Maggy Garrisson

Maggy Garrisson #1-3

by Lewis Trondheim, Stéphane Oiry (Illustrator)

Posao je posao, i kad je u otrcanoj agenciji u vlasništvu detektiva pijanca. A s obzirom na to koliko ga dugo traži, Maggy Garrisson spremna je na ustupke. Naročito kad se uvijek da ponešto zaraditi ako je čovjek spreman pomoći bližnjem i ako može barem minimalno sačuvati prisebnost duha. Ta sposobnost, čini se, itekako nedostaje Anthonyju Wightu, njezinom šefu. On je pronađen pretučen pet dana nakon što je Maggy počela raditi za njega, a k svijesti dolazi tek da bi je zamolio da mu u bolnicu donese novčanik.

Sitniš, pokoji račun, potvrda za parking, srećke iz videoigraonice… Ništa pretjerano zanimljivo, a ipak, kad Maggy opazi da je prate, shvati da je tu nešto sumnjivo. Jer, koliko god djelovale beznačajno, srećke, izgleda, izazivaju pravu pomamu.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Mystery, Crime, Graphic Novels Comics, France, Fiction

148 pages, Hardcover

First published September 7, 2017

About the author

The phenomenal Lewis Trondheim is never where you next expect him. As an artist and writer, Trondheim has earned an international following as one of the most inventive, versatile, and prolific graphic authors. From autobiography to adventure, from bestselling fantasy and children's books to visual essays, Trondheim's unique, seminal imagination consistently dazzles. His work has won numerous awards, including the Angoulême prize for best series with McConey and he also co-created the titanic fantasy epic Dungeon with Joann Sfar.

He is one of the founding members of the alternative publishing house L'Association, a proving ground for many of the greatest talents in European comics working today. He is also the editorial director of a new imprint called Shampooing, dedicated to comics for all ages.

Lewis lives in the South of France with his wife, Brigitte Findakly, and two children.

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unemployed Maggy lands a secretarial job at a private investigator’s office - except the PI turns out to be an incompetent boob so she takes over his caseload and pockets the fees once she solves them! But when the PI is brutally beaten and hospitalised over (what else?) a pile of hidden cash, Maggy finds herself caught in a dangerous battle between cops and robbers and no one is quite who they seem. How will her quick thinking get her out of this jam?

I really enjoyed Lewis Trondheim and Stephane Oiry’s Maggy Garrisson, which is a fun, amusing, and consistently inventive collection of entertaining escapades featuring their likeable amateur sleuth Maggy.

The cases are mostly interesting, the characters are compelling and become more complex over time, and the stories are told at a breezy clip so they never feel slow or dull to read. I loved how unpredictable the characters were - two in particular seem like classic “goodies” and “baddies” but turn out to be opposites as Maggy (and the reader) gets to know them better.

I liked how Maggy herself is no saint. Telling old ladies that she’s found their missing pets when really she just took a photo of them round enough pet shops until she found one that looked exactly like the missing pet, then getting the finder’s fee. She steals from people’s groceries nonchalantly, breaks into people’s houses to find answers - but you can forgive her these indiscretions as you see that she’s mostly a decent sort with a good heart/intentions, hustling to get by on what little cash she has.

Stephane Oiry captures modern London beautifully with his detailed art. You get a strong sense of place with a good idea of what life in London is like nowadays. The weird furniture arrangement (that jutting countertop) in Maggy’s flat is reminiscent of the strange layouts of converted houses into flats, and the pubs closing down and being replaced by boutique shops are all real aspects of London life.

Maggy comes up with some pretty ingenious solutions to problems she encounters. Like when she’s being tailed by a thug, she ducks into a pub and has the bartender send the thug numerous pints which the thug foolishly drinks; then, when he gets up to go pee, she leaves the pub and loses him. Or when she’s staking out a place, sees the thieves break in, then alerts the police, but realises they’ll get here too late, she breaks an empty bottle and puts the glass shards under the thieves’ tires, so they’ll drive away on flats and be easier to catch by the fuzz.

