Publisher: Gallery 13
Release Date: April 18, 2017
Price: $29.99
Creator: Jeff Lemire
Format: 272 pgs., Duo-tone/Full-Color, Hadcover
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6099-0
Age Rating: Mature
ICv2 Rating: 4 Stars out of 5
With Roughneck, cartoonist Jeff Lemire returns to long form, original comics that fans of Essex County and The Underwater Welder have come to appreciate and admire.
What graphic novel set in Canada could ignore the quintessential sport of hockey? Seriously though, the game serves more as a plot prompt rather than a singular focus for one of the major characters, Derek Ouelette. Recently retired, Ouelette finds himself broken down and living a solitary life of near poverty in the rural, isolated town of Pimitamon where his only source of exercise is the occasional brutal beat down of fellow drunkards and townspeople. Ouelette's passion for violence and quick-tempered behavior stems from the abuse inflicted by his own father. Lemire complicates Derek's life even further with the sudden, unexpected arrival of his opioid-addicted sister, Beth, who, it is revealed, is on the run from her own abusive relationship. Together the two will wrestle with their shared pasts and face down the impending threats not only from Beth's dysfunctional boyfriend, but also those originating from their parents.
Yet, Lemire's greatest contribution with Roughneck is that Derek and Beth, the central protagonists, are half-Indigenous, First Nations people from the Fort Albany Reserve. As Lemire revealed to me, he "spent a little time visiting schools in the Moosonee and Moose Factory area and meeting the kids and talking about making comics."
For Lemire, Roughneck afforded him the opportunity to "learn more about a part of Canada that I was and still am extremely ignorant of and hopefully bringing a little of that back to my reader." Lemire spent considerable time reading First Nations authors Richard Wagemese and Thompson Highway, and recognized "in reading their work I started to see how little I knew about Canada's indigenous people, their culture and their history."
Often, whenever comics showcase a Native character, he or she is predominantly and immediately stereotyped in the role of shaman, mystic, tracker, or proto-environmentalist. Lemire jettisons those overused and abused tropes for Roughneck and opts instead to focus on the contemporary realities facing modern, 21st century Native peoples. Lemire's brilliance here with Derek and Beth is further exemplified by the fact that their ethnicity is not specific to their characters. In fact, Lemire doesn't even reveal their heritage until well into the novel.
Native people in comics are often trapped by casting in a pre-modern, warrior lifestyle. Or, if they do appear in a modern setting (Marvel's Shaman, Moonstar, Red Wolf, and Warpath come to mind), their ethnicity is intrinsically wedded to their character arc, making them little more than token attempts by the publisher to showcase diversity--unfortunately, Lemire's own recent creation of Equinox for DC's Justice League falls into this category as well. Lemire abandons all of these trappings for Roughneck, however, and the result is a beautiful, heartfelt story that will resonate with readers familiar with Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera's Scalped.
If there are any criticisms of Roughneck they rest more in Lemire's staging and panel sequencing. Most of these issues should have been addressed by the editor, including speaker placement and lettering that affect the visual storytelling and pacing panel-to-panel. Most casual readers will likely not be aware of these technical faults, but for seasoned comics audiences who know page geography and especially fellow artists and editors, they are glaring issues.
Craft faults aside, Roughneck is a welcome return from Lemire. While his collaborative comics have afforded him wider recognition with both corporate and indie publishers, it is his solitary, singular cartoonist books that reveal his true talents as an artist.
--Nathan Wilson
