The Underwater Welder

Jeff Lemire has been one of my favorite writers and artists since I first stumbled across Essex County a few years ago. His ability to create such captivating stories that keep the reader on the edge of their seat wondering what will happen next and his sketchy art that captures the essence of the human characters so well, keeps me coming back for more. When I saw that Jeff had Underwater Welder coming out this year I eagerly preordered it without even reading the description. All I needed to see was that stunning cover image, the eyes of a diver peering out of his welding suit just watching us so intently. I cracked open the book as soon as it arrived and dived into the tale and was swept away.Let's take a seemingly average 33 year old male named Jack Joseph. He has a steady job as an underwater welder on an oilrig, he has a seemingly happy marriage, and their first child is on the way. All in all a rather happy tale. But the thoughts of his father who disappeared twenty years ago on Halloween began to invade his dreams, both waking and sleeping. Jack begins to see and hear visions from the past, and the real world becomes less and less real. And then on Halloween, the dreams become real and reality becomes a dream. And Jack must find the way out of his dreams before everything he cherishes vanishes forever.The story is like nothing I've read before, as Jeff weaves a tale of family, hope, mystery, and the stuff of nightmares all together to create a powerful tale. Jeff just creates these compelling characters that play off of each other really well. We have the main character of Jack, the father to be who slowly seems to be losing his mind, but really wants to do what is best for his family. And then we have Jack's father who vanished all of those years ago, who slowly succumbed to alcohol, but really did want what was best for his son. And their two world collide in such a powerful fashion years latter that it makes you stop and think on what you cherish and treasure the most in the world.The artwork in this story is absolutely beautiful. Lemire shows a deft hand at capturing the emotions and expressions of his characters and the world that surrounds them with pen and ink. Each line on the craggy faces of the characters shows their age, experience, wisdom, and regrets at life gone by. And in the landscapes you see the beauty and the harshness of the world that they live in. Jeff's style works particularly well for this story, as the sketchy line work and the ink washes create the perfect moody atmosphere and the roiling sea.

The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire is a beautifully drawn graphic novel about a man named Jack Joseph caught first metaphorically and then literally between his past and future. When I say beautifully drawn I mean it--the art has a sketch-like quality, an impressionistic rendering that has a surprising fullness in the details. It's rough and encompassing, much like the story itself. Lemire is a gifted visual storyteller (something I admire as I myself am so dependent on words); he makes great use of changes in the level of detail to signal disturbance. He uses the traditional panel structure of a comic to great effect and plays with it, too, stretching one scene across twelve panels on one page and using the crossbars of a window to mimic the boundaries of the panel in the next. To understand Jack is to understand his father: a man named Pete who made his living by diving for odds and ends he sold at a pawn shop. A man who drove his wife away by drinking too much. Like a lot of alcoholics who find themselves embedded in families, Pete Joseph is desperately sad, desperately out of control, and makes a lot of promises to his son which he can't keep. He goes diving one Halloween night when Jack is a kid and disappears; the town presumes him dead but Jack can't shake the feeling his father is still out there somewhere.Jack Joseph is thirty-three, the same age his father was when his father disappeared. Jack makes his way as an underwater welder on an offshore oil rig, diving just like his father used to, and he's married to a woman named Susan. They are expecting their first child any day. Jack can handle the immense pressures and darkness of the ocean floor, but he can't handle the looming pressure of his impending fatherhood or the dark shadow of his own father's disappearance. One day while diving he sees something that can't possibly be there. He fights with Susan and winds up diving again only to end up in a space that seems ripped out of time, a sort of purgatory-like holding tank of his own memories.This book hit me very hard. I grew up with negligent, promise-breaking alcoholic parents. The imminent birth of my own kid sent me head-first into a maelstrom of Unresolved Childhood Issues, too. Like Jack, I had to make the choice between wallowing in the past and embracing the future. I, too, was haunted by the specter of turning into my parents. I didn't go into the book blind--the back copy talks about parenthood and the ghost of a father, etc--but I didn't expect Jack's story to mirror my own so closely. I wonder how much of this is drawn from Jeff Lemire's personal experiences. The book explores these feelings and themes so deftly, with such pitch-perfect resonance, that I wonder if it's possible for someone who hasn't lived through it to capture it so well. I can already see I will fpoist this book on people who are having difficulty navigating the tricky waters of becoming a parent. I can already see it's a book I'll return to over and over. I give it five stars out of five stars, but if you are not a parent who has grappled with the demons of your own unreliable parents your mileage may vary.

What can I say ? Lemier has taken me for a ride on another emotional roller coaster

Que história linda e profundamente triste sobre luto, família, paternidade e memória, com um toque de fantasia. Primeira vez lendo algo do Jeff Lemire, mas já virei fã, quero ler outros coisas dele. E agora preciso da edição física já que li pelo kindle unlimited.

Como todo lo que hace Jeff Lemire, un dibujo sencillo y no muy preciso, pero encantador, esconde una gran historia, y esta no podía ser de otra manera.

Una historia angustiante y llena de pesar. Una deconstruccion de como las obsesiones que tenemos con el pasado nos fuerzan a repetir los patrones, perder el control y sentirse alejados de las personas y eventualemtente de la realidad.El libro de pasta dura esta excelente materiales y calidad desde la portada hasta la ultima pagina.

In really enjoyed this graphical novel as it tells such a deep and emotional story. Artwork is very simply but suits well for this book.