Graphic Novel Review: “Return Of The Dapper Men”

Firstly, it’s beautiful.

That was my immediate impression when I picked this book: it’s absolutely lovely.  Finely detailed, deeply textured paintings; a rich pastel color palate; deeply charming character designs; gold embossed text across the cover; huge sweeping panoramas stretching across the pages.

As for reading it?  It took me a minute to get the hang of it, as the rhythm of the text veers from slow-moving mood piece to suddenly shifting hastily from person to person and event to event.  It’s was bit of a transition to go from everyday linear thinking to reading this, a bit of shifting gears, resetting my brain, taking a deep breath and remembering how to experience a new work on its own terms and not the ones I walk in anticipating.

Oh, let me stop here and mention: the book in question is Return Of The Dapper Men, by Jim McCann and Janet Lee.  And you would be well-served to click on that title and buy the book from that link, because it’ll improve your world to hold a copy in your hands and read it, rather than just trusting my review here.

And once you start flipping through the pages…  The interior layout is occasionally a bit confusing (the page design sometimes favors graphic impact over smooth storytelling and the occasional oddly-placed word balloon can confuse the sequence of dialogue), but the artwork is never less than magnificent.  One of the major characters is silent throughout, which demands extra attention to the pictures to determine reactions; not always easy to manage with the slightly muddled panel transitions.  But then it’s a comic book, words and pictures working together to tell the story; if it demands a second to decipher what’s going on, it’s well worth the effort.

The story itself is a fable.  A children’s story in the grand traditional sense of not dumbing  things down for the wee folk, but telling a tale of openness and wonder and gentility.  There’s echoes of the standby fairy-tale benchmarks, a dash of Oz, a bit of Carrol-esque (Dodgsonian?) wordplay, a slight murmur of Thurber’s “The 13 Clocks” under the surface…  But it’s in the feeling, not the content.  This stands on its own, and the easy capsule descriptors only box in what is, at heart, a fresh and original work.  So, let’s drop the “Prisoner meets steampunk in Never-Neverland” nonsense comparative descriptions and call it what it is: a thing made by smart people who filter their influences into something new and wondrous.

So yeah, there’s some criticisms here, but they’re minor.  Here’s what matters: Dapper Men is a first major work by two emerging stylists, and with that comes flaws and foibles and spirit and vitality and brilliance…  This is a truly wonderful book, and the pages crackle with promise; full of the spark of  the new and the glorious joys of possibility.