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Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard

Written by Eddie Campbell and Dan Best
Art by Eddie Campbell
128 pages, color
Published by First Second Books

One of the best things about Eddie Campbell is that, as a creator, I never feel like he’s fallen into a rut. Each new project always seems very different from the previous one, trying out new ideas and storytelling tactics. Sure enough, his and Dan Best’s new book, The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard, is completely different from the last book of Campbell’s I read. And in some ways, I think it’s my favorite book from Campbell in a long while.

The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard was the toast of the town, a circus performer best-known for his death-defying leaps on the trapeze. When one leap goes horribly wrong, he hands the legacy down to his nephew Etienne, whose name is normally preceded with the adjective "useless." What follows is a strange, mind-bending trip through Etienne’s life, as well as the pages of the book itself.

The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard is a bizarre little book, there’s no doubt about that. Characters metafictionally comment on the next episode coming up in the book, plunge through the margins between the panels, and lose characters between episodes. And that’s in many ways just a small fragment of the overall whole of the book. At its heart, ignoring the structure and rule-breaking nature of the book, The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard is about a young man trying to live up to his uncle’s legacy, and the strange adventures that follow him for decades to come. Where else can you find the sinking of the Titanic, Jack the Ripper, and hordes of attacking Prussians? It’s an oddball collection of events, but the episodic nature of the book really makes it work.

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