FAMILYFANS Books & Comics

THE AMAZING REMARKABLE MONSIEUR LEOTARD

by Eddie Campbell & Dan Best

(:01 First Second)

Reader Appeal: Teens to Adults

Genre: Graphic Novel; Historical Fiction

Who could resist a story about the man who popularized the leotard? To quote the cover copy, Jules Leotard was once the toast of Europe, the original man on the flying trapeze. But he dies in the first few pages, and the rest of the story is about his nephew Etienne. Making things even more odd and intriguing is that this story is by Eddie Campbell, who created From Hell with Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Watchmen). And the result is quite unusual.

I’m not sure how to explain the story of Leotard. The book vaguely follows the life of Etienne through a series of episodes where he falls in love, flees a city, rides a tiger, burns down the circus, sails on the Titanic, runs across Jack the Ripper, sleeps, and so on. Each episode is very short, though, and there’s no unified plot. Etienne’s uncle wishes for him on his deathbed that “may nothing occur.” And in many ways that sums up the book. Its style is fragmented and very minimalist and is written in a simple, old-fashioned manner, making is sound like a period piece. The art is unconventional, too, and is fairly interesting. Many of the panels look like watercolor paintings or old poster drawings, reinforcing the period piece feel.

Honestly, it’s hard to find much to say about this book. Some of the drawings are pretty interesting, particularly the sinking of the Titanic, and the book has a unified style to it that is amusing and creative, but the truth is that the book is pretty much all style and no content. The word count doesn’t much exceed a children’s picture book, and the characters and plot are so shallow and pointless that they barely register. The author dabbles in metafiction and breaking through the fourth wall (the author shows up inside the book, wandering around and discussing it, and Etienne knows he’s in an episodic story), but these have no significant impact on the plot (such as it is), and it seems like he’s doing it simply to seem cool or to use up space when he doesn’t have any real ideas. The author also throws in a few vaguely crude elements here and there to try to be amusing, but even these feel flat and contrived.

I can’t think of any significant themes to point out because there weren’t any, except maybe that life is weird, aimless, and ironic. To give you an idea of what I mean, half the cast of characters die in the last few pages while trying to rescue another member of the cast, who is already dying from lead poisoning, and the last two survivors wander off and get run over and fall to their death, respectively.

Naturally, then, I can’t recommend this graphic novel, except to glance at as a curiosity. It suffers severely from being all artistic concept and no substance, perhaps the result of having been written by someone who is primarily an artist instead of a writer. It only takes about 5-10 minutes to read, so if you want to, just read it there in the bookstore. If you happen to notice it sitting on the shelf and are contemplating buying it, my wish to you is the same as that of Monsieur Leotard to his nephew: “May nothing occur.”

FAMILYFANS RATING: D-

--MV

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