One Coin Reads 20: Curtain Call, by Lugano and Rodguen

 Curtain Call, by Wilfred Lugano and Rodguen

2013, English edition 2018

I went in to this book with no expectations, and finished it with a tear leaving my eye.

The cover fits the content of the book, but maybe the first impression was misleading 

One of the great discoveries of my bargain book purchases has been Lion Forge's Magnetic Collection of books. Before buying these books, I had never heard the name Magnetic Collection that I could remember, despite having a volume of their excellent Toppi collections. I just glossed over the publisher label on that one, I have too much information hitting me every day to have it all sink in. 

Once I got a few books though, their name stuck and I realized a few things about them:

-They are putting out some great translated works.

-They must be having difficulty getting their name out their consistently.

I'm not in the shops or at the shows, so maybe they are having better luck in the real world. So much of my experience of what's happening in comics is through the Internet, so I'm not an accurate barometer.

Vincent is the smarter one, Gaby the dumber one

Anyway, Curtain Call was a mere ¥491, not a difficult chance to take. At a quick preview, it looked to have animation style art and coloring, and I wondered if it would be a turn off when reading, but my eyes adjusted to it almost immediately. Rodguen was a Dreamworks animator for 15 years according to his bio, and his illustrations and character designs are full of life. I don't think there was a confusing or awkward drawing in the whole book.

The story is about a screw-up named Vincent who has a plan to rob an armored truck and get out of France, and start over. While the main story is fairly linear, there are a lot of flashbacks for Vincent and other characters to show their background and give an understanding of where they're coming from. It's all narrated from Vincent's point of view, giving the story a conversational feel and a natural flow.

Vincent's home life is fine. It's not great, not terrible. Maybe people can relate to this?

Early on, we see a twist in the heist of the story: Vincent wants to do an ethical heist. He's convinced that he has a way to pull it off where nobody will be hurt and all the people directly involved will be better off. Then the story leads to a climax with the heist, taking lots of turns that all manage to feel organic.

The plan

What's so good about this book is that Vincent is very real character. Writer Wilfred Lupano places him in a realistic setting where Vincent realizes he doesn't have a great upbringing or foundation, but he still has a much better one than so many of the people around him. Vincent isn't a good guy, but he wants to be better, he really wants to change who he is.

The story isn't overly political or about racial politics, but a lot of Vincent's spiritual awakening happens during a trip to Senegal, and the politics of race in France are an undercurrent. Vincent's partner Gaby is a homophobic racist and displays other negative qualities, but he manages to be portrayed in a sympathetic light while showing that he doesn't even understand what he's saying or why he thinks what he does (for example, he calls anyone brown a raghead, not understanding that the slur is aimed at a specific group). It's a clear contrast to the Manquette/Tardi book I read last week where I had difficultly separating the character's racism from the writer's racism. Here, I clearly can tell the writer is using to illustrate the character. 

Gaby is terrible at telling people off because he's just not that smart

Overall, I was just impressed with this book and closed it with a smile on my face. It wasn't predictable, but when it was over the arc of story made sense. By the end, I could see that the story was revealed with precision to get the maximum effect, but nothing felt like a writer's cheat, like information was withheld to create tension. The story unfolded in a naturally as Vincent, the character, would tell it.

The coloring by Ohazar is great. Lively and clear

And yeah, I had a tear in my eye at the end. The book has people who do bad things or stupid things, but it doesn't really have bad guys you're rooting against (at least not for more than a page or two). By the end, you just want everyone to be okay. 

I want to read more books where you like everyone.