Albert and the Others

By Guy Delisle

Drawn & Quarterly

With the fantastic travelogues, Pyongyang and Shenzhen under his belt (2007’s Chroniques Birmanes, so far as I can tell, has yet to see an English language release, sadly), Guy Delisle has made a strong case for himself as a candidate for the title of Canada’s next great cartoonist and one of Quebec’s most gifted heirs to the Franco-Belgian comic tradition.  

Release last year by Drawn & Quarterly, Aline and the Others showcased another side of the artist. Light on narrative, the book was instead comprised of a series of 26 vignettes, each devoted to a different woman whose first name begins with a subsequent letter of the alphabet.

If the short and largely wordless stories shared anything with Delisle’s previous book’s, it was the artist’s keen sense of juxtaposition between the cartoon and the real, but where Pyongyang and Shenzhen saw fit to illustrate the artist’s largely serious and true-to-life travels through foreign lands via the artist’s pronounced cartoon style, Aline took matters one step further, utilizing equally cartoony storylines to illustrate larger abstractions of the human condition, with limb removal and other acts of cartoony self-mutilation oft serving as metaphors for female obsessions with body image.

Albert and the Others is Aline’s male counterpart, using the same approach to explore far reaching aspects of the opposite gender, through the short stories of 26 men, from the eponymous Albert to the lovelorn Zoltan, who closes the proceedings with an upbeat tip of the fez.

The men of Albert wield ungodly erections and pull women from lakes with fishpoles, but the stories never seem to possess a pro-mysogonist agenda, rather they all work to speak apects of the male existence on a sliding scale of subtlely and universiality. Some vignettes succeed more successfully, in terms of both humor and storytelling, but Albert largely succeeds as a sublime and, at times understated, display of Delisle’s quiet mastery of the form.  

As a collection, Albert is the perfect companion piece to its predeccessor, and as such, is essential for fans of Delisle’s work. For potential fans, the book will serve as a good showcase for the artist’s warm cartoon style, those seeking a sample of his talent for longform linear storytelling, however, would be advised to seek out the D&Q-published Pyongyang—you’ll likely find yourself picking up the rest of the author’s small English output in no time. 

–Brian Heater