Exit Wounds
by Rutu Modan
Drawn & Quarterly, 2007
The Complete Peanuts, 1963 to 1964
by Charles Schulz
Fantagraphics, 2007
Read by Joe Ollmann
I first discovered the work of Rutu Modan in Drawn & Quarterly Volume 5. In the story Jamilti, she told the story of an average, bickering, engaged couple, whose day out buying wedding dresses and making wedding preparations is interrupted by a suicide bombing. In this primitively drawn story, Modan evoked empathy for how ordinary and familiar the characters are to us, then suddenly points out the difference between their lives and ours with the intrusion of civil war.
Modan’s new book Exit Wounds, set in the midst of the same conflict, similarly shows the life of the two main characters, a soldier and a cab driver, existing and living their very ordinary lives while almost ignoring the ever-present conflict that, while intrinsic to the plot, is almost nonexistent. It’s an interesting approach for an Israeli cartoonist to take, unexpected, and making the effects of the conflict more pervasive just by its familiarity and ordinariness.
Modan’s drawing style is equally paradoxical. In Exit Wounds, the drawings confound the eye, at times looking incredibly lifelike, at other times strangely out of proportion and slightly clumsy. The effect is as if someone of limited artistic talent were tracing a series of photographs. It is engaging, and the perfect style to simulate the uncertainty of the characters. The book is about relationships and how difficult they are on many levels, from the personal to the cultural. It is both an amateur forensic detective story and a romance, an exciting, compelling mystery that also appeals to our tender nature, and ends on the happiest of ambiguous notes.
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The seventh volume of The Complete Peanuts is here and it continues to delight. Facets of Seth’s thoughtful design continue to reveal themselves, such as the jagged line of Charlie Brown’s sweater on the back cover, which I only noticed on this volume but realize that it has been there since the first volume. The introduction to this issue is written by Bill Melendez, animator of A Charlie Brown Christmas, et al. The dude that invented the moves for all the kids dancing to Schroeder’s piano can do no wrong for me. It feels like Schulz was just reaching a level of confidence and surety with his characters at this time. The humour is elegant and sophisticated, highbrow and unpretentious and funny as hell. I got all seven of these and I’m throwing out books to make room for all the rest.
