Drew Weing’s “Set to Sea” is a book that’s been on my radar for a while now, but has only recently been added to my collection. Originally released as a hardcover in 2010, this mostly wordless picture book tells the tale of an unnamed poet who is physically imposing, yet delicate in his nature. Last year Fantagraphics made the title available again, this time in softcover. Because of this, on an aimless Saturday afternoon, I was able to slide the unassuming blue spine off of the shelf at a local comic shop and decide it was about time that I read this thing.
I’m going to assume that the first thing anyone would notice about “Set to Sea” is that it’s a fair bit smaller than most other comics. It’s easy to be wary of little books, particularly when the art is it’s main draw, but after reading this story I can’t help but think that Weing and Fantagraphics made the 5.25″ x 6.5″ trim size a part of the story, something that adds to the overall experience. I feel like Weing approached his pages with the intention of having a minimal amount of real estate, with each page containing a single, large panel. Instead of cramming a sequence on every page, moments have been carefully chosen and presented to the reader. This method of storytelling also adds to the pacing of the story, but we’ll talk a bit about that later.
Another interesting way the trim size of the book plays into the narrative is in the way the story plays with repeated imagery. Reading through “Set to Sea,” it’s easy to pick out the visual callbacks that Weing incorporates. The first and last page, the poet standing at the railing of the ship, and, to my point, the poet writing in his notebook. I mentioned before how physically imposing the main character is, and that’s to say that he’s just a big fella. Huge by some accounts. He’s twice as broad as everyone around him, he has to duck through doorways, and his hands are almost the size of a normal human’s torso. So, since he’s got these huge mitts, whenever we see him holding his notebook, it looks particularly tiny. So, as the reader, if you pull your focus back and see your hands holding this tiny book, on a page where the poet’s hands are holding his tiny book, well, that’s some metatextual play in the narrative if I’ve ever seen it.
Weing’s cartooning in “Set to Sea” is a sight to behold. His line work swings between thick, goopy marks and thin, almost whispy lines. This serves the art in a few ways: the ocean looks dark and chaotic, while the sailors’ faces have delicate cracks from all the sun and salty air. It’s through this variation in line that Weing is able to illustrate the shapes and textures in this world. This is cartooning, so every shape is going to have an outline holding it’s place on the page. For Weing, these lines are usually bold and economically used. It feels like his focus is on communicating what an object is, and where it’s position is in space, as efficiently as possible. What do I mean by ‘space’? I guess the easiest way of translating that is to say that it is an object’s intended position on the page as related to the reader. Is it near to you, the reader, or is it some distance away? Weing uses the weight, or thickness, of his line to give you this information without actually having to tell you. Bold lines mean that something is near, while thinner lines indicate distance. This is a story that takes place out on the ocean and in busy port cities, so communicating space and distance can be pretty crucial to the feel of the narrative. Through his expertly crafted art, Weing was able to wrap the reader in this world.
Weing’s linework is also used to convey light, contour and textures, which I think gives his art real distinction. His character design harkens back to the work of the classic strip cartoonist EC Segar, chock full of big feet, bulbous forearms and oblong head shapes. But unlike Segar, or really anyone else in this school of cartooning, Weing seems to really push himself to render every page as much as possible. Fabrics, wood grains, and other surface textures are all methodically and meticulously detailed, with hundreds of tiny lines of varying lengths and rigidity helping to give each scene a kind of tactileness. There’s very little question of what the objects in his drawings would feel like if you were able to run your fingers across them. His technique goes beyond texture, as Weing uses hatching and cross hatching to ‘light’ his scenes. He uses scores of tiny lines to create gradients, where white seemingly fades to black, to show lightness and darkness. It’s easy to read this part of the art as simply greytones, but a careful inspection will reveal marks upon marks becoming more densely packed as a shadow deepens. It’s really interesting to see such familiar, Segar-esque characters populating scenes that are made so dense with hatchwork. It shows just how good of a cartoonist Weing is; he knows exactly where and how to be economic in his work, holding back the impulse to meticulously render every bit of a page, and only using it where it counts most.
Continued belowNow, with art and book design covered, let’s talk about narrative. An unnamed poet, who seems to be brimming with aspiration but lacking in inspiration, is booted from an inn for trying to pay his bill with a book dedication instead of currency. Feeling dejected, the poet wanders down to the piers to try and get some writing done. After dozing off, he is clunked on the head by a pair of unsavory fellows and, presumably, sold to a ship captain as a laborer. And so begins an adventure that will carry our protagonist through a great many years of his life.
On its surface, “Set to Sea” reads like a coming-of-age story, as we see an uncertain young writer find confidence and success in ways he never imagined. And while I think that such an interpretation is valid, I can’t help but feel like there’s something a little deeper at play. To me, this story is about the creative pursuit and the pitfalls on the road to success.
The night that the poet was taken aboard the ship, he was stuck trying to write about something that he had absolutely no experience with: a life at sea. Maybe living in a port city is what made this the focus of his work, maybe he was trying to emulate another writer, the reason is never made clear. What is certain though, is that he’s not very good at it. We see his notebook filled with musings that romanticize the life of a sailor, but, as the poet himself puts it, “something’s still missing!” What was missing was a real understanding of why the sea is romantic, something that he would soon know first hand.
After beginning to live a life at sea, the poet seems to become disillusioned with what he was once so enamoured with. The work is hard. The food is terrible. There are pirates. After seeing what the sea truly had to offer, the poet pitched his notebook into the drink. His dream was dead, and when you live on a ship, you throw dead things overboard. As heartbreaking as that scene is, it’s at this moment that he stops being a poet trying to write about the sea, and becomes a sailor who will write from experience. This is the moment that sets him down the path towards finding modest success with his art, but far more importantly, a sense of satisfaction from leading a life well lived. Our unnamed protagonist is no longer shackled by the need to be renowned, and is instead contented by the simple life of a sailor. I mean, I’m sure he’s happy to see his works published with some degree of acclaim, but I get the sense that sees said acclaim as a part of his life, not something that defines it. I don’t think that this is something the younger version of himself would be able to comprehend.
There are many years covered the 144 pages that comprise “Set to Sea,” and the single panel per page approach Weing took in telling this story serves the slowing and hastening of time well. There are stretches of the book where consecutive pages read as a beat by beat accounting of events, with each page acting as a panel in a strip. Then at other points, the time between each page becomes greater. Instead of second by second panel progression, we’re given montages of sorts, showing us moments from a stretch of time that could be days or years. Early in the story, as the poet is new to the ship, we see him complaining to anyone who would listen in what could be seen as a few weeks. Then, as we wind our way through the final act of the book, each page is one moment from many in a year, until we find that our protagonist is much older than when we met him.
I found “Set to Sea” to be a rare thing; it is a beautiful and charming work that, in a lot of ways, spoke to my personal experience and gave me a bit of insight. From art, to narrative, to production, this is an exceptional work that I would wholeheartedly recommend it to most anyone. The book is available from Fantagraphics or your local comic shop. Weing’s latest work, “The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo” can be read on his website.
