Old Souls

by Brian McDonald, Les McClaine (Illustrations)

From Brian McDonald and Les McClaine comes Old Souls, a supernatural graphic novel about addiction, obsession, and the things we do for family.

Chris Olsen has a good life. He has a regular job, a wife and daughter who love him, and a promising future. By any measure this is a good life, but it isn’t his first.

When a troubling encounter with a homeless man triggers something inside Chris, memories of his past lives bubble to the surface. A lost Chinese boy, a wailing grandmother, and a love so powerful it never left his soul—all compete for his attention.

Chris sinks deep into the seedy and seductive world of “grave robbers,” vagrants known for their ability to relive their former lives. But can he find closure to a tragic episode in his past without losing himself in the process?

Genres: Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Fiction, Comics, Horror, Paranormal, Adult

256 pages, Hardcover

First published June 25, 2019

About the author

Brian McDonald has taught his story seminar at PIXAR, DISNEY FEATURE ANIMATIION and George Lucas' ILM. His award-winning short film WHITE FACE has run on HBO and Cinemax and is used in corporations nation-wide as a diversity-training tool.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of Old Souls seems pretty promising; a happily married man with a kid and a good job discovers that he had been reincarnated—several times. So, a reincarnation theme is a pretty easy allegorical source for helping readers think about the past. And the look of this book, illustrated very nicely by Les McClaine, is attractive. And I like that title; that’s a concept with which I am familiar, as sometimes you see a wise-beyond-her -years kid identified as an “old soul.” Sometimes people say it to indicate they were probably priests or shamans or Mother Earth in “past lives.”

The trouble with this story is the story. A guy we don’t really ever care about is perfectly happy until he encounters an old homeless man claiming he is the guy’s grandmother who had once abandoned him. The guy helps him meet a bunch of “grave robbers,” guys that are connected to their past lives. For Chris, his past lives include being a slave owner, and other terrible things. The scenario begins to resemble an addiction scenario as he spends all of their life savings to pay some guru to try and help him find his own past-life-abandoned son, to make restitution and resolve his guilt. But in the process all these homeless guys have destroyed their lives dwelling in the past, so this is what Chris does, too.

What’s the point of all this? To learn to live in the present and be happy with the good life you have. I say huh?! The wife, who rightfully had kicked the guy out, irrationally takes him back in tears and hugs, because, well, you know, love and living in the present and family, I guess. No matter what you have done in the past, fugheddaboutit, you get a pass if you just say you will love. I guess. The story is way confusing and you don’t care in the least about the characters. But I have a suggestion for Pixar: Don’t pick this one up for development. Bad storytelling, bad charcters, bad work with "universal themes.”

Brian McDonald, publisher First Second tells us, works for Belief Agency as its Chief Storyteller. His book, Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate is, we are told, “required reading at Pixar Animation Studio,” focusing on (it looks like, I haven’t read it) universal themes to capture audiences. Goodreads reviewers seem to (based on the high rating) appreciate his “how to” books, but are not actually (also based on the ratings) big fans of his written stories. I’m reminded of Scott McCloud, who writes brilliantly about the theory and practice of making comics, but is not exactly a household name among actual comics fan as actual storyteller. Do as I say, not as I do (though McDonald, the bio says, has been working in film successfully for thirty years).

I say ugh, but give 2 stars because of the artwork, which is very good.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is like a mishmash of those heartwarming Christmas redemption stories where a white man has done something wrong and must decide to make the right decision or live an eternity of torment.

This time, the guy-with-a-good-life in question becomes a past-lives addict. Here, the treatment of addiction is very...gentle, as is the handling of crimes against humanity. It's more of a thoughtpiece, a look at how things could be worse when certain people hit that dissatisfied "There Must Be More Than This" point in life when something more interesting pulls them away from the life they'd tried so hard to achieve.

In the end, there's no reconciling with the evils one has visited upon fellow humans throughout eternity, there are only the consequences of the now, the decision to do the right thing or to suffer forevermore. And even then, present consequences are minor.

The artwork is clean, defined, and expressive. I got more out of the pictures than I did the text.