Which leads me to my only real (minor) criticisms of this book. Who IS Maggy Garrisson?! She’s presented as this ordinary woman drifting from temp job to temp job but she clearly has a unique skill set based on the way she solves this many complicated cases and handles herself in the London underworld. She should be the one with the private investigation business, not working an admin post in one! What - she just happened to pick up these skills on the fly? Come on. It doesn’t seem to me that someone as skilled and savvy as Maggy would be struggling to get by.

Also, she solves every case that comes her way, which is a bit pat. Even in the “impossible” (the PI’s word) case of finding out who in a funeral home has been stealing gold teeth from cremated corpses and selling them, she figures out a brilliant solution. Everything’s wrapped up a little too neatly - I would’ve preferred some cases to remain unsolved for realism sake. Trondheim’s insistence on closure each time hurts the final case with the photo album which has an absurdly melodramatic, rushed ending.

That said, those criticisms don’t get in the way of enjoying the book because the cases are entertaining and Maggy is such a likeable character that you want to see her solve them and walk away the winner.

This one was a blast - a great read with fine art. If you want to read an engaging and imaginative contemporary crime comic with a good sense of humour, check out Maggy Garrisson.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maggy Garrisson: Give us a Smile, Maggie

The Plot
"When I get old I'll strangle myself."



Maggy gets a job for the first time in 2 years. Firstly, Maggie is really, really cynical. Secondly, with the cynicism comes fantastic British humour. Thirdly, her boss is a deadbeat PI who refuses to pay her anything and so she makes her own in the world by solving small mysteries littered throughout the comic.



Maggy is such a relatable character. She's down on her luck and so grumpy, sassy and cynical. She's a chain-smoking curvy lady who just wants a break in life. Or just to be able to feed her alcohol habit; whichever comes first.




The style

Maggie has a very unique and interesting art-style. Maggy becomes the assistant of a deadbeat investigator.



What I love about the comic book as a medium is the diversity of the artstyle. Like , the art is not clean and beautiful, but its cartoonish and almost amateurish nature benefit it and give it life more than a simple old style would.



Conclusion
"You shouldn't smoke. Smoking kills."
"So does getting old. kid."

The realism in this comic strikes me, and in a good way. There aren't enough grumpy Man Called Ove-type heroins out there. So here I present Maggy Garrisson - the inner bitch we often are and should see more often in comics.



Having the dark, gritty, real London as a setting is pretty cool. This comic is all about what lengths people turn to when tight on cash and struggling in poverty. It's like Trainspotting on a diet - lighter but still packs a punch.



This comic was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dingdong!

HATTER: Are you going to get that?

Me: No. Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something? I’m dissecting a novel. You get it.

Dingdong!

HATTER: We’ve been through this already. I’m a cat so I have no opposable thumbs to speak of. I can’t reach the doorknob.

Me: Well, go and see who it is. You can do that at least.

Hatter runs off & peers through the front window, then runs back.

HATTER: It’s one of those door to door salesmen. He looks harmless, although he has very poor posture. I myself have perfect posture – look.

Hatter struts around the room throwing grand poses.

Me: You think a lot of yourself don’t you, for a small ginger cat.

HATTER: Mens sana in corpore sano. Anyhow, he’s got a big bag and a lanyard to prove that you should give him a fiver at least.

Me: Sigh. How tiresome. Okay, well don’t touch this novel, even if it starts whining. Don’t take any of these needles out.

I open the front door.

Salesman: Hello sir, I am totally miserable and I have a bullet lodged in my brain, would you like to buy any household requirements, I have pan scourers, flannels, hoover bags, I have doileys, carbolic soap, I have devices for getting stones out of horses’ hooves, I have saucy pictures of the latest Hollywood sensations, I have spare parts for a space shuttle, I have freezedried mammals-

Me: No, no, I have all that stuff. I bought pan scourers last week, a pack of six for £2. Yours are £12 each. Ridiculous.

