A tragic neglect of history forces me to mourn the loss of my high school lessons. Familiar names and events float around lacking definite dates and locations. Chester Brown’s historical revisitations, reminiscent of the Biblical pictures books he has done, draw me back to the pleasures of history at the same time as they reveal the glossy spin educators put on our collective past. This is not an epic history of heroes and conquest. It is an existential and tragic story of isolation, waiting and reluctant conflict. Louis Riel is a multifaceted man caught up in historical events that force him as much as he initiates them. This is not the “Great Man” account of the past. These are real people, selfish, lost, crazy, greedy and angry. Not absolute good and evil but shades of grey like Chester’s drawings. This could and should be a required textbook. It is expertly footnoted and does the unthinkable (for academics, at least) by admitting the possibility of mistakes. (TD)
comic, #4&5, 25 pages, $4.25, Chester Brown, Drawn & Quarterly, PO Box 48056, Montreal PQ H2V 4S8, www.drawnandquarterly.com