Graphic Novel Review: The Compleat Angler: A Graphic Adaptation by Gareth Brookes

Reviewed by Deborah Tomaras

 Gareth Brookes. The Compleat Angler: A Graphic Adaptation. SelfMadeHero, 2025. US $19.99. ISBN: 9781914224270. https://selfmadehero.com/books/the-compleat-angler-a-graphic-adaptation

        

    English comics creator Gareth Brookes is known for art comics using experimental techniques, such as the crayon-rendered A Thousand Coloured Castles, as well as The Dancing Plague, which examines the 1518 historical phenomenon through pyrography and embroidered panels. In The Compleat Angler, Brookes creatively revisits the past in comics form, this time via linocut prints and ink on bamboo paper.

     As a work of art, the comic is stunning. The weaving together of sharp linocut and dreamy ink-on-bamboo mimics the undulations of a river and the movement of the text. More meditative sections of Walton's work—poetry, philosophy, musings—are illustrated using ink on wrinkled and borderless bamboo pages. Delicate smudging, and wordless panels, highlight the slower-paced and contemplative nature of the passages.

    The comic flows between these contemplative sections and more straightforward descriptive passages discussing fish and angling, where animals move sinuously across and between crisp three-color linocut panels, the traversing of gutters emphasizing their dynamism. A curious compression of human figures within the panels creates a rough size equivalence between people and animals depicted, highlighting the interconnectedness between human beings and the environment that Brookes foregrounds in his Preface to the comic.

     In all, the art style and pacing of the comic ably convey the artist's vision of The Compleat Angler as pacifist contemplation, a calming salve in turbulent political times. Brookes also emphasizes Walton's environmental argument against those who damage nature in service of profit—another timely contemporary issue. The artist turns Walton's ecological statement into direct environmental activism, donating ten percent of the book's profits to the British charity River Action.

    As a "remix, a celebration of Walton's book, or an elaborate fanzine," per Brookes' Preface, the comic works. As a literary adaptation, however, the reader is left with questions. Brookes never specifies which edition of Walton's work is being adapted. Certain sections, like an observation that Romans consider the eel "the Helena of their feasts," seem to point to later versions, as that phrase doesn't appear in the first edition. But it's difficult to pin down, particularly because the adaptation is similarly opaque as to where and why historical language has been retained. The artist specifies in the Preface that "some of [the] original, unusual spelling" (but presumably not all) was kept: why daintie, but not eele? Brookes also "abridged the book comprehensively and altered its structure entirely;" as with the Ship of Theseus, it's uncertain whether the text is still The Compleat Angler after all the alterations, or a different book entirely.

    Conversely, the retention of Walton's original pronouns for animals is perhaps too historical—and problematic—for the contemporary reader. Brookes keeps Walton's masculine pronouns for most animals, purportedly to highlight both the antiquated feel of the text and "the sense of respectful harmony" between people and animals, per the Preface. However, that harmony is decidedly and only masculine. Animals receiving feminine pronouns uniformly conform to moralizing stereotypes of womanhood held during the seventeenth century. The otter is a gluttonous and unnatural despoiler of nature. The raven callously abandons her hatchlings in a later section that again couples women with the unnatural. The female carp "put[s] on a seeming coyness" before breeding with multiple male carp at once; her behavior is contrasted to the courtly male carp guarding and assisting her at the end of their encounter. The sole virtuous feminine animal, the lark, ascends to the heavens while singing, presumably due to her piety and purity. In an adaptation where the artist freely acknowledges taking "great liberties with the original text" in the Preface, one wonders why this potentially beneficial textual change was overlooked.

     Despite questions about the comic as an adaptation, however, it is, in its own right, an enjoyable, beautiful and meditative work. Don't expect it to be the complete Compleat Angler; as Brookes writes in the Preface, the comics adaptation "is in no way intended as a substitute for the original." Read it instead for the peacefulness, the prints, and the pike.

A version of this review will appear in either IJOCA 27-1 or 27-2. 

Book Review: The Anxiety Club, a graphic guide to understanding anxiety

 reviewed by Ishita Sehgal

Frédéric Fanget, Catherine Mayer and Pauline Aubry (ill.). Translated by Edward Gauvin. The Anxiety Club, a graphic guide to understanding anxiety. SelfMadeHero, 2024. https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/the-anxiety-club

 

Modern life definitely demands a guide to navigate the daily obstacles and attempts to achieve a sense of composure in the daily grind. The presence of anxiety and other psychological troubles keep creeping in trying to detour oneself from the path of the daily hustle bustle. French creators psychiatrist Dr. Frédéric Fanget, co-author Catherine Meyer and illustrator Pauline Aubry explain how anxiety can manifest itself, how it can cause threatening scenarios, and most importantly how anxiety, in whatever intensity it may show up, can be treated through Anxiety Therapy. The book itself is divided into five chapters that discuss in detail the many aspects of anxiety and how it is imperative to recognize them and find the right kind of treatment.

 

In the authors’ own words, the book is to “decatastrophize anxiety.” This graphic novel is a guidebook about surviving with anxiety as this psychological problem is depicted and then shown being dealt with. In the first two chapters of the book, readers are introduced to the multiple ways of how anxiety can show up and how one can try and identify it. This is done by using day-to-day terms and phrases which makes identifying the problem accessible and easy. The quirky titles of the chapters such as “anxiety’s disaster camera” or the “faces of anxiety” and the lingo the authors use are not only relatable, but also help in retaining information.

 

Even though the authors have fictionalized the anxious people, renamed and anonymized them, the book keeps the character of Dr Fanget as himself. This choice to not fictionalize the doctor gives the reader a sense of security and confidence in receiving correct information. The chapter on anxiety treatment is the key element of this book. It brings together all the questions that people suffering from anxiety might raise and the ways in which they could be answered. The treatments are divided into three parts depending on the intensity of the anxiety one is under.

 

This book is a delightful read about a very serious problem faced by people of all ages as the world is progressing disconcertingly faster technologically. The question one asks of a self-help type of book is about its authenticity and reliability, which Dr Fanget’s presence in the book as a narrator answers. However, those who seek this as self-therapy for anxiety, may or may not find one here, but between the gutters, they may identify their own symptoms.