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with this book for me is that if you read it as a reincarnation skeptic, it looks a lot like a bunch of white male characters appropriating the suffering of slavery and the rape of Nanking for their middle-class mid-life crises. If you buy into the reincarnation conceit, then you have the optics of white guys getting a free pass for all the cultural appropriation they want.

And we're asked to sympathize with the slave owner who nobly decides to free his slaves once he is dead and cannot profit from them anymore??

AWKWARD!

[Sara the Librarian · Rating 2 out of 5]

So this was eh.

I was pretty excited to read this one. Its certainly got a neat premise. Chris Olsen is just your average husband and father who's working a bit of a dead end job, saving for a house, loves his family. But he's being harassed by a homeless guy who he feels compelled to buy lunch for every day. He's not sure why but he feels a connection to this guy. It turns out its because they knew each other in another life.

Chris soon becomes obsessed with learning about all the lives he's had before. The homeless guy takes him to see an enormously fat man in a squalid tenement who can help him recall all his lives through hypnosis. Soon he's blowing through his savings and becoming totally obsessed with reuniting with a dead loved from another life. This is bad because it makes him neglect his present family.

I don't know this all just felt very surface and kinda blah. The book doesn't spend nearly enough time exploring Chris's past lives or what exactly is going on that allows him and others like him to access those memories. Sometimes not understanding the mechanics of the narrative device doesn't matter. Its okay to just ask your readers to accept this kind of off the wall idea because the story constructed around it gives you enough information or you care enough about the characters for it not to matter so much why the crazy thing is happening. But when the off the wall thing IS the story I just need more to work with. Why can Chris and the other people he meets in the tenement remember past lives but others can't? Why do we keep encountering the same people in each life? why do we keep some of the same personality quirks? Its just not enough to establish that some people can do this and that's it.

The stakes also just aren't that high. Chris is either going to overcome his obsession or he isn't but I don't care enough about him to really get invested. You don't learn enough about him to develop strong feelings about what he's going through.

There's nothing really wrong here this just didn't hold my interest and didn't make much of an impact.

[Jay G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Want to see more bookish things from me? Check out my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfer...

*I received a copy of this from the publisher in exchange for my honest review*

3.5/5 Stars

Chris lives a good life with a loving wife and young daughter. Then he meets a homeless man named Jack who speaks of a life he once lived, triggering memories in Chris that he didn't realize he had. Chris enters the life of a 'grave robber', allowing him to take trips into past lives and relive his life and deaths in each one. Chris becomes obsessed with one of his previous lives and his carefully crafted world soon falls apart.

I wasn't a huge fan of Chris, he was very selfish and rude to his wife... I did enjoy the artwork, but wish there were more colours... although the white, blue and black worked well for the eerie atmosphere of this. I did enjoy the overall message of the story being to live in the present and not dwell on the past and I thought it came across without being overly preachy.

[George Ilsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise is initially fascinating but the book loses momentum, and fails to build.

This is a text that does not become more complex, but starts out well and then fails to achieve liftoff. So why three stars? Because it is well done, with a neat resolution— just one that feels trite to me. However, there is a paradoxical balance to be found between the simplicity of the climax and the big themes explored.

[Jessica Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 ⭐

This book had so much potential. I love the premise of living multiple lives, but the execution was not there for this one. There was potential for so many lessons to be learnt from the different lives that were lived and the protagonist learnt from none of them. The only reason that this book gets 1.5 stars is because of the art style.

Trigger warning: racism, grief, death

[BookishStitcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

I just never really came to care about the main character. He was horribly selfish, and he kept having people forgive him really horrible things. It didn't seem realistic.

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Old Souls is more of an interesting thought experiment than a fully formed book. It also fails to fully introduce the main character for the first 30 or so pages, which is an odd choice. In any case, the idea here is that, with the help of a crazy homeless man and a mysterious guru, Chris discovers he can revisit his past lives. He quickly becomes addicted to the knowledge and, as warned, learns too much. Things unravel, somewhat predictably.

You never really care about Chris, though, and his past lives are interesting, but largely ephemeral. The mechanics of the whole "revisit your past lives" thing is never explained. Old Souls is a decently told story that doesn't bore, and the art is detailed and evocative, but a stronger plot or any sort of twist would have added some much-needed flavor.

