Foodboy

by Carol Swain

by Carol Swain
Foodboy is about loss and hope, friendship, and faith, bonds that are tested when the paths of two boyhood friends diverge. Gareth (the Foodboy of the title) and Ross live in the small Welsh village of Llanparc. The attempt of a visiting troupe of Evangelists to convert the sends Ross into wilderness. Gareth remains loyal to his friend, leaving food out for him, even when it becomes apparent that Ross is becoming increasingly feral. Foodboy is drawn in Swain's trademark style of exquisite panel compositions.
SC, 7x10, 80pg, b&w

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

I can now be reached via my new website:
carolswaincomics.com
where fans can now purchase my original comic art, or just say Hello. Below is my bio, from the site:
Born in London and raised in Wales, Carol Swain is one of the UK's foremost comics creators, whose comic stories and graphic novels have been translated into 15 languages. Dubbed "The Raymond Carver of comics" by Time Out magazine, Carol's many admirers include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Art Spiegelman, underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, UK Comics Laureate Bobby Joseph, and Watchmen and V for Vendetta creator Alan Moore, who wrote the foreword to Carol's acclaimed graphic novel Foodboy.
Carol's father was an architect, her mother an antiques dealer who once took her to the famous Greenham Common protests. After a spell at art school in Stoke-on-Trent, Carol moved back to London. Inspired by the punk ethos of DIY, she began self-publishing her comic Way Out Strips, while contributing stories to various comics journals worldwide, and serving as colourist on the controversial graphic novel Skin. Way Out Strips was eventually picked up by America’s Fantagraphics Books, who would go on to publish Carol's subsequent graphic novels Invasion of the Mind Sappers, Foodboy, Giraffes in My Hair: A Rock’n’roll Life (a collaboration with her partner Bruce Paley), and Gast. Considered by many to be her finest work to date, Gast is a coming-of-age story in which a young English girl investigates the suicide of a reclusive, cross-dressing Welsh farmer by seeking out those who knew him best, though it's his dogs and sheep who have the most to say. Gast has since been optioned for a short film by the French director Frédéric Bayer Azem, and was the subject of a doctoral thesis by Alice Vernon of Aberystwyth University entitled "Exploring Identity, Landscape and Language in Carol Swain’s Gast."
In 2007, pages from Carol’s comics were included in an exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery entitled Cult Fiction, alongside works by the likes of Robert Crumb, Joe Sacco, Dan Clowes, and Raymond Pettibon. Her work has also been exhibited at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum.
In 2009, Dark Horse published a career-spanning anthology of Carol's work entitled Crossing the Empty Quarter.
In 2013, Carol was a panellist at the Cork International Short Story Festival, along with Etgar Keret, participating in a discussion of the graphic novel as an art form and its relation to mainstream fiction.
Carol lives in Pembrokeshire with her partner and dog, who seems to have a lot to say. She is currently working on a new graphic novel tentatively entitled Mwnci Swit (Welsh for Monkey Suit), which is set in Llanparc, the fictional Welsh town in which several of her stories are based.

Reviews

[Onur Yz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yok, hayır.. Bana hiç hitap etmedi bu. Çizimleri sevemedim, hikaye hiç sarmadı. Carol Swain aslında korku türüne yönelmeli, çizimleri bu tarza çok yakışır. Keşke duysa.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I honest-to-God didn't know what was happening half the time in this book. Was it missing pages? Were the drawings in Welsh, some draftsman's visual equivalent of their excessive love of consonants that conspired to boggle my eye? There was a guy who lived in the woods and a guy who was feeding him? And then something bad happens? And then there's sadness? Was I drunk when I read this? Perhaps, but it didn't help.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A minor masterpiece ... which is the best kind.

[Kenya Starflight · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'd seen a previous work by this author, "Gast," highly recommended by several "best graphic novel" lists, but someone suggested I try "Foodboy" instead -- it was shorter and more concise, they said, and a better read. Having read this, however, I not only have to question the tastes of the person who recommended it, but whether I actually want to read "Gast" now. "Foodboy" is hailed as a masterpiece, but to me it was a confusing, badly drawn mess.

I'll be honest -- I wouldn't have understood the story had I not read the summary on the back of the book. It seems to be about a man sneaking food out to a friend of his who lives in the wilderness, but the plot is so bare-bones that I know nothing else about these characters. We're given no explanation as to who they are, what their bond is, or why the one has chosen to eschew society and live like a feral creature. I know not every story has to have everything explained, but how am I supposed to care about either of these characters or what happens to them if I know nothing about them? It doesn't help that a lot of the story seems to be told in flashbacks, and it's rarely made clear what's a flashback and what isn't.

The art style doesn't help matters either. I'm going to sound picky, but the art is awful, consisting almost entirely of rough pencil sketches with only rudimentary shading. I'm not expecting a masterpiece out of every graphic novel I read -- graphic novels such as "Maus" and "My Friend Dahmer" are powerful despite the shortcomings of the artwork -- but this art felt like a mess, more like it had been lifted out of a teenager's sketchbook than done by a professional comic artist. Perhaps this is the preferred style of underground comics? If so, it's not for me.

I can't understand why people, including the legendary Alan Moore, hail "Foodboy" as such a masterpiece -- it was a mess of bad artwork and barely-there story to me. And it makes me very hesitant to pick up "Gast" now.

[Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I'm surprised at the poor reviews here. I agree with the one reviewer, a minor masterpiece, indeed. Foodboy tells the story of two childhood friends, Garth and Ross. Garth is the narrator who tells us of what became of Ross after an Evangelical group visits the town. As Garth starts a new job in the kitchen of a restaurant, his friend Ross retreats further and further away from society, a journey he seems to have started a long time ago. Garth loves and admires his charismatic friend, who has a bunch of followers, and provides food for them when he can. But his attempts to engage with the group and Ross become less and less successful, and at some point, Ross is gone. It takes Garth a while to figure out where Ross might be, and when he does find him, their past and present collide in ways Garth can't always understand. Infused with longing and love and set against the backdrop of poverty in a beautiful countryside, Carol Swain's Foodboy delivers a lament to lost friendships, a yearning for nature against the pull or insistence of civilization, and a mystery of the human mind. Recommended for those who like bones, dams, traveling on foot, postcards and vague clues.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is fascinating storytelling, and not what I thought it was. Swain was always of interest in shorter comics, and I still confused this title with the anthropomorphic Sof'boy and Friends: Japanese Edition - this is very far from that, a naturalistic fiction of disturbing inequalities.
I'll be rereading.
Goodreads Librarian note: there is some confusion in ISBN and ISBN-13 in this U.S. edition from Fantagraphics twenty years ago.
Recommended.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awkwardly drawn, awkwardly written. It seemed like it might be attempting some sort of Donnie Darko oblique teenage psychological darkness, but it didn't wasn't very successful.