Good night, Hem

The legend of Ernest Hemingway is given a laconic, witty spin in this quirky three-part biography with fantastical elements from Eisner Award--winning Norwegian cartoonist Jason (I Killed Adolf Hitler). Tracking the arc of the novelist's career, it begins in 1925 Paris then moves to Pamplona amid the crackling electricity of boozing, bed-hopping, literary striving, and fighting. Jason drops in cameos from F. Scott Fitzgerald and socialite Lady Duff Twysden, and (in a surreal twist) The Three Musketeers' Athos. In recently liberated 1944 Paris, a lonelier and more self-aggrandizing Hemingway is at loose ends until he convinces an Army buddy to give him a plane for a Dirty Dozen--style suicide commando mission to take out Hitler with a "strike in the solar plexus of the Third Reich." Finally, in 1959 Cuba, an old and tired Hemingway tries to tell one last story: that of Athos, the out-of-time musketeer. Through it all, Jason's focus remains on Hemingway, as the melancholic pugilist who never felt at home no matter where or when he is. As in previous works, Jason renders his people as bipedal dogs, birds, and other creatures in human attire with pupil-less eyes, giving them all an equally haunted look. It's a splendidly curious addition to one of the greatest bodies of work in modern comics. (Sept.)

Norwegian cartoonist Jason (O Josephine) presents three interconnected short stories starring Ernest Hemingway, which combine fact and fiction in a meditation on the legendary author's life, career, and legacy. In 1925, young Hemingway and his friends meet a lovelorn musketeer named Athos in a Parisian café and invite him to tag along on a trip to Pamplona, where days spent sightseeing and drunkenly proclaiming the power of their artistic visions bleed into nights of existential despair. In 1944, Hemingway takes it upon himself to end World War II and begins training an elite force to undertake a dangerous clandestine mission into Germany. When a soldier in the cadre falls in love with a woman from a town near their headquarters, he finds himself torn between following his heart and succumbing to Hemingway's grand romanticization of masculinity. The final story, set in 1959, finds Hemingway revising history to glorify himself as he composes a memoir of his friendship with Athos and reflects upon his own decline and legacy. VERDICT Jason delivers an at times whimsical but overwhelmingly melancholic portrait, revealing reverence and sympathy for Hemingway without ignoring the author's shortcomings. One of the best releases of 2021 so far.