[Václav · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4 of 5 for a nice take on the theory of past lives)
I came to this with any expectation. No idea what this would be and how it ended on my reading list. Maybe art spoke to me because it's pretty nice, decent, elegant and eventually working very well for the mood and the theme of this graphic novel. I started reading and as the story got clearer I got hooked on it. I will say no more than this story plays with an idea maybe we carry memories of previous lives with us. And even if we do not usually remember them, we are somehow influenced by them. But does we want to know? I must say the story is well written, pretty powerful, it uses all its potential, Mc Donald builds up everything he needs to tell the story properly, no more and no less. I hate when authors rush to the opulent conclusion, missing the starting view, or creating wast and rich world and leave it unused in some hasty conclusion. But this is not the case. The story is built with a confident hand, it's touching and powerful. This is not some fracking sensation, no, but it's pretty damn good "people story".

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

December 2023. This had a cool concept and strong start, but didn’t stick the landing for me. A man is approached by a homeless man claiming to have been his grandmother in a past life. He starts to remember flashes of former lives and spends more time with the man to learn more about it.

I especially was bothered by the decision to bring up various racial elements without resolving them in a satisfactory way; an old homeless man remembering his past life as a Chinese woman repeatedly yelling racial slurs about Japanese people comes up multiple times, for example. The main issue with it though is our main character remembering a past life as a plantation and slave owner who was cruel to his slaves and additionally separated parents and children when selling them. He eventually gets “karmic Justice” by his wife and son both dying, and grieving over his son dying as a child the rest of his racist slave-owning life.
From that our modern dude in no way acknowledges or reckons with his past as a slave owner, but becomes obsessed with finding the reincarnation of his dead son from a hundred years ago. He almost loses everything pursuing this, before getting a somewhat happy ending.

Why bring in all the racial elements if they won’t be addressed properly? No idea, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

“Old Souls” by Brian McDonald and Les McClaine.

[Mars Dorian · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting premise with so-so execution.

I find the idea of reliving lives compelling and wished the creators had fleshed out the concept.

I, however, didn't care about the protagonist who came across as selfish. I asked myself: Why, oh why, is he doing this?

The art is clear and allows for smooth storytelling. Colors, as often with longer graphic novels, are minimalist but help the dreamy and moody atmosphere of the book.

It was a fast, fast read thanks to efficient visual storytelling but lacked emotional power.
Especially the resolution was cheesy and conveniently simple. Why do authors have to explicitly explain the theme which should be obvious throughout the reading?

If you can get this graphic novel at a library as I did, it's still worth a read because it's different than the mainstream.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly interesting premise. My main issue was how the protagonist's obsession that drove him to leave his wife and kid wasn't really explained very well, and the ending was unearned and too quick. Fantastic artwork!

[Sophie Carbone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well this was quick but incredibly disappointing. This hammers home its messaging and wraps up with an ending that is not deserved. The main character is reckless and terrible and does not grovel or learn his lesson nearly enough in my opinion. Unhappy with the ending and the turn that it takes in terms of discussing racism and slavery. This makes some very interesting choices in that regard that just feel… a little odd and that the wrong messages are being made here. Like the worst part of being a slave owner is that he loses his son?? And the loss of his son is the only thing that teaches him slavery is bad??? This felt very skewed in what the messages it was trying to put forth, and yes, family matters, but this was taking very intense examples to make this point and I don’t think it needed to go the direction it did. This made me angry more than anything else.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this in one day because I couldn't put it down. What if you could remember all your past lives and what if you could find those that were important to you in those lives? Would they be someone far off in a distant place or right there with you like before? Old Souls follows Chris as he discovers (through the help of his Chinese grandmother from a past life) memories of his past lives and one in particular starts to destroy everything he has in his current life. I've always been fascinated by past lives and reincarnation but I never wondered whether those memories would be able to infect your current self. Very thought provoking.

