The Amazing, Remarkable Monsieur Leotard by Eddie Campbell and Dan Best
In the delightful “The Amazing, Remarkable Monsieur Leotard,” graphic novel treasure Eddie Campbell and his collaborator Dan Best take a look at old side shows and draw a direct line between those performers and the modern day superhero. This unexpected feat is accomplished by examining the structure of exciting narratives and sweeping adventures as experienced by outsiders.
Leotard is, of course, the famed daring young man on the flying trapeze who inspired the song, the man who created the garment of the same name. This book is not about him, but his nephew, the far less interesting Etienne, who dons his uncle’s fake mustache and accepts his dying gift of a blank book. Etienne takes the book as a challenge to fill it with tales, and assumes the mustache as a key to the adventure. Like a dying wizard passing on his powers to a young orphan, Leotard leaves the world, but leaves a representative of his legend.
What follows is a series of short vignettes that constitute comic book issues in a larger adventure series. The idea here is that Etienne has been pass a mantle and he runs with it, he has been given a blank book and a challenge of sorts — “May nothing occur,” his uncle wishes him on his death bed. A small thinker would look to the sky and hope the same, a life of safety, but Etienne is no small thinker.
Aided by a dwarf named Zany, Etienne immediately sets about filling his book, ballooning past hordes of invading Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War in order to return to his uncles troupe to announce his elevation to fill the legendary Leotard leotards.
Etienne also begins to reinvent the troupe in fantastic ways, most notably in the form of Quartette Fantastique, a crew of performers modeled after the Fantastic Four.
Campbell and Best deliver the tale with a breezy and casual structure, allowing the characters to decide the pace with which the stories unfold. Often in vignette form, the pieces add up to something understated and lovely in regard to telling stories and relating your own mythologies. Campbell’s artwork, meanwhile, is beyond beauty — he is one of the most important creators in the field and his color work here, which crosses styles and genres and employs some brilliant panel placement as well, elevates his legend further.
You leave the story loving both him and Etienne.
