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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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Trailers
The crime isn't the point of the story, though, it's merely the
MacGuffin upon which hangs the true theme of the work. Josh Clayton
has lived all his life in a trailer, and is deeply ashamed of his mother,
his upbringing, and by association, himself. Possible redemption offers
itself up through a meet-not-quite-cute with a fellow high school student.
Michelle is a pretty girl from a higher social rung who, it turns out, will
not be manipulated by her peers and their damning mockery of Clayton.
Michelle, in fact, is a key element in the pleasure I took in reading the
story -- she may be a little more sophisticated at navigating teenage (and
later, adult) life's stormy's waters than most girls her age, but she is
presented as so fully-real a character that I was won over by her, and by
her efforts at reaching the seething pain inside Josh. The best scenes in
the novel occur between these two.
The worst take place around the previously-mentioned crime committed
by Josh's mother. The crime itself is believable enough, but Josh
comes off as too grounded and decent to allow the cover-up to go on as long
as he does. So one's immersion in this story of his transformation from
child to man largely hinges on one's willingness to accept some pretty
unbelievable scenes including a Tell Tale Heart-like finger refusing to stay
buried and a couple of hillbillies playing sport by shooting birdshot into a
bloated corpse. It's not that I don't think these things could happen,it's just that I wasn't convinced by the depiction of some of the more extreme aspects of this particular story. Where Kneece and Collins-Rousseau
stick to more familiar emotions and events, though, the tale rings mostly
true.
Collins-Rousseau gets a good deal of credit for her convincing visual
creation of the world these characters inhabit. She has an approach
similar to Alex Robinson, if he was, say, inked by Journey-era
William Messner-Loebs. There's a powerful sense of place, especially in the
scenes of lower-class misery like the inside of Josh's family's trailer, or
the parking lot of the convenience store where the local hookers ply their
trade.
I'm leery of dramatic fiction in slice-of-life graphic novels. Failure
always seems to be a page-turn away, if it even takes that long, and
even the most ambitious of works (like the recent Fantagraphics release
The Night Fisher, or NBM's own recent North Country) can leave
me surprisingly cold. Trailers works as both a piece of
entertainment, and an exploration of what sorts of stories are possible in
the comics artform. Its reach exceeds its grasp, but only by a little, and
ultimately I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it and by how
well many parts of it succeeded in keeping me turning the pages, all the way
to the end. Grade: 4/5
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Kneece and Collins-Rosseau make Trailers a highly readable
entertainment despite the fact that the central conceit -- an horrific
crime committed by the lead character's mother that continuously threatens
to burst into scrutiny despite efforts by him to cover it up -- is
never really very convincing.