Paul at Home by Michel Rabagliati

I don't know what it is about Canada and autobiographical cartoonists. Obviously Joe Matt, Charles Brown and Seth knew each other and influenced each other, but others (Kate Beaton, for example) came out of completely separate worlds. And Michel Rabagliati isn't even working in the same language as those English Canadians, so I'm left just assuming it's something inherent in maple leaves or youth hockey.

Rabagliati is a native of Quebec, who worked as a graphic designer for decades before turning to cartooning in mid-life. His books are about a man named Paul Rifiorati: Rabgaliati has generally admitted that they are mostly autobiographical, but there's also some element of fictionalization, or just of cleaning things up to make a better story. As of 2020, there have been eleven Paul books published in Quebec -- not all of them full-length -- and eight of them, more or less, have been translated into English. The titles sometimes shift in translation: for example, I believe Paul a Quebec became The Song of Roland in English. All of them are in a similar loopy art style with bold black lines -- I think of it as UPA-influenced; I don't know if Rabagliati would agree -- though this current book mentions that he tried different looks for the book I know as Paul Joins the Scouts but went back to his usual style midway through development. [1]

Paul at Home is the most recent book in the loose series: published in 2019 in French and 2020 in English. Previous books had moved backwards and forwards in time, but had mostly seen Rabagliati turning decade-old events in his life, most often from his childhood and early adulthood, into comics. But Paul at Home is more immediate: it opens in 2012 and Rabaligati started work on it in about 2016. And it's the least happy of the books.

Paul is fiftyish as the book opens, living alone and unhappy with it. His marriage has fallen apart: we don't get all the details, but it seems to be roughly mutual, and they're pleasant to each other when they have to meet now. Their one daughter, Rose, is nineteen and has moved out of Paul's house -- and will soon move to England for vague reasons, against the advice of both parents. His health isn't great, either -- there's major dental work, general malaise, ongoing damage to his drawing arm and neck from years bent over a drawing board, and a series of tests and appointments for what is probably sleep apnea.

So Paul isn't happy, and doesn't have much to be happy about.

His widowed mother, though, has it even worse: living alone in a small apartment. And her health problems will be much larger, and entirely insoluble, before the end of Paul at Home.

This is a book about the downhill side of middle age, that time when endings are coming much more quickly than beginnings ever seemed to. Paul does seem in danger at times of tipping over into being a stereotypical grumpy middle-aged guy -- swearing at parking tickets, complaining about French tourists, and endlessly grousing about bad fonts (because he's a graphic designer to the core) -- but it's more that Rabagliati is not afraid to make his stand-in less than heroic and entirely real.

This is the saddest, most depressing Paul book, because life does tend to get sadder and more depressing. As we get older, that's clearer and clearer: Rabagliati has seen it, and shows it well here. But it's not all sad, and it's only depressing if you let it be.

In the end, Rabagliati would likely agree with a certain porcupine's advice: "don't take life so serious, son -- it ain't nohow permanent."

[1] This is also as good a place as any to mention that I've tried to figure out which books are which, to the point of making a Google Sheet based on Rabagliati's bibliographie page, and that there are still things that confuse me. 

1. Is Paul dans le métro the same book as Paul en el campo? Why hasn't that book (or those two books, if they're different) appeared in English?
2. Or is Paul en el campo an expanded version of Paul à la campagne? (Which makes more sense.) In that case, why didn't that collection come out in English?
3. Did Paul Joins the Scouts really appear in English and Spanish but not in French? That seems deeply weird. Or is that Paul au parc? If so, why is that one book eight pages longer in French?

Not on the same level, but I deeply wonder what the deal was with the title The Song of Roland. It's so far out of the series title structure and it was Rabagliati's first book with a new English-language publisher. Having worked in the content mines for my whole adult life, I have cynical guesses about some of the factors, but I bet that would be a great story at a convention bar some late night.

And as long as I'm rambling, I'm impressed at how consistent the French naming convention has been: Paul + conjunction + details. I kinda wish the US publishers had the courage of Rabagliati's convictions.