Paul (comics)

AUTHOR: Rabagliati, Michel

ARTIST: Michel Rabagliati

PUBLISHER: Les Editions de la Pastèque (French); Conundrum Press (English); Drawn and Quarterly (English)

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1999- (English translation, 2000- )

Publication History

Michel Rabagliati was born in Montreal in 1961 and grew up enjoying not only American comic books but also Franco-Belgian works such as The Adventures of Tintin (1929-1976), Gaston (first appearing in 1957),and Asterix (1961-1979).After studying art and typography, he became a graphic illustrator, and his work appeared in such diverse publications as The Wall Street Journal, Utne Reader, The Advocate, and Canadian Business. After designing a new logo for Canadian publisher Drawn and Quarterly in 1990, Rabagliati regained an interest in comics and began to write and draw comics of his own, just as he had done as a child.

In 1999, the first of his semiautobiographical comics, Paul à la campagne,was published by Les Editions de la Pastèque. The following year, Drawn and Quarterly published his story “Paul: Apprentice Typographer” in Drawn and Quarterly, issue 3, and later that year published a translation of Paul à la campagne entitled Paul in the Country. These and the subsequent English editions were translated by Helge Dascher. Both publications were well received, with “Paul: Apprentice Typographer” being reviewed as “a minor-chord masterpiece.”

Rabagliati’s first full-length graphic novel, Paul a un travail d’été,was published in 2002, and the following year, it was released in English as Paul Has a Summer Job. This was followed by Paul en appartement in 2004, with the translated Paul Moves Out published the following year. Paul dans le metro, comprising twelve short stories, was published in 2005. The title story was reprinted as “Paul in the Subway”in the pages of Drawn and Quarterly, issue 5, and was nominated for an Ignatz Award. Along with “Paul: Apprentice Typographer” and an excerpt from Paul Moves Out, “Paul in the Subway”was included in The Adventures of Paul, Drawn and Quarterly’s contribution to the 2005 Free Comic Book Day.

In 2006, Paul à la pêche was published; Drawn and Quarterly published the translation in 2008 as Paul Goes Fishing. Paul à Québec was published in 2009, and its English translation, The Song of Roland, was scheduled for release in May, 2012, with Conundrum Press taking over for Drawn and Quarterly as publisher. Paul au parc was published in 2011.

Plot

The stories in the Paul series are semiautobiographical and include a small amount of fiction. The main part of Paul in the Country deals with a trip that Paul, along with his partner, Lucie, and their daughter, Alice, takes to his parents’ home in the countryside. While at his parents’ house, which formerly belonged to his great-aunt Janette, Paul remembers his past experiences there, including accidentally killing a bird with a pellet gun and spending time with his friend Alain.

Paul Has a Summer Job primarily takes place in the summer of 1979, when Paul is eighteen. He has dropped out of school and taken a job at a print shop, but he does not like it. His friend Guy invites him to work as a counselor at a camp for underprivileged children located near Lake Morin. He agrees and meets the others at the lake, but he is nervous about sleeping in the woods and encountering bugs and animals. He learns how to climb a nearby mountain, an activity that he will later repeat with the children for whom he is responsible. Shortly before camp starts, he meets his partner at the camp, an attractive young woman named Annie.

Paul and Annie’s first group of children is made up of six boys aged eleven and twelve; Paul has some trouble dealing with both them and Annie, but he soon gets along better with both. The next group consists of five older boys, aged thirteen to fifteen. In the time between the boys leaving and the next group arriving, Paul, who is attracted to Annie, learns that she might be attracted to him as well.

The final group is made up of nine- and ten-year-old girls, and Paul becomes close to Marie, who is blind. She is a friendly, funny child who wears a small doll on her necklace, which she later loses. Annie and Paul begin a romantic relationship, and shortly before camp ends, they have sex. It is Paul’s first time, and as they lie under the stars, Annie points out a small one, saying that when each of them looks at it they will think of the other. Camp soon ends, and they go their separate ways. While Paul keeps in touch with some of the other counselors, he never sees Annie again.

Years later, Paul, Lucie, and Alice attend a party at a chalet owned by Lucie’s friends Dominique and Dave. While there, Paul discovers that the chalet is on the shores of what was once Lake Morin, which was renamed. He searches and finds the old campsite; lifting the platform that was once the floor of his campers’ tent, he finds Marie’s doll. He gives the doll to his daughter and points out the star that Annie showed him long before.

Paul Moves Out begins in July, 1983, shortly after Paul and Lucie move into their first apartment. The story then flashes back to October, 1979, depicting their first meeting at the Studio Seguin art school. A new teacher, Jean-Louis Desrosiers, tells his class that they will be concentrating on design, since graphic design has become important. Paul and Lucie begin to spend more and more time together as friends, and they also often spend time with Jean-Louis as well.

Over Easter break, Paul, Lucie, and another student, Danielle, accompany Jean-Louis on a cultural trip to New York City. There, they visit many small art galleries, and Paul and Lucie kiss for the first time. The trip takes an awkward turn when Jean-Louis makes a pass at Paul, which he rejects. However, their friendship recovers by the time the group returns to Montreal. Paul and Lucie continue their relationship and meet each other’s parents.

