Muybridge

Arguably best known for always insightful, often humorous graphic travelogues, Delisle fills his latest panels with his signature charming, magnetic line drawings capturing the struggles and successes of legendary, innovative photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Interwoven throughout are Muybridge's own groundbreaking photos and additional enhancing art and photos (beware the exploded mule!). Delisle's opening double-page spread features period portraits of his vast cast, which he cleverly hones to four significant players in the single-paged preface, "The Mystery of the Galloping Horse": ". . . in 1855, quite a few serious people were trying to understand exactly how a horse moves at full speed." That quartet is composed of French artist Ernest Meissonier, wealthy Leland Stanford, physician Étienne-Jules Marey, and, of course, the titular Muybridge, whose life Delisle tracks from his 1850 immigration to the U.S. from England to his death, in 1904. In between, Delisle spotlights Muybridge as "bookseller, landscape photographer, reporter, panoramist, and inventor (not to mention husband and murderer)," with a prominent focus on Muybridge's decades-long partnership with (traitorous) industrialist Stanford. Delisle's usual translators, Dascher and Aspinall, return to capably bring this to English-language audiences.

The fractious life of pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge is chronicled in this brisk but thorough graphic biography by Delisle (Factory Summers). Born in 1830, Muybridge sailed from London to the United States in 1850, where he found work as a bookseller and was thrilled by proto-photographic innovations like daguerreotypes. After recovering from an 1860 stagecoach accident that put him in a coma, he had prematurely gray hair, a newly cantankerous disposition, and a hungry curiosity. Muybridge emerges in Delisle's adroit rendering as an innovator with the mind of a mechanic, the soul of an artist, and a prophetic air. His painstakingly captured photos of Yosemite made him famous, and attracted the attention of railroad tycoon Leland Stanford, who had a hobbyist interest in determining if a galloping horses' hooves were ever all in the air at the same time. Several years, a million dollars, and one breakthrough idea (a dozen cameras snapping lightning-fast pictures) later, Muybridge proved the answer was yes. He kept innovating, arguably creating the pre-cinematic landscape well ahead of the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison, who received the fame and credit. Delisle draws with his usual comedic verve, and keeps the pace at a lively clip while weaving in significant research. Fans of Louis Riel and other comics cultural histories will find this well worth their time. Agent: Sylvain Coissard, Sylvain Coissard Agency. (Apr.)

Getting off the ground. Eadweard Muybridge led a cinematic life. The English photographer journeyed throughout the American West and Central America, heavy equipment in tow. For years, he toiled away at photographic techniques that led to patents. Most dramatically, he fatally shot his wife's lover. And so it is fitting that he is the subject of a graphic novel whose suspense-filled panels zip by, adding up to an engrossing account of the "father of motion pictures." Delisle, a Canadian cartoonist whose globe-spanning books includeJerusalem: Chronicles From the Holy City (2011) andPyongyang (2003), begins his sweeping narrative with an adventure-hungry Muybridge departing London for America in 1850. Ten years of bookselling in New York and San Francisco lose their appeal, however, and in heading back east, he barely survives a stagecoach accident that puts him in a coma for nine days. After six years of recovery in England, he returns to San Francisco, determined to make it in the burgeoning field of photography. He succeeds. His grand landscape portraits bring him attention, as does his "Flying Studio," a horse-drawn darkroom he rides around town. Here begins the story that makes the eccentric famous: Leland Stanford, the railroad magnate (and future university co-founder, along with his wife, Jane), hires the photographer to prove that a horse leaves the ground when galloping. Six years later, after much experimenting--ultimately achieving a shutter speed of one-thousandth of a second--Muybridge has the answer. A lot of this history is well known, but Delisle succinctly relates it in lively images done in a muted, old-timey palette. Guiding readers through the early days of photography and cinema, he shows how Muybridge, determined and intense--his brow furrowed, his hair wild, his beard long and pointy--led the way for future artists to make their own work come alive with the magic of movement. A playful and immersive portrait of a man who stopped time. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.