Paul Has a Summer Job by Michel Rabagliati

In Quebec they call Rabagliati their Tintin. Little slices of life, and what does it all add up to? A life! And the accumulation of stories is sort of amazing, on the whole! Beautifully drawn, all of it. And he honors that.Īnd now I have read several of his stories, linking them together in my head, Rabagliati's fictional autobiography told over decades of his professional work. Not much happens and yet when you are living this life, everything does. There's a kind of nostalgia in it for me, too, a white kid like Paul/Michel, basically his age, who had the kinds of summers. and this is the heart of it, yes: PAUL HAS A JOB, as many of have or have had! So what? Is this a joke?! A book about that?! But no, it is not a joke, there's not irony in it, it is what people do and it is worth telling just because it is common and not spectacular. There he finds himself guiding a motley band of kids, misfits and troublemakers, much like himself.Ĭoming of age, slice of life, memoirist novel.

But instead Paul follows the path of so many Quebecois he lands a job as a counselor at one of the many summer camps in the mountains outside the city. This, his first graphic novel, is eagerly anticipated by comix connoisseurs who enjoy a sweet, unsentimental story about being a teenager and Rabagliatis crisp. Defiant, he quits school and anticipates a summer of leisure. But he's been asked to put art aside because his other grades are so terribly low. Paul is outraged that he is forced to stop his high school art training. Paul Has a Summer Job continues the story of Paul, a Quebecois teenager in the 1970s, as he experiences the first conflicts of responsibility with his desire to be free. This, his first graphic novel, is eagerly anticipated by comix connoisseurs who enjoy a sweet, unsentimental story about being a teenager and Rabagliati's crisp retro-modern 1950s drawing style.

Rabagliati`s strip ' Apprentice Typographer' was one of the highlights of 1999`s Drawn & Quarterly anthology, and his first comic book Paul in the Country won the 2000 Harvey award for Best New Talent.

Paul Has a Summer Job by Michel Rabagliati