Exit Wounds | Rutu Modan | A subtle satire of family life, complicated and satisfying.

Exit Wounds | Rutu Modan | One of the best GNs of 2007

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Exit Wounds

	Exit Wounds Rutu Modan Drawn and Quarterly, 2007 - 168 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Set in modern-day Tel Aviv, a young man,Koby Franco, receives an urgent phone call from a female soldier. Learning that his estranged father may have been a victim of a suicide bombing in Hadera, Koby reluctantly joins the soldier in searching for clues. His death would certainly explain his empty apartment and disconnected phone line. As Koby tries to unravel the mystery of his father?s death, he finds himself piecing together not only the last few months of his father?s life but his entire identity. With thin, precise lines and luscious watercolors, Rutu Modan creates a portrait of modern Israel, a place where sudden death mingles with the slow dissolution of family ties.

Exit Wounds is the North American graphic-novel debut from one of Israel?s best-known cartoonists. Modan has received several awards in Israel and abroad, including the Best Illustrated Children?s Book Award from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem four times and Young Artist of the Year by the Israel Ministry of Culture. She is a chosen artist of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation.

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A subtle satire of family life, complicated and satisfying.

I have to disagree with the other reviewers on the artwork. The art in Exit Wounds is subtle, quiet, but it's gorgeous. I was first captured by the colors--mostly muted but with very carefully situated splashes of brightness for a beautiful punch. The color combinations are absolutely evocative of the Mediterranean landscape. The story is gritty and realistic; it unfolds slowly at first, but then snowballs into one revelation after another that are pretty shocking, ironic and hilarious at the same time.

Yet it's no rollercoaster. Exit Wounds is something you kind of sink into, or it steeps in you, like tea. After my first reading, I thought it was a slight story, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I reread it and kept thinking about it. This is a comic that defies comic stereotypes of plot, mindless action and noise. Don't expect that! Expect to be very quietly seduced into the life of a boy who discovers the true identity of his father, the underhanded manipulations of family and unexpectedly finds love and integrity, all revealed in a gritty, urban and rural landscape. It is complicated but satisfying in that Modan does not take shortcuts. Life is complex, and she doesn't wrap it up with a bow.

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One of the best GNs of 2007

Critics from Time to Entertainment Weekly to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch have lauded Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds as one of the best (if not THE best) graphic novels of 2007, and had I read it a few weeks earlier, it would surely have ended up on my list of best comics of the year as well. As it is, I can only add my voice to the chorus of those who sing the praises of this book.

Set in present-day Israel, the book's central character is Koby, a young man who lives with his aunt and uncle while trying to scrape by on the meager wages he earns as a cab driver. One day his life takes a strange turn when he meets Numi, a girl who has been dating Koby's estranged father Gabriel. Gabriel has recently disappeared, and Numi believes he might have been a victim of a recent bombing in a bus station. Her request for Koby's help in identifying the body turns into a quest of sorts, as the two work to piece together the clues of what happened to Gabriel.

That description might lead you to believe Modan emphasizes mystery and intrigue, when that couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, Exit Wounds is less about finding out what happened to Gabriel than it is a character piece about two complete strangers linked by their relationships to the same man. From their first meeting, Koby and Numi are at odds, clashing over their different ideas of how to handle the situation, and this conflict between them is a direct result of how they connected, or failed to connect, with Gabriel himself.

Comics such as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis or the works of Joe Sacco have been designed to give readers an insight into another culture, and from that summary you might be fooled into thinking that this book's purpose is similarly informative. But Exit Wounds is about people in general, not just Israelis. The book is more universal because it doesn't emphasize the details of the plot or setting and instead focuses on the strained relationship between Gabriel and Koby, between a father and son, which anyone can relate to no matter their nationality.

