Jason, “Hey, Wait” and “Sshhhh!”

A while back I was lucky enough to meet Jim Lee, he of comics fame. We got to talking comics (of course) and I told him that I wasn’t much for the superhero stuff anymore. When I was a kid, yeah — it was all about JLA, Spidey, a little bit of X-Men (I kinda had a crush on Dazzler), Batman of course, and even some of the old 40’s Wonder Woman stories that I got in a tattered used paperback. I was also growing up outside the country, so I was heavily into Asterix, Tintin, the Marsupilami and the Moomins, Mafalda (finally available in English!!), and of course Valerian and his sidekick Laureline. Most of these latter ones are largely ignored in the States — it’s only recently that Valerian has gotten an English translation, for example.

But then, a long hiatus, unbroken until my buddies in college turned me onto Watchmen and Sandman (which was then being released, one excruciating issue at a time, and which they kindly let me read issue by issue out of the polyethylene bags, no doubt ruining their collectible value). Because of them, I read Rude & Baron’s Nexus and Moore’s Swamp Thing and Miracleman runs, Ostrander’s Grimjack, and a host of others that let me know that comics had grown up a little bit while I wasn’t looking.

Nowadays, if I read comics, it’ll be Gaiman and Moore (and yeah, there’s superheroes in Top Ten), or stuff like Maus, Persepolis, Blankets by Craig Thompson, or Jimmy Corrigan. But not much of the sort of thing that Jim draws himself, at least as I understand it.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, of course, to learn that an accomplished comics artist is also a fan of all sorts of comics. So in the mail one day, I get a package with a bunch of comics that he thought I’d like. And the first ones I read were two by a Norwegian artist named Jason.

I don’t think I can summarize these. After I read them I just sort of stared at them in disbelief. Jason draws anthropomorphic animals with almost no expression on their faces. He uses a thick, rough line. The books aren’t in color. Lots of repeated panels.

And Hey, Wait… will just about tear your heart out in 64 efficient pages. It’s about friendship, about childish daring and peer pressure, about regret and loss, about how one incident can transform a life, about the way a memory can reshape every event that occurs and cast it in a different light. I don’t think it would work as a poem or a short story–it would come across as trite. But panel by panel, the artistry mounts until you reach the unbearable conclusion.

Sshhhh! is more of a set of connected stories, ones that look at a life from different angles. They’re excellent, though not quite at the heights of Hey, Wait, which is simply one of the best comics I have ever read.

In one way, though, it reminds me of how I felt when I finished watching Grave of the Fireflies — I am not quite sure I want to read it again. Not quite that bad, but getting there.

Worth taking a look, even if you’ve given up on the funnybooks. Thanks, Jim.