A couple weeks ago, Top Shelf digitally stealth re-released Jeff Lemire’s first graphic novel, Lost Dogs, with a physical edition to come next year. I say stealth re-released mainly because I completely missed it until last week, at which point I felt an official site announcement might be a bit too late to “matter.” However, just because it was too “late” to report it doesn’t mean there isn’t still a reason to write about it, right?
Hop after the cut for some thoughts on Lemire’s first comic work.
Every creator has to come from somewhere. All of your favorites have rough, early work that they might be somewhat ashamed or embarrassed of, but are equally proud of as it was the piece that said “I am here” to the comic community. To my knowledge, there is no creator that came completely out of nowhere; there’s always that one out-of-print something that you’ll struggle to find after the creator is publishing your favorite comics at Marvel or DC. For Jeff Lemire, that elusive comic was the mysterious Lost Dogs — but now, thanks to Top Shelf, we can all read it and enjoy it.
Lost Dogs is a curious piece. It’s a short little read, about the equivalent of an oversized floppy’s worth of material to time-spent-reading ratio. Following the adventures of a somewhat solemn over-sized man in a red and white shirt assumedly stolen from a pirate, we see his life go from great, to bad, to worse throughout the duration of the graphic novel in what can only be summed up as an ode to tragedy. From the docks to underground fight clubs, our hero is brought along a path he doesn’t deserve, yet is force fed from whatever dark place he was born of, until finally he can take no more and the color is drained from him right before our eyes.
Lemire readily admits in the introductory essay to the new edition that the book is rough. It is his earliest work, born of hours in front of the drafting board and sprung from the challenge of 24 Hour Comic Day. As such, the work readily feels incomplete; the story we’re told certainly has a beginning, middle and end, yet it doesn’t have the sense of purpose or direction as Lemire’s later work does, It simply reaches its conclusion and leaves most of the big questions for the reader to ask him or herself, specifically as to if there are any questions to ask at all.
That isn’t to say the work doesn’t stand on its own for different reasons entirely, however. The most apparent element of it is the birth of a much greater talent. In the seams and cracks of this book is the heart and honesty filled throughout the pages of Essex County; in our quiet striped hero, we see the lonely eyes of Sweet Tooth’s Jepperd peeking out quietly; the black and white world absent of color except for red evoke the same sense of artistry from singular toned The Nobody. Lemire’s figures and art itself is certainly rough in quality when compared to the more fluid line work we know him from today, but in these older pages is the sense of style and vision that would later inform the unique and colorful world that makes Lemire such an artist voice to watch now.
I’m reminded of how, when we were younger, we were often told to make time capsules. You were supposed to take all the things that you loved, put them in a box with a letter to your future self and bury it in the ground, never to be seen until you were older and wiser (and understood that no, Chumbawumba really wasn’t a good band). The time capsules were there to represent a piece of you, things that were obviously important and at inevitably actively shaped you. Unearthing a piece of Lost Dogs is the same as digging up a time capsule, although we see it from a different perspective than Lemire does. Everything we see here is the early qualities of a bourgeoning artist, ready to bloom in the larger world of comics and carve out his own singular niche within a sea of the stereotypical.
Lost Dogs is a voice, working its way up from a silent roar to a deafening boom impossible to ignore with the dawn of the DCnU. I certainly was a great fan of Lemire’s work after reading the magnificent Essex County, but I personally didn’t find Essex County until after Sweet Tooth #1 came out. Looking back on a piece like this, I can rather readily admit that had this been my first experience with Lemire’s work, I would’ve still been an instant fan. Sure, it’s not as sharp as any of his later work, but knowing what I know of Lemire’s catalogue now, its very easy to see here that this was an artist willing to work hard and push himself. This was someone with a vision, whose passion bled onto the page as much as the characters in the story, and as dry as the book is overall, its still ten-fold more dense and full of intriguing depth than the humdrum drivel of the week to week comic offering.
I probably to some extent sound like a nut. On the one hand, I praise the books quite ingenuity while on the other I bop it on the nose for being an underdeveloped piece. I think, however, that in looking at it now, long after it was made and long after Lemire’s career is actively flourishing, its easy to come at the book from two inherently opposing viewpoints and still finish it with a positive disposition. Lost Dogs isn’t bad at all. It’s certainly not great, but neither were some of Terry Gilliam’s earliest short films, and look at the incredible films he went on to put out. What exists in Lost Dogs is the adamantly clear spark of what was to come, and for that alone Lost Dogs is entirely worth reading.
