Good Night, Hem by Jason Review

Jason’s immortal musketeer Athos finds himself in 1925 Paris where he meets a young Hemingway. Off they go to see the bulls run in Pamplona! In the second story, it’s 1944 Paris and Hemingway leads a team to assassinate Hitler and end the war. And finally in 1959 Cuba, an elderly Hemingway reminisces about his time with Athos.

Jason’s one of my favourite cartoonists so there aren’t many books of his that I don’t think much of, so I was surprised at how bored I was reading his latest, Good Night, Hem. All three stories are so uninspired and dull. All that happens between Athos and Hem when they meet is some goofy identity switch (their character designs, minus the clothing, are identical) so that Hem can attempt an affair with someone.

Otherwise, it’s the story of Hem going to Pamplona with other writers and getting the material to write Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises. I’ve read the novel and I know about The Lost Generation so there’s really nothing here for me except to be reminded of those things again.

The second story is even sillier with Hem taking it upon himself to assassinate Hitler. I would go so far as to say this one in particular reads like a parody of a Jason comic. It’s pointless, unfunny and uninteresting. I just don’t get it. Why Hem? Hmm. And then the third and final story, which is mostly an epilogue that basically summarises the previous stories, was a forgettable way to close things out.

The main problem is that Jason’s done these kinds of stories before, so it felt repetitive to me, and those previous stories were far more interesting than the ones offered up here. Read The Left Bank Gang for a better story featuring Hem; read The Last Musketeer and Athos in America for better Athos stories; read I Killed Adolf Hitler for a better Hitler assassination story.

I love Jason’s art style and the technical aspects of the comic are masterful but the actual stories themselves weren’t the least bit compelling and nearly put me to sleep reading them. A rare miss from an otherwise dependable and great cartoonist, Good Night, Hem is a disappointingly underwhelming book.