[Sahana Callahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 from me. really really interesting premise re: reincarnation that was softened slightly with the ending tbh — why was he a slave owner who got absolution from a slave?? that feels. i love 90% of it and then the last 10% i was like oh. okay.

it would have almost been more satisfying as a cautionary tale to live in your present, where chris loses his family and his life in this world, stuck, but Choosing, thru jack, not to continue the cycle. i think i might have enjoyed a tragic ending here, but the forgiveness was fine. it just fell a lil flat for me @ the end.

[ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. Meh. Very great premise, but the execution is lacking. I don't care for the main character, their past lives, or anyone else in the story. It is very vapid and superficial not touching deeper on the resurrection theme, but rather focusing on addiction and loss of family, and even then those topics also are surface level. The kicker is the ending which is just thrown in for shock value and again has no real meaning or evaluation of morals or life choices. It was a lazy add to tie everything (loosely) together. The artwork was great though.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story, and a great cautionary tale about becoming too interested in things that really don't matter. Best of all is the great art by Les McClaine, one of my favorite cartoonists.

[Matt Marn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique storyline. Haunting...
What begins as an adventure of self-discovery soon turns into an obsession, spiraling a life into a nightmare. Some doors are better left closed

[Alicia McCalla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was riveted by this storyline and worried about the choice of the protagonist. Great read!

[Keen Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars!

“A man is nothing without his family.”

This is a story which seems far-fetched on the surface but as we get deeper into the plot we see that it explores many ideas and themes which are universally relatable. There are times when this maybe becomes a little woolly and almost loses its way, but it always remains within touching distance.

The drawing is really nice too, with some lovely detail and the use of colour really adds to the cold and dark mood of the story.

[Adrienne Tsilividis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting take on reincarnation and living in the past. Art was really nice but the story ended predictably.

[Ville Verkkapuro · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful idea and an exceptionally solid execution. I loved the art and the pacing, also very believable although the story was extremely over the top.

[Austin (Weird) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.7
tba

[lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 - Amazing premise and art, but the main character refusing to learn his lesson and getting forgiven through no effort feels like a cop out. Hated the ending

[maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

very interesting concept, great character design

[Rebekah Hendren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark and contemplative, Old Souls takes the reader through the story of Chris, a husband and father who discovers that reincarnation is real. He gets connected with a group of "grave robbers", people who have the ability to remember their previous lives. Chris learns to do the same, and his experiences wreak havoc on his current life. He spirals into mental illness and addiction while stuck in the memories of a previous existence. Despite this, the book's conclusion was hopeful and positive, making it feel satisfying to me.

This was a really compelling read and the art style and color choice lent itself well to the plot. The subject matter was presented in an intense way, but the themes of the story really stuck out to me. Cherishing the here and now, the importance of family, learning from your experiences in life, moving forward after tragedy, and forgiveness (of ourselves and others) were my main takeaways.

Perhaps some of the closing panels say it best:

[Emily Matthys bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story line is an interesting one. It is fresh and different than many graphic novels that I've read recently. Those are the pluses. The minuses have more to do with the reader than the content. I have no idea if the illustrations are well-done. I am extremely near-sighted and, as such, cannot see 3D renderings. It makes life difficult when confronted with things like the IMAX or this graphic novel. This also made the text difficult to decipher, but the story was well-crafted and it made it worth it. This skews older than my elementary library and I don't know if I have the readers at the public library, but it is a definite recommend for those that would like to expand their GN section to include something new, fresh, and cutting edge.

[J MaK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel explores pain— specifically the pain of losing a loved one— a pain that transcends race. The part of this novel that resonated with me the most was toward the end of the novel where Brian McDonald glimpses into the inhumanity and ancestral pain brought on by the transatlantic slave. He explores this pain through the eyes of a Virginian tobacco planter/slave owner — Samuel Miller (Chris Olsen) and Minerva. Samuel sells both Minerva’s child and man. But the pain of losing her only son is unbearable. Minerva soon discovers that Samuel’s wife dies while giving birth to his only son Tristan. Unfortunately, Tristan dies a few short years later. Samuel finally experiences the same loss and pain as Minerva when he previously sold her only child for an unworthy and selfish cause. “Debts must be paid.”

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An eerie reincarnation tale with some nice twists and genuinely haunting images.