The story then returns to Paul and Lucie in their new apartment, which they have been refurbishing. They make friends with their neighbors, have their bathroom destroyed by a handyman chasing a rat, and go to work and school. Sadness comes into their lives when Paul’s great-aunt Janette dies, but they are cheered up a few days later when they babysit Lucie’s nieces.

Paul Goes Fishing begins in 1991, with Lucie three months pregnant. The couple visits their friends Francie and Peter, who are also expecting a child. Paul and Lucie take a vacation and share a lakeside cabin with Lucie’s sister and brother-in-law, Monique and Clement, and their daughters. Most people, including Clement, visit the lake to go fishing, and Paul recalls the day that he and his father went fishing and their boat almost sank. Other flashbacks shown at this point convey further information about Monique and Clement and explore events from Lucie’s and Paul’s early lives, including a time when a teenage Paul almost ran away from home.

The trip ends in tragedy when Lucie has a miscarriage. Lucie eventually becomes pregnant again, and her parents bring her gifts for the baby. Two months later, she has another miscarriage. Afterward, when she comes home and finds the baby items, she becomes extremely upset. The following year, with the help of a doctor, the couple tries again; Lucie becomes pregnant and later gives birth to Alice.

Volumes

•Paul in the Country (2000). While visiting his parents’ home in the country, Paul reminisces about his earlier visits.

•Paul Has a Summer Job (2003). At eighteen, Paul works as a counselor at a summer camp and falls in love.

•Paul Moves Out (2005). Paul meets Lucie while at art school, and they move in together several years later.

•Paul Goes Fishing (2008). Paul and Lucie try to have a child and take a fishing vacation.

Characters

As Paul comprises several volumes, there are numerous characters. The primary ones are listed here.

•Paul, the protagonist, is a stand-in for the author. He is French Canadian and is depicted at various ages. As an adult, he works as a graphic designer.

•Lucie is Paul’s longtime partner. They meet at art school and eventually have a daughter named Alice. She is a stand-in for the author’s companion, Carole.

•Paul’s Family Members include his parents, Robert and Aline; his sister, Kathy; and his great-aunt Janette.

•Annie is a young woman from Quebec City and is Paul’s partner at the camp. They become romantically involved, and she is the first person with whom Paul has sex.

•Marie is a young blind girl who is part of the third group of campers.

•Dave and Dominique are friends of Paul and Lucie who own a house near where the camp once was.

•Francie and Peter Dube are friends of Paul and Lucie. Francie is pregnant at the same time as Lucie’s first pregnancy and has a daughter, Jeanne.

•Roland is Lucie’s father.

•Jean-Louis Desrosiers is Paul and Lucie’s teacher at art school. He is attracted to Paul and rejected by him, but they remain friends for years afterward.

Artistic Style

Rabagliati credits such Franco-Belgian comics creators as Hergé (The Adventures ofTintin)and Albert Uderzo (Asterix)as his artistic influences, and reviews of his work have noted his style’s similarities to the clear-line style made famous by Hergé. Rendered in black and white, Rabagliati’s art is generally realistic with some “simplistic” touches, such as eyes drawn as black dots or white circles and noses sometimes drawn with a triangular shape. Male and female nudity is occasionally depicted, but it is not drawn in any exaggerated way. As the stories take place at different points in Paul’s life, the characters are shown at various ages, but they remain easily identifiable at all times.

Most, if not all, of the characters shown in the books are based on real people, but since the reader is not shown what these people really look like, it is unknown how accurately Rabagliati has portrayed them. The pages are drawn in a standard multipanel format with the number of panels varying from page to page.

Themes

The basic theme of the Paul books is life and its issues: love, work, family, and everything else that goes along with those aspects of existence. Some autobiographical works deal with hardships in the author’s life, such as illness or abuse, while others deal with successful and unsuccessful romantic relationships and life in general (Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, 1987, is a good example of the latter). Paul tackles the everyday, commonplace aspects of life but also deals with occasional problems and disappointments, such as Lucie’s miscarriages. The comic even discusses the everyday lives of secondary characters, sharing details about downsizing taking place in Clement’s company and Monique’s work in family services.

Impact

Paul has been well received by critics and readers, some of whom have dubbed the protagonist “The Tintin of Quebec.” The stories have gained Rabagliati worldwide fame and accolades, ranging from international awards to inclusion on library association reading lists. Paul Goes Fishing, for example, was nominated for the Ignatz Awards for Outstanding Artist and Outstanding Graphic Novel. It was also nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album. In addition to French and English, the Paul books have been published in Spanish, Italian, and other languages.

Further Reading

Brown. Jeffrey. Clumsy (2002).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Funny Misshapen Body (2009).

Thompson, Craig. Blankets (2003).

Bibliography

Boyd, Kevin. “2010 Outstanding Cartoonist: Michel Rabagliati.” The Joe Shuster Awards, June 23, 2010. http://joeshusterawards.com/2010/06/23/2010-outstanding-cartoonist-michel-rabagliati.

Flagg, Gordon. “Paul Goes Fishing.” Review of Paul Goes Fishing, by Michel Rabagliati. Booklist,March 15, 2008.

Serchay, David S. The Librarian’s Guide to Graphic Novels for Adults. New York: Neal-Schuman, 2009.