Everybody in Luke Healy’s graphic novel, “How to Survive in the North”, is lost in one way or another. Some of them are stranded in the furthest reaches of the planet while others are caught up in their own faults and failures. Healy weaves together three different narratives over a vast time period, and does so consistently and generally effectively. Two of the stories are true.
Although the book ultimately left me cold, there nevertheless remains much to admire in it, especially in the cartooning.
Written and Illustrated by Luke Healy
Weaving together the true life historical expeditions of Ada Blackjack and Robert Bartlett with a contemporary fictional story, How to Survive in the North is a unique and visual narrative journey that shows the strength it takes to survive in even the harshest conditions – whether that be struggling for survival in the Arctic in the 1900’s or surviving a mid-life crisis in the present day.
All the stories in Healy’s comic somehow or another deal with the Robert Bartlett expedition in 1913. Handed an ill-equipped boat and a not-perfect crew, Bartlett sets off on a research campaign, only to get caught in the ice and stranded in the north. Several decades later, Ada Blackjack, an Eskimo mother, joins a new crew as a seamstress. They hope to follow the Bartlett trail as well, except they, too, end up marooned and stalked by a polar bear.
These stories are true.
Healy filters all this through Sully Barnaby, a college professor who has just been put on a mandatory sabbatical. He spends most of his newly-found free time in the library, where he discovers journals and papers of Bartlett and Blackjack. The rest of the time he spends successfully messing up his life by making an ass out of himself at parties and carrying on an affair with a student.
Healy makes some broad reaches as he attempts to connect these stories together. He draws parallels in the characters — from how they interact with the world around them and how they fall into their own lethargy. They are all running from something under the guise of trying to save something else. Despite having friends and people looking out for them, they continue making the worst possible choices and descending into a new level of solitude. None of them seem to realize the impact and influence they have on everyone else around them.
For Bartlett, Blackjack, and Barnaby, surviving in the north isn’t so much about the actual act of survival, but of coming to terms with their lives and situations. Because so much of this book deals with them learning to take power over themselves, the story moves at an iceberg pace.
For the most part, however, Healy does maintain a nice balance between the sequences. He structures this mostly in three-or-four page scenes, creating some interesting parallels. Healy occasionally falls into ineffective redundancies, made obvious only because he handles many of the other parallel sequences with an expert, deft hand. Moments such as when the crew is stranded and decide to try their luck finding civilization or when Blackjack has to deal with the fellow explorer who refuses to see her fit to accompany them overstay their welcome. Some of the Barnaby sequences are mired in the Philip Roth middle aged disparity; I had to reread a couple pages because I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on. A lot of the initial setup works takes longer than necessary to truly take off.
None of it seems to come together, either. The characters end up in . . . I don’t want to say better places by the end of the book, but maybe in places they have a better understanding for. Yet, I didn’t see the same payoff between the separate sequences. In some cases, the arcs simply seem to end.
The thing is: “How to Survive in the North” looks amazing. Healy’s character designs are simple shapely things, but they constantly and consistently carry so much weight and emotion. The colors are mostly flat, with each sequence getting its own tone and tine. We see a lot of yellow for Bartlett, pink for Blackjack, and blue for Barnaby. Healy uses these colors like leitmotifs, reminding us of another character and their plight
Continued belowHealy presents this with smaller, square panels. It reminded me a lot of the collected “Tintin” adventures. I guess you could read it as a bit of a sendup of that adventuring mentality: after all, the people around Bartlett and Blackjack approach their expeditions like they’re seeking out glory. He utilizes a lot of negative space — both within the frame and on the page altogether. There’s a horizon line hopelessly stretching toward infinity. “How to Survive in the North” achieves a real and rare agoraphobic atmosphere, and we can understand why all these characters so quickly and easily get lost in their thoughts and shortcomings.
Maybe the best way to describe “How to Survive in the North” is as more of a tone poem. It’s oneiric and patient. Healy’s visual are engrossing — take a look at the aurora borealis spread early on in the book. (It looks like it was done in crayon, which has a cool effect.) The designs are simple yet effective, compelling in ways the story itself sometimes struggles to be. This might be the through-way to help us understand the complicated emotions and turmoils Healy’s subjecting his characters to.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – I’m not sure if “How to Survive in the North” is a book I’m going to frequently reread, but I do think it’s one I’ll flip through and admire again and again.
