15 Apr / Mister Lightbulb by Wojtek Wawszczyk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
Award-winning animator Wojtek Wawszczyk’s graphic debut, which won the Polish Comics Association’s 2019 Best Graphic Novel award, is available now for English-language readers thanks to this translation by the lauded Antonia Lloyd-Jones. A decade-plus in the making, this epic bildungsroman superbly imbues the surreal with quotidian resonance.
That shining dot is me,” the protagonist introduces himself amid an overwhelming black background. In the next couple of pages, the audience’s point of view approaches the brightening, expanding glow: “For several years I’ve been working as a streetlamp. The people below are watching me trying to beat the darkness.” That escape from darkness defines an unlikely artist’s life journey as his “happy family” childhood home transforms into a stifling personal prison.
While he’s still a boy, his parents are literally broken at work: his father is flattened by an oversized iron, his mother split in half at the steelworks. And yet they live. Meanwhile, the boy swallows a molten glob that gives him the power to glow, a talent he’ll need to learn to nurture and control. Leaving behind his struggling parents affords him some semblance of freedom – college, work, falling in love – but the guilt never lifts.
Wawszczyk’s black-and-white, paneled and not, phenomenally dynamic pages turn swiftly, revealing an Everyperson’s struggle to live life fully despite persistent obstacles and setbacks. Narratively and artistically, Wawszczyk shines.
Review: modified from “Graphic Novels,” Booklist, March 15, 2022
Readers: Adult
Published: 2018 (Poland), 2022 (United States)