As I mentioned in my post regarding Cavity's Curiosity Shop, when I finished shopping I was unable to immediately pay for my books, and as a result wandered around the store for a few minutes while I waited for the owners to finish their conversation.
My brief tour resulted in the addition of a couple of graphic novels to my purchases: Jaka's Tale and We Stand On Guard. Strictly speaking, neither one is a graphic novel - they're both omnibus collections of previously published comic books.
We Stand On Guard, originally published as a six-issue mini-series by Image Comics* in 2015, is a grimly nihilistic tale of a future invasion of Canada by the United States. Whereas Steve Skroce, the artist on the series, is Canadian, story creator and writer Brian K. Vaughan** is American. Vaughan, whose wife is Canadian, has explained in interviews that the concept for the story was partially prompted by "friendly arguments with my in-laws during Canadian Thanksgiving."
The story paints a brutal picture of the US destroying Canada as a nation in order to gain control over its vast reserves of water, a future which seems far too plausible in the era of climate change and frequent drought conditions south of the border.
Jaka’s Tale…where to begin?
Okay.
In December of 1977, an artist named Dave Sim from Kitchener, Ontario decided to do an independent black and white Conan the Barbarian parody comic book featuring an aardvark named Cerebus.
As bizarre as that sounds for an elevator pitch, Cerebus was an unexpected and incredible success. It was Sim’s plan to take his earth-pig protagonist through the course of their entire life over 300 issues of the comic, and end the series with his death in the final issue – an astonishing plan, given that there are lots of comics produced by the major publishers that only last a year or two before being cancelled.
Amazingly, he succeeded – 6000 pages and 27 years later, Cerebus passed away in a final moment of barbarian anger, falling out of bed and breaking his neck.
The entire series has been collected*** in ten volumes, commonly known as "phone books", based on their size. Jaka's Story is the fourth phonebook in the series, and is distinguished by the fact that Cerebus himself only makes a marginal appearance in the events of the story.
The character of Jaka the tavern dancer was originally introduced in Issue 6 of the original run - a thief drugs Cerebus with a love potion**** so that he will fall in love with Jaka, allowing her to then extract the secret location of a treasure trove from him. Cerebus eventually recovers from the potion and abandons his pursuit of Jaka, but the story ends with a twist - Jaka announces her love for him after he leaves and says that she will wait forever if need be for him to remember his love for her.
Jaka proceeded to become one of many recurring characters in the series, and was later revealed to be the niece of Lord Julius, ruler of the city-state of Palnu. Issues 114 to 136 dealt almost entirely with Jaka’s life – a bold decision, given that Sim only had 300 issues planned for the comic.
Whatever prompted this digression on Sim's part, Jaka's Story is an astonishing creation, combining a unique artistic style and brilliant storytelling to create an illustrated tour de force. It's almost a novelistic experience - literally, given that the story contains extended prose passages from a book describing Jaka’s childhood - the Jaka's Story of the title. It's an anguished, uncomfortable tale of betrayal, anger and repression, and could easily stand on its own without any of the rest of the issues of Cerebus.
I was pleased to find We Stand On Guard, but I consider Jaka's Story to be a bit of a score at ten bucks. I'm a bit tempted to buy the other nine volumes now, but I don't think they're still in print, and Amazon pricing for each seems to be in the $50-$70 range - I don't think I'm $600 worth of tempted.
- Sid
*This is a weregeek moment waiting to happen. Image Comics was founded in 1992 by a group of comic book artists looking to take control over their own properties. They're still around, in third place as comics publishers after the giants of DC and Marvel.
** Vaughan is probably best know for his 2002 comic book series Y: The Last Man - there's a television adaptation coming out in September.
*** Sim originally created six four-issue collections of the early Cerebus comics under the name Swords of Cerebus - I have the first five of those collections, no idea why I never bought the sixth one to finish the set. Birthdays or Christmas, anyone? I don't need the first print run or anything that would drive the price up.
**** Always keep an eye on your drink, kids.
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