By Zack Quaintance — I have long found the work of cartoonist Guy Delisle to feel abnormally relatable and immersive, which is certainly true of this year’s new graphic novel (via Drawn & Quarterly), Factory Summer. There are, to my mind, two principal reasons for this, both as it applies to this book and to Delisle’s work in a broader sense. This book is relatable from its foundation up due to its subject matter, which seems like as good of a place as any to start unpacking Factory Summer.

Factory Summer is an autobiographical book, detailing three summers from Delisle’s teenage years during which he worked part-time in a paper and pulp factory in his native Quebec. The same factory, in fact, in which his father was employed in a higher level architectural position. It is a bifurcated story, in part about the mundanity of work and in part about coming-of-age stories for a certain type of aspiring creative. The work is, of course, relatable on all fronts, as who among us has not felt worn down by day-to-day (or in this case, night-to-night) labors. But more than that, this is about a certain type of work sure to be understand by any who have sought temporary employ while dreaming of something more permanent, something more rewarding or greater.

This is where I found Factory Summer at its most relatable (sorry for the overuse of the word). It’s a very specific book, loaded with far more life details than not only the average graphic novel, but of any graphic novel from recent memory (at least to my mind). There are procedural pages that delve deeply into the process of the work Guy is doing here, into pushing pulp away while averting safety hazards. There are also characters whose lone surface significance to the plot is to enrichen the fabric of everyday life. This all heightens the experience, though.

For example, while going to school to become a writer and a journalist, I found myself earning money to pay for courses, my car, and whatever else by working part-time at Panera Bread, washing dishes, running the register, running food out to guests, whatever. And I remember some of the processes of this work quite well (the ticketing system for arranging the soups, salads, and sandwiches comes to mind a few times a year). I also remember the idiosyncrasies of the (usually much older) people I worked with in those days. In this book, you can almost feel Delisle delving into all of the details that have stuck with him through the years, not to parse meaning but to simply elucidate the times, to remind him of the wholistic experience that formed the necessary world around him as he took his earliest steps into his craft, pushed forward by a desire to leave that sort of life at the paper factory behind.

So yes, Factory Summer is a graphic novel that finds that rarified air of going so deep into the details that it transcends, becoming universal. Past that (and this is true of all of Delisle’s work), his cartooning style lends itself well to complex projection, to seeing yourself in the pages and in the people, to affixing these visuals in your own mind's eye. It all adds up to one of the most engaging graphic novels of the year, a patient and melancholic look back at a formative — if outwardly unremarkable — time in many readers’ lives. I highly recommend this book, which is especially timely during a year in which we all meditate upon the nature of work, worker value, and the way it will all be shaped moving forward.

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Factory Summers by Guy Delisle

Factory Summers
Creator: Guy Delisle
Translator: Helge Dascher and Rob Aspinall
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
For three summers beginning when he was 16, cartoonist Guy Delisle worked at a pulp and paper factory in Quebec City. Factory Summers chronicles the daily rhythms of life in the mill, and the twelve-hour shifts he spent in a hot, noisy building filled with arcane machinery. Delisle takes his noted outsider perspective and applies it domestically, this time as a boy amongst men through the universal rite of passage of the summer job. Even as a teenager, Delisle’s keen eye for hypocrisy highlights the tensions of class and the rampant sexism an all-male workplace permits.
As the paper industry slowly began to move overseas, Guy worked the floor doing physically strenuous tasks. He was one of the few young people on site, and furthermore got the job because of his father’s connections, a fact which rightfully earned him disdain from the lifers. Guy’s father spent his whole working life in the white-collar offices above the fray of the machinery, scheduled from 9 to 5 instead of the rigorous 12-hour shifts of the unionized labor. Guy and his dad aren’t close, and Guy’s witnessing of the workplace politics and toxic masculinity leaves him reconciling whether the job was the reason for his dad’s unhappiness.
On his days off, Guy found refuge in art, a world far beyond the factory floor. Delisle shows himself rediscovering comics at the public library, and preparing for animation school—only to be told on the first day, “There are no jobs in animation.” Eager to pursue a job he enjoys and to avoid a career of unhappiness, Guy throws caution to the wind.
Release: June 2021
More Info: Factory Summers by Guy Delisle

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.