Review: Missouri Boy

I’m firmly convinced that the beauty of the American South is that it’s a better place to be from than a place to be in. Frequently, I look back upon moments in my life that could have only taken place in the semi-rural Arkansas and Georgia I called “home” and romanticize the place a bit much. Sure, there’s wonderful food (get me started on barbecue and you’ll want to shoot me in the face around hour three of my treatise on Brunswick stew) and a casual, friendly bond with people that happen to share a zip code with you, but there’s also deeply entrenched racism and mosquitoes large enough to suck the vitals from a fairly large bovine without any hesitation.

Leland Myrick seems to realize that the South is better taken in bite-sized chunks and his minimal yet lyrical Missouri Boy gives the reader vignettes of his growing-up that provide not only lazy summer afternoons and the joy fireworks that can be purchased from about a million roadside stands, but a peculiar regional pathos that is hard to for us, the departed, to quantify to anyone not from “around there.”

Myrick’s art suits the subject matter: the softened angles and love of unsteady lines recalls Paul Grist and much like the creator of Kane and Jack Staff, Myrick ensures that regional affectations are amplified through the presentation. Slightly oversized work shirts, trees that don’t grow as straight as they’re supposed to, the semi-random edges of autumn leaves – they all become characters in their own right because of the manic attention to an almost complete lack of detail, an impression of the original that somehow gets more across than a photograph ever could. Hilary Sycamore’s coloring in the book is, frankly, sublime – an example of why I love flat palettes so very much, with a tonal scheme that provides the perfect subtle counterpart to Myrick’s accomplished work.

I really shouldn’t like Myrick’s structure here – it’s disjointed and leaps forward in gaps that vary from one year to four, but his narrative voice is so strong, I don’t mind one bit. The script is never overdone or underwritten – it, like Sycamore’s coloring, provides another layer to the visual storytelling that serves as the centerpiece for this outstanding graphic novel.

A review copy of this book was provided by First Second Books. More information about Missouri Boy and sample pages can be found at the publisher’s website.