Salesman: Oh sir, I drag myself 60 miles every day and me with a bad back and a bullet lodged in my brain, don’t know how it got there, maybe I was born with it. I have packet soup, I have graphic novels –

Me: What? Graphic novels? Why didn’t you say? Let’s see.

An hour later. The now disregarded dissected novel is still pinned to the table, leaking a greenish bile.

HATTER: Well, is it any good?

Me: Hmmm.

Later.

Me: Hmmm.

Later still.

Me: Done.

HATTER: So, did this “graphic novel” meet with your requirements, boss?

Me: Why are you talking in a Scottish accent?

HATTER: This is my normal voice.

Me: No, you sound like Sean Connery.

HATTER: Och, ye sassenach flatterer.

Me : Maggy Garrisson is a gorgeously drawn and ravishingly coloured novel, five stars for that; also, I loved Maggy herself, who wouldn’t. The problem was the story (stories, I should say), simple as that. They were really kind of uninteresting. Very low low level skullduggery and gangstery nonsense. Dear authors : Get rid of all the noir trappings and give us a 300 page life of Maggy and you’re guaranteed 5 glowing pulsing stars.

[Michele Monteleone · Rating 5 out of 5]

È assolutamente impossibile non innamorarsi di Maggy, detective privata per caso, affezionata frequentatrice di pub, intelligente ed è incredibilmente autoironica. Nella grande tradizione dei detective derelitti alla Marlow, Maggy non ha un soldo in tasca, è capace di freddare chiunque con battutacce caustiche e ha un fiuto infallibile. I casi che segue partono sempre piccoli, crimini di tutti i giorni che però spesso sembrano impossibili da risolvere proprio a causa della loro banalità. È incredibilmente soddisfacente però scoprire cosa si inventerà Maggy per trovare il colpevole e risolvere il suo caso. Probabilmente è il giallo a fumetti più bello che abbia mai letto, consigliatissimo!

[Bettie]

Maggy Garrisson by Lewis Trondheim and Stéphane Oiry review – utterly convincing The marvellous creation of two Frenchmen, the frank and sardonic Maggy Garrisson is a London gumshoe like no other

[Tom LA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful. The writing is sharp and witty at every page. It’s funny, too, like the best small-crime stories should be. The art is a joy to the eye, minimal lines, very clean and detailed, reminds me a bit of Chris Ware’s, but it’s put to much better use here (because I can't stand Ware's depressing narratives).

Just an absolutely gorgeous and perfectly-crafted book.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maggy Garrison is a hard drinking, conniving, brilliant, sarcastic newbie PI who doesn't straddle the line between good and bad so much as grind it into the dust and throw it into the trash while staying alive and making a living. James M Cain would have written her first, if he could have.

[Irena Pranjić · Rating 5 out of 5]

Osuvremenjena verzija detektivskog žanra u kojemu glavna junakinja nije nalik ni Sherlocku Holmesu ni Poirotu ni Miss Marple već možda najviše likovima Dashiella Hammeta, zato jer dolazi s dna društva. Glavna junakinja, Maggy, slučajno se uslijed opće nezaposlenosti zapošljava kao pomoćnica privatnog detektiva koji zbog vlastitih grešaka, prvenstveno alkoholizma, biva privremeno onemogućen rješavati slučajeve svojih klijenata. Iako je predviđeno da mu kuha kave i posprema ured, Maggy otkrije da posjeduje instinkt za pronalaženje krivaca i otpetljavanje zamršenih kriminalističkih slučajeva. U tijeku svih tih aktivnosti upoznaje svog partnera i to na krajnje nekonvencionalan način - on je poslan od strane svog šefa, vođe sitne kriminalne organizacije, kako bi je zastrašio, no njih dvoje ipak razviju kvalitetnu ljubavnu vezu i povjerenje jedno u drugo. Maggy je zanimljiva i zbog svog izgleda jer nije oličenje standarda ljepote, punašna je i rado uživa u hrani i pivu pa se dobar dio radnje odvija u tipičnoj engleskoj lokalnoj pivnici. Svi detalji koji osuvremenjuju detektivski žanr a koji su uglavnom sadržani u načinu na koji su dizajnirani i glavni i sporedni likovi i ambijenti nimalo ne smetaju pitkosti stripa i uživanju u napetosti zapleta i raspleta.

