What I Did

Like Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories (2008), this fat, handsome hardcover collects some of the droll Norwegian-French graphic novelist’s earlier work. While all the pieces postdate the time when Jason decided to give the long, lean characters in his stories dog, bird, and cat heads, these tales are less fantastic, less parodic, and more poignant than his later stories; some ambulatory skeletons and corpses presage later obsessions, but they’re creatures of the protagonists’ fearful and guilty consciences rather than “real.” “Hey, Wait . . .” and “Sshhhh!” are sad life stories, one of a man haunted by the death of a childhood friend for which he feels responsible, the other wordlessly follows an ordinary guy from young manhood to death, full of the protagonist’s fantasies of alternative scenarios in which he wins instead of loses. “The Iron Wagon,” an adaptation of a classic Norwegian crime novel, is the grimmest, starkest thing Jason has ever done, as powerful as a dark Ingmar Bergman film, despite those animal heads. --Ray Olson

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