Jeff Lemire's Stark, Beautiful World

Forlorn sons, lost fathers and phantasmal mothers are the lonely inhabitants of Jeff LeMire's island of a graphic novel The Underwater Welder. Lemire's created a story which encapsulates the massive turmoil and eruptive change that can all occur in a single microcosm: the individual human mind.

Originally published in 2012 by Top Shelf Publications, new readers just stumbling into the fascinating realm of graphic novels or established readers simply ignorant of Lemire's existence may have skipped over this book as they peruse the shelves of their library or comic book store, but they would be remiss in passing over it. Even though it is five years old, this graphic novel still has an immense existential crisis to offer its readers.

The artistic look of Lemire's graphic novel is sparse, as it is in all the works he draws himself, but readers quickly discover that he is cutting out the frivolous and diving straight to the heart of the matter. The primary character of this morose, yet intriguing tale is Jack, after whom the book is titled; through his journey of self-discovery he leads the readers into a world of magical realism.

The readers watch as he flounders at the prospect of his first child's birth while still clinging to the ghost of his own long-missing father, another man who made his living by going off to sea. Unlike Jack, his father did not fix things but had a drinking problem and scavenged junk off the seabed hoping to discover treasure. He never found any, and then one day no one was able to find him. Years later, Jack sees his father reflected in himself and is subsequently cast adrift in waves of uncertainty. He finds himself tempted to never return to shore where his wife and soon arriving child await him. The readers bob quietly right alongside him through it all.

The Underwater Welder takes a gripping hold of the reader and while the book is quite daunting in size with its 224 pages, it is impossible to stop running through this, depressing yet simultaneous uplifting, story after turning the first few pages.

While the delicate world of Lemire's creation is devoid of color on the page, it is not lacking in anything else. Even with the stylized sparseness of simple black ink on a plain white page, the story of Jack and his (old and newly developing) family is extremely rich in suspense, doubt, love, pain and acceptance.

Lemire welds the stories of his characters and drawings together in a fantastic manner. The intricate line work captures the exact moments Jack's face betrays his trepidation of becoming a father as well as his joy at the thought, and Lemire's scratches on the page perfectly depicts Jack's scratches at the hope of breaking his family's depressing cycle.

The dialogue, art and storyline of Jeff Lemire's The Underwater Welder are not only enough to provide a fabulous break from reality for a little bit of time, but will hook readers into searching out more of his works. Jack's desire to be part of a whole, loving family can also be found in Lemire's more apocalyptic, science fiction series, "Sweet Tooth," published through Vertigo.

Of course, the familiar cast of forlorn sons, lost fathers and phantasmal mothers are present there as well; new readers will quickly find that Lemire possesses a gift for weaving tragic familial themes into imaginative plots. The element that leads his readers through these sullen environments without losing sight of anything cheerful are his small, yet satisfying trinkets of hope, which provide fortitude for even further dives into the abyss of humanity's melancholy.