Underwater Welder, Shadow of Jeff Lemire’s Past – Danger Room –

When Jeff Lemire’s work is analyzed, it is often overlooked. The enormous associative power that the presence of water plays in the imagination; a powerful and flexible symbol regularly used to reflect on life, death and rebirththree thematic columns that formed the basis of his most personal work, which is not necessarily autobiographical. underwater welderThe production process, which took about four years, coincides with a very special, vital and creative moment for Lemire, who has just stepped into major publishing competitions without giving up her most personal projects, and perhaps experiencing a cocktail of emotions and feelings for the first time. feelings associated with the advent of paternity.

A mixture of fears, insecurities, and euphoria – this is also reflected in some of his remarkable works from that fertile period; for example, like his podium at his head. animal human or sweet tooth– Fills Jack Joseph, the protagonist of the Underwater Welder, with one of those dimpled, lonely, and selfish profiles that abound in Lemire’s work† At the age of 33, he cannot bear the death of his father, whom he plunged into the water on Halloween night 50 years ago, never to return. The weight of the past can’t live it in the present and escape from his depressed hometown, where he works as an underwater welder, trying to heal his childhood traumas with daily dives on an oil rig off the Nova Scotia coast. . In one of these immersions, he finds an object that can open an intertemporal portal that prompts him to intermittently relive scenes from his past, without revealing his closest present – ​​his wife’s advanced pregnancy and impending paternity. slips through your fingers.

As with some of his most stimulating works, Lemire plays genre elements to face the costume scenes to make the most of the narrative water of his fictions.† The devastated city where Jack and his wife Susan live is an unchanging and unchangeable relic of the past. Only the breakthrough of a supernatural element allows a rift to open through which light enters, which opens the eyes of the heroes and allows them to face their decisions. And that’s it underwater welderis a disturbing ghost story, alongside a powerful metaphor of paternity, where fear reigns in the awkward silences of conversations, the gaps between sketches, the sewers into which Jack takes refuge – the hero relentlessly pursues. at the bottom of the sea to force him to take responsibility for or take account of his hidden depression. Fear is also felt in the wrinkles and nervous lines on the faces of the characters, which Lemire draws with a strikingly ugly aesthetic to emphasize their imbalances and risky life moments.

Despite an early working status, Lemire knows how to channel Jack’s fears and frustrations into the graphics part of the business. When the character is faced with a real problem, the author traps him in a grid of twelve perfectly gridded vignettes that exacerbate his vital suffocation; meanwhile, the vague replies she muttered to her partner’s reproaches were echoed even more strongly by the circumstances, she was completely overwhelmed. In sea dives, the opposite happens, his figure sometimes almost lost in the vastness of the ocean, reflecting the sense of peace and comfort the hero feels when he comes down to boil the cracks and traumas from the past. To further illustrate the differences between the two worlds, the scenes on the surface use only standard black and white; their contrasts sometimes create nightmarish and expressive shadows, while underwater scenes use ink washes and varying shades of gray. The differences between the two worlds become more blurred as the plot progresses and the vital mess of a Jack trapped in space-time is highlighted. An example of synergy between matter and form Work extraordinarily rich in layers and readouts† Not alone. As Jack begins to reconstruct scenes from his past he thought was forgotten, the layout of the vignettes on the page resembles the layout of a puzzle at his disposal, allowing them to plunge into a high-profile story.

Using the painful flashbacks that Jack has experienced, Lemire manages to fluidly create a dialogue between the past and the present to reflect on the losses and traumas of the past in a personal and honest way, and combines work with equal dexterity. Essex countryhis current work is both a spiritual continuation and a stylistic sublimation. This metaphysical part of Jack’s journey back to the real world justifies comparing the work to the most notable chapters, after realizing that his constant gaze into the past gives him only the most disturbing emptiness. The Twilight Zone Summarized by Damon Lindelof in the introduction to the study, published in Spain by ECC Ediciones. Ten years after its original publication, underwater welderan intimate drama of universal resonance remains the best possible summary of all of Lemire’s authorial virtues. an inexhaustible miracle†