Yet in a way, the book does subtly show the Israeli experience; it treats the setting as a background element that not only drives the plot but also impacts the behavior of the characters. Koby meets Numi while she's serving her mandatory service in the army, and her indecision about what to do next with her life is a driving force for her character. Gabriel's behavior at Koby's bar mitzvah is mentioned as an example of the trouble in their relationship. From the location of the unidentified victim's burial plot to the nonchalance with which several characters treat the news of the bombing itself, every aspect of this story is affected by Israeli life in some way, like Israel is the elephant in the room. No one discusses Israel directly but everyone feels the influence of this country in every aspect of their lives.

Like many other aspects of Exit Wounds, the art too is deceptive. Modan's drawing style is very European, at times reminiscent of Herge's Tintin, and at first glance she tricks the reader into thinking there is very little to the art. People's faces are the simplest arrangements of dots and lines you can imagine, but the beauty of Modan's artwork is how expressive she makes those lines become. The emotions they show are palpable, especially the varied shades of anger that Koby expresses. In one panel he might merely be feeling mild annoyance and in the next outrage, yet the nuances of Modan's art illustrate the differences in his moods perfectly.

Exit Wounds has all the technical elements an excellent comic should contain: art that is minimalist yet incredibly expressive, colors which seem to adjust from muted to vibrant with the tone of the scenes, and panel layouts that guide the reader through the story at a perfect pace without ever feeling the need to overly spell things out. Beyond all that is a great story, a gripping read that holds your interest through a twisting plot, an intriguing setting, and subtle character development. All of those details add up to a truly brilliant graphic novel that deserves all the praise it has received.

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Entry wounds.

Rutu Modan, Exit Wounds (Drawn and Quarterly, 2007)

For the first couple of chapters of Exit Wounds, I wasn't terribly sure about it. Interesting story, yeah, but nothing that really jumped off the page. More fool me; Rutu Modan was just setting things up. The full scope of her deviousness shows up about ten pages before the end, and there's one frame in this book that made me stop dead in my tracks and say "wow." Yes, out loud.

Koby is a taxi driver. Numi is a soldier. Numi is romantically involved with Koby's estranged father, and thinks he may have been killed in a suicide bombing. The two of them, after some false starts, set out to figure out whether Koby's father really was the last unidentified body in that bus station, and in doing so expose some general weirdnesses of family life, Israeli culture, and interpersonal relations.

I'm a sucker for dumb love stories. Note that in that sentence, "dumb" is modifying not "stories", but "love". My favorite example of this particular subgenre comes from Alan Parker's film Birdy, where Matthew Modine finally has a chance to lose his virginity and totally bungles it. Numi's hysterical one-liner in Exit Wounds immediately jumps to #2 on that list. It's so stupidly naïve, and it fits so well (despite Numi being far more experienced than Matthew Modine's character in Parker's film). It's indicative of both the kind of sense of humor Modan displays throughout the book, and her willingness to make her characters suffer. And suffer they do. (No, that wasn't the "wow" moment, which I can't expose without major spoilers; you'll just have to read this for yourself to find that one. I'll give you a hint: it's a wedding picture.) Modan has a finely-tuned sense of irony, and she's not afraid to use it.

This is one for the books. Pick it up at your earliest convenience. It comes with the Goat Guarantee of Excellence. (If you don't like it, I'll refund you the price of this review!) ****

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What will be with these Israelis???

What will be with these Israelis?
As a light comic book i would expect more but when you write a book Israeli style this is what you get.
To see the conflict through Israelis eyes in a comic book that want to look for the rode of seriousness i am not sure this is the one you are looking, It seems that the book lost its way somewhere through the dealing with family problem to the Israeli-Palestinians conflict but as i was looking for 2 books from one from each side (The second one was "Palestine" by Jow sacco) this was a good choice, between the hole mass of the book you still get a real glimpse in to the Tel-Aviv/Israeli realty of constant war/fear/tension.
This book is made to be read with criticism but also with a lot of understanding.

Wroth the buy.

Cheers

Stam1

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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