[Arlene♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maggy Garrisson is an improbable hard boiled detective of the most marginal variety. Basically, she's out of work and will "look into things" for a buck. She falls for a bad guy thug, makes poor decisions, but does have lines she won't cross. A favorite line: "You won't bring Lucius back by killing him. You'll go to prison and all your begonias will die."

A fun book by the author of Little Nothings.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rooted for Maggie even though she's kind of awful because who doesn't like a snarky female noir lead with a questionable boyfriend and sketchy but good ideas for solving cases?

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maggy Garrisson has just found a new job after being woefully underemployed for a few years. She finds herself the unwitting office assistant to a detective who is laid up almost as soon as she begins work - though Maggy is happy to have a job, she is cranky, sassy, and not very good at it. When her boss's canary disappears, she simply buys a new one to replace it. She steals his cigarettes. She finds herself caught up in a bit of intrigue as she tries to make a quick and easy buck, but it's unclear what fate has in store for our antagonistic protagonist . . . so I suppose we will have to wait and see what happens in the next volume.

I received access to this title via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Arend · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharp, well observed, can't help rooting for the heroine, who's smart, resourceful, and persistent. The art breathes the UK in all its shoddy (and rainy) glory.

[Jacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only complaint is the text is printed so frickin small.

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fun!

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maggy's an engaging character and the dialogue was pretty dry and laconic. Great translation job

[Vittorio Rainone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un noir con un impianto classico, ben più classico di quanto lasci presagire la protagonista scelta. Anzi, verrebbe da dire che Maggy riesca a risolvere le cose con un po’ troppa disinvoltura, e con una serie di espedienti che ben poco ti aspetteresti da una che non è del mestiere.

Ma questa è davvero l’unica pecca che ho riscontrato nella lettura.
Perché i dialoghi sono fantastici, per nulla didascalici, con un ottimo ritmo e spesso gustosi e divertenti. I personaggi ne risultano tutti tridimensionali. La storia si legge con piacere nonostante abbia ben pochi elementi veramente dinamici (cosa che in un racconto di genere potrebbe essere un problema), la griglia rigidissima utilizzata per le pagine non stanca, grazie a un bell’uso dei colori e a disegni precisi, minuziosi ma espressivi.

Davvero un bellissimo volume.

[Meepelous · Rating 5 out of 5]

Content Notes for detectives and organized crime, people are tailed, there are threats of violence and some violence. A dog is fed chocolate, but it only makes them hyperactive where I was under the impression that they could die?

This is not an action book, it's more a study of either character or of life I guess. As I already mentioned there are threats and some instances of violence. But like with most stuff I enjoy, the violence is not the focus of the visuals. We don't get decompressed frame after frame of the action or gore or whatever. Obviously that is a personal choice for me and not necessarily a moral judgement. I save that more for the ways I feel like violence is taken seriously or not, and I did appreciate how when people in this book are beat up they stay beat up for a reasonable amount of time and weren't just magically healed in the next panel.

What keywords came to mind reading this book? Noir, grey morality, being a grown up, and creative problem solving.

And, while I don't actually like it that much, let's flip to the official synopsis and then I'll comment. " After two years of unemployment, Maggy Garrisson lands a secretarial job. Too bad her new boss is the shady, chaotic Anthony Wight: private detective and alcoholic. But a job is a job, and Maggy could use the cash. Five days into her new role, Wight is beaten to a pulp and Maggy is tasked with returning his wallet. With this seemingly innocuous request, Maggy enters a sinister underworld of corrupt cops, crooked businessmen, and career criminals. There’s a lot to investigate, from the disappearance of a family album to the theft of gold teeth from bodies at the crematorium. But for someone with the energy, ingenuity, and enterprising spirit of Maggy Garrison, puzzles are there to be solved—especially if there’s money to be made in the process."

