November Featured Reviews 

“November Vol. 1: The Girl on the Roof”

By | December 3rd, 2019
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Through the gaps in a chain-link fence a series of vignettes take place; these are snapshots of people trying to find their own way in circumstances and systems that are constantly limiting their options, they’re stories of corrupt police, of mysterious but lucrative offers, of codes and puzzles that just form a part of a bigger, obscured picture. These are stories of “November.”

Cover by Elsa Charretier and Matt Hollingsworth

Written by Matt Fraction
Penciled & Inked by Elsa Charretier
Colored by Matt Hollingsworth
Lettered by Kurt Ankeny
The lives of three women intersect in a dark criminal underground. as fire and violence tears through their city over the course of a single day and night, they find that their lives are bound together by one man—who seems to be the cause of it all. One night. One city. Three women. November: the first in a sequence of three graphic novellas by matt fraction (sex criminals, hawkeye) and elsa charretier (star wars, infinite loop), with colors by matt hollingsworth and exquisitely crafted lettering by cartoonist kurt ankeny.

The first chapter of “November” introduces us to Dee, she keeps to herself, doing the puzzles in the newspaper alone in a cafe each morning. But there’s more to those puzzles than she can see. A man, calling himself Mr. Mann, approaches her, tells her he’ll pay her a lot of money to complete the puzzles every day, and turn a light off in a hut on a roof. There is more at play here than the puzzle in the newspaper, but Dee isn’t allowed to see it. Throughout this first volume of “November,” there is a bigger picture whose presence is felt but which cannot be fully seen. The angle that we see this world, this city, through is tight and obscured. People participate in codified systems, but from the bottom, it’s hard to see everything.

The divisions of a city are at the heart of this book. Divisions between law and crime, between order and chaos, between locked and open. The structure of the book, as a sequence of vignettes, each laser focused on one character’s inherently limited perspective means a unified narrative, a singular picture, is split apart. Just as the characters in “November,” we can’t see everything that’s going on at once.

Splitting a narrative into smaller, focused images is sort of what comics is. Each panel a snapshot of a greater whole, it fits into its place in the sequence, it can’t exist without the context around it, but its borders contain it, separate from what is around it. Fraction and Charretier are dividing the perspectives in the book from the macro to micro levels. The panelling is mostly consistent grids of three rows, making a cage out of the panels. There are motifs of fences, locks, closed doors. Hollingsworth’s colors are stark and simple, but toned down and dark, they mirror the obscured presence of the divisions in perspective and social positions in the book. Everything is a trap that we’re already caught in; by the time we can see what is going on it’s too late.

The lettering maybe stands out a little here. Ankeny uses this flowing, hand-written style that is almost ornate. It is very pretty, but it feels like in contrasts with the starkness of the rest of the books style. Perhaps it could serve as a necessary counter-weight, there is more going on here than a depressing, fenced-in cityscape, there might be some softness, some freedom hiding under the systems and roles.

Everyone in this city, in this book, has a role to play in a bigger narrative. This is just volume one of three, it is a first act, establishing the world, the characters, the questions that are to be answered. What happens when those roles get broken? One vignette sees a cop stealing evidence for personal use, while remembering getting told the rules of working the evidence locker. Dee asks what would happen if there were no puzzle for her to decode. A police dispatcher stays beyond the end of her shift and drinks on the job because she wants to avoid her home life. These roles, little boxes that the characters have been put in don’t leave them enough wiggle room, and they push against the sides of the boxes. As a first act, “The Girl on The Roof” sets up these roles to be challenged in the two sequels (volume two comes out in March). This leaves “November” feeling a little incomplete, which it is I suppose, but on its own, this first volume is a well constructed step into a city at night, filled with intrigue and characters trying to to get by.


//TAGS | Original Graphic Novel

Edward Haynes

Edward Haynes is a writer of comics, fiction, and criticism. Their writing has been featured in Ellipsis, Multiversity, Bido Lito!, and PanelxPanel. They created the comic Drift with Martyn Lorbiecki. They live in Liverpool, where they hornily tweet for your likes and RTs @teddyhaynes

EMAIL | ARTICLES


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