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Lost Dogs (2005)

by Jeff Lemire(Favorite Author)

3.7 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Graphic Novels & Comics

publisher

Top Shelf Productions

review 1: I've always liked the idea of the comic book writer who draws his own art. Admittedly I'm not too familiar with independent or "alternative" comics so I haven't read many works with this type of creator. A couple that come to mind are Guerillas by Brahms Ravel, Optic Nerve, early Hickman, Guy Davis' The Marquis and the early work of Jeff Lemire. I was in the mood for a self-contained graphic novel that was somewhat short; I had read Complete Essex County awhile back and loved it and this being the right length I decided to give it a try. The story of Lost Dogs is a relatively straightforward, simple yet powerful tragedy. It follows a gently, naive giant of a man - mentioned at being 8-feet tall - on a trip into the city with his family, which he eventually loses along with... more his life. It feels like it has a good length story for the size of the book, being around one hundred pages. Though I do like sprawling epic stories like 100 Bullets or Ultimate Spiderman it always nice to have a complete story around this size. There are a couple scenes story-wise that I really loved: the sweet scene where the family enjoys themselves at the puppet show; the brutal, violent scene where the family was attacked on the docks; the best scene however was the conversation between the main character and the organizer/promoter of the fight, and right after between the man and Jack. Of all the scenes I thought this one was most interesting in terms of character development for the man. I liked how he tells the men who kidnapped him that "I'm a man. And I've got nothing left to fight for." and the following conversation with Jack. Even when he is bleeding to death he thinks about somebody other than himself, a man who manipulated him and got him in the situation he currently is in. He even forgives him. Shows that despite his appearance as "more animal than man, and a giant that he is a caring person. Bittersweet ending to show him dying but being happy to be back with his family. A couple things I found interesting about the character: it's an interesting choice to not have the character named at all, he is mostly referred to be either his appearance as big and scary or by papa; he also reminded me of the man Jimmy from Essex County in both appearance and character - a big scary man that might bot be the brightest who's actually a caring person. A couple things that could have been done better was some of the dialogue and the development of characters other than the man and Jack, the promoter did get some. Also, I thought it could have been structured better as three chapters.The first thing I noticed about the art was the similarity between the man and Jimmy, as I mentioned earlier. Second was the difference in art between the two works, this one used more broad brush strikes and had a rough, messy look. You can tell it's an earlier work, but it still looks nice. It will be interesting to read some more of Lemire's work and see his progress for his drawing. Another difference was the use of grays and colors - actually just one, red - that gave it a distinct look. I liked it. I find it interesting when comics do something like that color-wise, The Nobody and Ghost World are the first books that come to mind, though both use color in an obviously different way. The lettering as far as I can tell was function, nothing special. I wish I had the original version too so I could see Lemire's lettering, the reprint has somebody else that redid the lettering. The use of panels was pretty good, for the most part. There were some parts that I really liked such as the puppet show and the scene where Jack and the man show up to see Walleye fight and the subsequent fight between him and the man, good use of a 16-panel layout. A lot of comics today overuse wide panels with no variety, here there was a good variety of different layouts, nothing experimental though. It did fit the simple story though I feel. The composition of the drawings was also pretty great, I liked the off-balance panel of the family on the carriage a lot as well as the fight scene. Some of the splash pages were amazing I thought, such as: the scene where he is thrown in the water after his family is attacked, when he is holding his wife after she dies, and my favorite - the last page of the man shackled and dead lying on the floor. The only page where his shirt was void of red. Amazing and to the story.
review 2: This is an early Jeff Lemire work, and it feels rougher than his later works. A simple-minded behemoth has unpleasant encounters when he and his wife and child go to town, and then he deals with the ramifications. The artwork is vintage Lemire, with nary a straight line to be seen, and an interesting color schema - the only thing not in black and white are the red stripes (and blood) on the protagonist's shirt. It's dour and depressing and a dark look at humanity. less

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