fantastic, such as when Jon and Bjørn fly a kite and a dinosaur snatches it from the sky. Jason’s style ensures the narrative is both relatable and surprising, as when surreal incidents unfold.

In the front matter, Jason previews the style he uses throughout the book. In this wordless page with six panels, he shows Jon and Bjørn passing an apartment door. Bjørn looks around cautiously before Jon rings the doorbell. The boys run away quickly before the door opens and a monster, similar to the one from the horror film Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), stares directly at the reader. The reader is a witness to the prank, which is a common one played by children, but is not prepared to see a monster behind the door. What is even more puzzling is that instead of looking around for the perpetrators of the prank, the monster looks directly at the reader. Thus, the simple panel-to-panel transition not only immediately involves the reader in the action but also cautions the reader to expect the unexpected in this tale of Magical Realism.

Jason’s style shies away from any panel experimentation, though his use of various devices produces a visually stimulating narrative within traditional panels. The artistic style is secondary to the narrative. The way in which the story is disseminated remains consistent throughout, with six bold, bordered panels per page.

Jason’s black-and-white panels have plenty of white space with the simplest of details and little dialogue. Every third page in part 1 and more than two-thirds of the pages in part 2 are wordless. His later completely wordless strips and stories in Sshhhh! display a skillful use of the genre of wordless comics. Most of the book is told in single, one-page events that together form an album of childhood and adult lives. Jason admits the most important influences on the creation of Hey, Wait . . . were the stories of French comic artist Fabio Viscogliosi (known as Fabio), who uses simple characters and situations to present hapless events in the life of a vagabond cat that first appeared in L’oeil du Chat (1995).

Jason uses word balloons creatively. One example involves Jon’s teacher. In what appears to be a history lesson, the teacher delivers a lecture; however, from the limited, telescopic portion of text captured inside a round word balloon, the lecture makes no sense. Not only is this effective in relating the nonsensical nature of the lecture, but also it presents Jon’s complete lack of interest. As his teacher delivers the lecture, Jon draws a Batman figure in his notebook.

Jason repeats panels on a page to heighten awareness of certain events in the story. For example, Jason does not show Bjørn’s death. Instead, a page of six all-black panels follow the previous panel in which Bjørn is shown jumping out for the tree limb on the edge of the cliff. The page of black panels is followed by a panel of a skull and a candle on a bookcase that strongly implies Bjørn’s death before it is confirmed in a funeral scene.

In another series of panels, in order to show Jon losing consciousness during a drunken stupor, Jason masks more and more of the panels as Jon sits on the couch drinking, until he is shown with only the simplest of lines. The next panels are entirely white before a sketch of a toilet appears; the lines become bolder as Jon is shown falling on his knees before he vomits in the toilet.

Duplicating panels are also used when Jon is dead and then opens his eyes. The tree is shown in all six panels on the page between when Jon sees his childhood self and when Jon and Bjørn are playing soccer, suggesting what could have been if they had not played on the cliff. The last panel on the page with the boys playing soccer shows Bjørn, who scores a goal. He jumps into the air, with his hands held high in triumph, much like his pose before he jumped for the tree limb. Jon is left with a warm memory of Bjørn.

Themes

Friendship and guilt are the major themes in this work. The friendship between Jon and Bjørn in part 1 is heartfelt and innocent. Jason provides numerous examples of the boys playing and enjoying each other’s company before Bjørn’s accidental death, which leaves Jon alone with an overwhelming feeling of guilt.

In part 2, the negative effects from guilt permeate Jon’s adult life. He lives a lonely life with low self-esteem, dealing with resentment, isolation, depression, and alcoholism. Jon is unable to forgive himself because he feels responsible for Bjørn’s death. Like his repetitious job in the factory, Jon’s life is uneventful and mechanized. He is divorced, cannot keep a steady relationship, and spends his evenings drinking until he falls asleep in a blackout. When Death arrives, Jon does not plead for his life. For Jon, Death is the only end to his misery. As a concession, Death offers Jon a glimpse of what his life could have been if the accident had not occurred.

Impact

Hey Wait…has been favorably received and is considered a representative piece of the European (especially French) comics of the 1990’s and early 2000’s. As part of the “new comics” scene burgeoning in France in the early 2000’s, Jason joined fellow artists such as Joann Sfar and David B. in presenting graphic novels that deal with highly personal, often autobiographical, subject matter. As Jason’s first book to be translated into English, Hey Wait…introduced the Norwegian artist to a new level of success and had an influence on both European and American graphic novels that came after it.

Further Reading

B., David. Epileptic (2005).

Brown, Chester. I Never Liked You: A Comic-Strip Narrative (1991-2002).

Jason. The Living and the Dead (2006).

Bibliography

Jason. “Interview with Jason.” Interview by D. J. Douresseau. Comic Book Bin, June 15, 2004. http://www.comicbookbin.com/charlie32.html.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Jason Interview.” Interview by Matthias Wivel. The Comics Journal 294 (December, 2008): 28-77.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “A Short Interview with Jason.” Interview by Tom Spurgeon. The Comics Reporter, January 27, 2007. http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/resources/interviews/7393.