Louis Riel
This is the first installment of what will be a 10 part series on Metis revolutionary Louis Riel. While I’m glad that acclaimed cartoonist Chester Brown has decided to shift his attention to the fascinating story of this early Canadian revolutionary (what’d he get a grant or something?), I felt that the story was too much of a history lesson. In this introductory effort, Brown fails to get us inside Riel, and instead focuses on the historical circumstances of Canada’s incursion on Metis territory. It’s interesting and provocative stuff, but it’s not enough. Unless Brown can figure out how to use the story to get us into the mind of his Riel, we might as well just read the story of Riel’s fate in the history books. An interesting debut, and certainly one I’ll be following, it’s still too early to tell if this project will amount to more than just a heritage minute. (HN)
comic, #1, 25 pgs, $4.25, Chester Brown, Drawn and Quarterly, PO Box 48056, Montreal, QC, H2V 4S8