Montreal isn’t a big city. It’s barely even a medium-sized city, by American standards. And the arts scene – particularly the English-speaking arts scene – can feel postage-stamp small, an agglomeration of people who’ve known each other for years and their mutual friends. At the same time, there’s a sense of profusion; of there being something unusual to attend every night of the week. While the scene itself can feel incestuous, this variety makes everyday life exciting.
It’s right in the middle of this big-yet-small world that you find Sherwin Sullivan Tjia, AKA Sully; a member of the arts community and also a keen observer of it. I don’t think we have a Great Montreal Graphic Novel yet, but this collection of short stories from Conundrum Press comes pretty close to evoking just why people come here.
Written and illustrated by Sully
Say for a second you’re just a normal person. You live in a hipster neighbourhood but you’re not a hipster. You’re hipless. This the premise behind this collection of interlinked stories done in a graphic novel format that originally found life as a weekly column in the McGill Daily. The protagonist here tries to live his life like an open heart, and a curious cat, meeting and mingling with a collection of Montreal oddballs. With artwork reminiscent of Adrian Tomine’s, this collection’s warmth and humour remind us that the hipless are human too.
All right, if you’ve read this far, you’re either prepared to hear about something pretentious, or else have a particularly open mind when it comes to this sort of thing. I have to admit that describing an arts community from the inside sounds, to me, like a pretty spectacular feat of ass-gazing. I think what steers “Hipless Boy” clear of this territory is its sense of fun; these are mostly true stories, collected from a variety of sources and streamlined down to their most charming elements.
Some of the incidents don’t seem remarkable at all at the outset – a conversation in a cafe, a bus ride to work – and others have the worked-out feel of tried-and-true party anecdotes. There are brief jaunts into darkness, too, sometimes with a macabre edge. And then there are fictional bits that flesh out interesting concepts: what about a trip to all the Springfields in America? How about a dress made out of roadkill?
Sully’s clean lines and effortless scene-setting keep the variety of material grounded. It’s all black pen strokes and blue shadows, with Montreal landmarks occasionally dotting the background. The layouts are fairly simple, interspersed with the occasional page full of text or splash page, and the lettering is remarkably clear, guiding us through tangles of casual conversation.
Sully’s faces are so simple – dashes for eyes, different dashes for lips – that the amount of feeling they evoke in context can be surprising. But at more emotional moments, these faces get a touch more high-def, pulling us deeper into the characters’ world and leaving less to the imagination. The generally stripped down style seems to reflect an essential quality of the art world; the idea of a big concepts being key, and not necessarily the details of their execution.
The tension between realistic conversations and shock-art fabulism winds up feeling like a houseparty; the kind where you might meet your new best friend, or else get stuck in a corner, talking to a guy who composts in his bedroom. And, like a houseparty, it can leave you feeling a bit nervous. There’s an honest, even earnest, feeling to Sully’s work, which can veer Holden Caulfield-like in its intensity. (There’s got to be a reason Catcher in the Rye is mentioned in the first story.)
I don’t think there’s a grand lesson to be taken from this collection, especially not when it comes to Montreal itself; mythologizing a city never gets you anywhere interesting anyway. But the rhythms and tensions of just being here, and trying to add something to it, as well as absorb something – and all of this without becoming an asshole – are ably captured.
Whether you’re familiar with this place and its weird ways or not, “The Hipless Boy” is a unique exploration of what it’s like to try and art your way through life. And as such, it steers clear of pretension and straight to the heart.