And this is the reason I was hesitant to pick this book up. It's not not true, but I feel like it makes Maggy's character seem super generic noir babe. But let's continue to dig in.

As far as the quality of words and art goes, it was very good in my opinion. But I could barely put this book down, so somewhat biased. The page layouts were actually super basic, but I was never bored. I suspect the secret is that the framing of each scene and the way that the characters moved communicated a lot.

But the gender representation is probably where I felt like the book really shined.

To start with, Maggy is neither virgin or whore, and she is neither a prude or a party girl. Not to say any of these things are bad, obviously, but even empowered female characters can fall into tropes. Maggy drinks a lot of beer at the pub and bums a lot of cigarettes, she has an average body, and hides her ill gotten gains in apparently very predictable places. We see Maggy partially unclothed twice and even in the shower once, but nothing in the composition of the frame directed me to objectify Maggy. The frames were generally just communicating, time goes by and Maggy is comfortable in her home with this person.

Maggy is also never put on a pedestal. She blends in very nicely with the generally gray morality of everyone around her. She seeks out female friendship but isn't super girly either. Maggy's not an action star by any stretch of the imagination, but she can still handle herself around all the tough guys that the plot line sends her way. Flipping back through the book I'm pretty sure she almost never smiles.

Sexuality is pretty heteronormative, but I must admit that I liked the way that the romantic relationship developed throughout the book. It's not a romance, and as much as it was not action centric it was also not titillating in the romantic or sexual departments either. We just get glimpses as Maggy and Alex's lives cross paths professionally and personally; winding closer and closer together. Coming from very different directions, both of them develop and reveal themselves to us in interesting ways. It's a lot of show and not tell.

Race was pretty good. Both of the main characters are white, but it felt like we had something at least close to proportional representation of black and people of colour in side and background characters. I'm not the final judge on these things, but we read so many books where everyone is pearly white, so as someone who lives in a very racially diverse city (which I believe London is also supposed to be) it was nice to break things up a bit.

It also helps that the bad guys, as much as there can be bad guys in a book that (as I've already noted) mostly sits in the moral grey area are bosses and cops. This understanding of power dynamics and the female representation really sold this book for me. Because so many noir things objectify the female form and shill for cops, to the point where I'm not sure if this is exactly noir because it doesn't do those things. But otherwise I think the tone, level of smoking, and morality really remind me of noir so I'm sticking to it. Maggy and Alex and both pushed into their positions in part because they cannot find work elsewhere and Maggy is shown several times stealing food and cigarettes because she has no money. Neither character has much ambition in life and that's ok.

Any exploration of ability vs disability was mostly left unexplored, except for as I said previously, the fact that several people are beaten and they generally seem to stay beaten for a reasonable amount of time. People disappear out of the story to reappear much later having been released from the hospital.
Yes I'm fanning out over this one but I think I'm going to rate this one five out of five.

[s.j.hannaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant

Absolutely loved all the stories, having lived on the edge for most of my young life I could really relate to this book, my son keeps on at me to write about my early life...

[J Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The character of Maggy Garrisson is rather droll, or perhaps muted. But she reminded me of a friend I had and we always called him phlegmatic, so there you have it.

Since I am not wed to any particualr type of artwork for graphic works I am free to look at each work and decide if the art matches, for me, the story. In this case, I think it did. Everything here seems, for lack of a better word, subtle. The humor is subtle, the action, such as it is, is understated, and the artwork matches that tone.

I was torn between how to rate this. I did enjoy it but I wasn't just turning pages with a frantic desire to see what happens next. Part of that is the nature of the story, a rather regular person in slightly less regular, but not earth-shattering, situations. So I was more positive than I might have been if this had been aiming for suspense and tension.

I would recommend this to readers who like stories without a lot of hyperbole in either characterization or plot. This doesn't leave or world behind but rather shows a different part of it.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss.

