Guy Delisle recounts his teenage years working a summer job at a Quebec paper mill in Factory Summers. And… that’s about it?
Delisle works the night shift and learns the techniques of his unusual job while putting up with disdainful heckling for going to university from his older, surlier co-workers. We see him finding his path, switching from a fine arts degree to animation and discovering the wider world of comics.
And it’s his years in animation and experience creating his many previous books that make this one such an easy and well put-together read. Despite some of the processes’ complexity, you understand exactly how a paper mill operated in the 1980s and what it takes to produce the daily newspapers we take for granted. It’s also about his distant relationship with his dad - sort of. It’s barely touched on really.
Masterful cartooning aside, there’s so little here that’s even slightly compelling and I was frequently nodding off reading this. I’ve been a big fan of Delisle’s memoir comics for years but Factory Summers really feels like he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. Dull and forgettable, I wouldn’t even recommend it to Guy Delisle fans.
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