Status
Call number
Call number
Collection
Local notes
Description
Referencing a classic Haida oral narrative, this stunning full-colour graphic novel documents the tragic story of a leader so blinded by revenge that he leads his community to the brink of war and destruction. Consisting of 108 pages of hand-painted illustrations, Red is a groundbreaking mix of Haida imagery and Japanese manga. Now available in paperback, the hardcover edition was nominated for the B.C. Bookseller's Choice Award, a Doug Wright Award for Best Book and a 2010 Joe Shuster Award for Outstanding Canadian Cartoonist. It was also an Amazon Top 100 book of 2009. Red is the prideful leader of a small village in the islands off the northwest coast of British Columbia. His sister was abducted years ago by a band of raiders. When news comes that she has been spotted in a nearby village, Red sets out to rescue his sister and exact revenge on her captors. Tragic and time- less, it is reminiscent of such classic stories as Oedipus Rex and Macbeth. Red is an action-packed and dazzling graphic novel that is also a cautionary tale about the devastating effects of rage and retribution.… (more)
Publication
User reviews
The story of Red is a found narrative: a classic of Haida folklore. During childhood, raiders take Red’s sister Jaada – an event that instills in the future leader an enduring dream of retribution. The two children were already orphaned; now Red faces the future without family. As an adult, he begins to arm his formerly peaceful society, depleting their resources to buy weapons and to build an ingenious sea-going vessel. One day, traders announce that they’ve located Jaada. What happens next is both a tragedy and a cautionary tale.
Visually, the tale is beautifully told, using a style inspired by traditional Haida arts. Unfortunately, the narrative is not quite as successful as its graphic rendering. More than once, I couldn’t figure out what was happening and who was who. Red isn’t the first graphic novel to suffer from a sketchy, fragmented, at times bewildering story. Textually abbreviated, this form is inherently at a disadvantage. Still, it can and has been done well, and should have been better executed here.
As for the graphics, the panels are colourful watercolours that depict events in the forests and on the waters of the Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte) islands in British Columbia. Irregularly shaped, these panels are edged with thick, sweeping lines, curving between the scenes on any given page. This unconventional framing at once unsettles the narrative and creates a dynamic energy.
But this sequence of unusual panels is not the whole story. Taken together, on one of the book’s final pages, they add up to one large-scale formline that suggests an almost fated cosmic patterning. Inspired by traditional Haida art, this formline is also reprinted at a slightly larger size on the inside of the dustjacket. It’s a gorgeous work – one that pulls back to reveal the larger image constructed by the panel shapes. This unique form draws together in a single graphic presentation the close-up, moment-by-moment action of the present, as well as the wide-angled overview of history or mythology. Yahgulanaas goes so far as to recommend tearing out the pages to piece the formline together for yourself: a massive composition nearly ten by four feet.
Read this book for the inspired execution of a new form, for the way Yahgulanaas reinvents sequential art as synthesis as well as series.
*****
Counting this as my indie