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a female protagonist, especially a detective one, Maggy is refreshing. She's not cool or sexy; she is average-looking, and when she smokes, she's not represented as a cool, deadly chick. She's caustic and clever, rather implausibly becoming a pretty good detective without any training simply because she's clever enough to come up with ways to solve crimes that baffle others. She gets caught up with a petty criminal who becomes her lover, and with whom she gets involved in some skulduggery. This volume collects what are, AFAIK, the only three albums of the series, each of which has its own story, along with ongoing threads, so structurally this is a bit loose. Furthermore, the end of the third album reads like further installments were likely, so the whole thing has an unfinished feel. Nevertheless, it plays some clever games with crime fiction tropes and is enjoyable enough, if not spectacular.

[Highland Park]

Londoner Maggy Garrisson, looking for any job that will pay anything, finds a secretarial gig with private investigator Anthony Wight. When she arrives, Wight’s passed out drunk at his desk and doesn’t accomplish much else before getting beaten up by mysterious enemies and landing in the hospital. But Maggy’s resourceful and pretty hardboiled herself, and she quickly sets herself up as a freelance investigator, while the plot that began with Wight’s beating slowly tightens around her.
-Catherine, Information & Reader Services

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Modern Brit Noir - gritty without being overly violent. Maggy is a smart young woman with no direction - until she finds her calling working as an assistant to a private eye. She is dimensional - her morality is not straightforward - and Lewis Trondheim does a great job characterizing her. I'm looking forward to the next installment, particularly because the arc in this book centered around something she was personally involved in, while well done and interesting, I'm more interested in seeing her work for others.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maggy gets by on her wits, but in a highly personal and singular way. Maggy and Alex are a profoundly odd couple, but again, in a way that charms and appears to be original. Even drunken private investigator Wight, who fires Maggy early on for pilfering cigarettes among other things, is more than he appears to be. The Brighton Beach escapades and subsequent efforts by the corrupted London police are presented carefully and with all relevant details consistent with the plot. The artwork is gorgeous and is put to brilliant work advancing the story.

[Alic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maggy is such a douche, as is mostly everyone in this story. Still, she succeeded to win me over with that antihero asshole charm. You hate to love her. I would steer far away from a personality like hers in real life but on paper her only-slightly-guilt-ridden immorality and sour indefference somehow feels like a breath of fresh air. Was Maggy screwed over first or did she screw someone over before that? Chicken or egg? Who knows. Here's hoping she finds more ways to cheat people out of their money before life bites her on the ass!

[Robert Hudder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fresh take on a hard boiled detective. Feels a little like Sparkle Hayter's books in some ways. A down on her luck woman takes a job that leads to a bit of caper. Some of the joy is in the upending of some tropes but most is in the depth of the characters that move past right and wrong to something more complicated.

I mean, there does ultimately have to be bad and good and a resolution of sorts. This book does deliver on that. You can't help but believe that some of the endings are based on how much of a betrayal there is.

Yeah, a bit of genre hopping in the noir field. Love it.

[Luke Stacks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll buy anything with Trondheim's name on it. This collection of crime/mystery stories satisfies with lots of tiny ironic twists, but resolves too cleanly to feel true to life. Emma Wilson's translation is so natural and apt that I had to check there was a translator in the first place. I enjoyed Stephane Oiry's art too, especially the drab color palette--although I'd happily trade the plentiful photo-referenced backgrounds for something looser.

[Madalene · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detective story with intentionally unlikeable/moral relativist characters. The benefit here is that the different cases weave together nicely, with interesting techniques for tracking down the explanations. If you like Jessica Jones (or if you don't like Jessica Jones because it is too dark and too supernatural), you'll probably like this graphic novel - it's all detective stories, with an English sense of humor.

[Geraldine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this - interesting female protagonist, good artwork, great sense of atmosphere -particularly in London. Would bear comparison to Posy Simmonds' Cassandra Darke. The latter better in my opinion but Maggy Garrisson also a good find.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling bit of neo-noir, finishing on the cynical but resourceful Maggy, as she takes a job assisting a PI and outwits the mafia, the police and her boss to en route to finding money and love. Plus she makes a pretty good investigator herself.