Underwater Welder Kindle & comiXology

I have to say I was not impressed with this comic. First of all, it's fully in black and white, which was disappointing to me. Secondly, the art seemed a little rushed. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't wonderful. I kinda got the feeling that there was a rule that no eraser would be used, under any circumstances. That kind of stylistic art can be good. I don't know why, but it didn't do it for me here. Also, the story was a bit sappy. I like Lemire. I loved Trillium and Descender. I've started Sweet Tooth. This story was not up to those, in quality. Just my opinion, but there it is.

The Underwater Welder is a black and white fiction graphic novel that focus in the strange circumstances surrounding the life of 33y.o. Jack Joseph --an underwater welder--, and her expecting wife Susie. The accidental finding of an old forgotten childhood watch and an accident happened during a rutinary shift will bring Jack to question reality, his present and his past. The isolated inhospitable rugged shores of Nova Scotia are a perfect setting for this intriguing novel.The novel has many of Lemire's themes and characters archetypes also present in other of his works: the role of memory in your present life, the thin line separating past and present in people's memories and emotions, lonely alienated characters who want to connect emotionally but are progressive frustrated by their lack of success at doing so, the line the separates reality from non reality.The novel also shows again Lemire's drawing mastery and graphic versatility to convey into images stories and situations that are far from easy or straight forward to depict. Also common to Lemire are his wonderful landscape composition, and the framing and composition of his vignettes.The novel reads easily and with gusto, and is very intriguing. However, it has a predictable ending that you can sense from half way the novel. Perhaps the tempo of the novel should have been different and some of the information provided at the beginning omitted so the reader would have had less clues to unveil the mystery. Having said so, the story is intriguing enough and odd enough to keep you interested. The characters are well sketched psychologically, especially Jack, although sometimes the reader, or at least me, wanted to know more about Susie.The undersea images are great, specially having into account that they are drawn in black and white. Also great is the graphic depiction of the progressive mental alienation of Jack and his almost oneiric and trippy living in his deserted town. A very enjoyable reading overall.

I don't like giving mediocre ratings like this and maybe my expectations were set to high. This title was referenced in more reviews than I can count as a must read after all. But I didn't find the art to be impressive and I didn't feel the same kind of enthusiasm at the end of this story like I do with others. Maybe the story fell too far outside the horror genre that it was advertised in, as its really more of a coming of age drama. Still I'm glad to have read it so I have the visual reference now.

The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire is a beautifully drawn graphic novel about a man named Jack Joseph caught first metaphorically and then literally between his past and future. When I say beautifully drawn I mean it--the art has a sketch-like quality, an impressionistic rendering that has a surprising fullness in the details. It's rough and encompassing, much like the story itself. Lemire is a gifted visual storyteller (something I admire as I myself am so dependent on words); he makes great use of changes in the level of detail to signal disturbance. He uses the traditional panel structure of a comic to great effect and plays with it, too, stretching one scene across twelve panels on one page and using the crossbars of a window to mimic the boundaries of the panel in the next. To understand Jack is to understand his father: a man named Pete who made his living by diving for odds and ends he sold at a pawn shop. A man who drove his wife away by drinking too much. Like a lot of alcoholics who find themselves embedded in families, Pete Joseph is desperately sad, desperately out of control, and makes a lot of promises to his son which he can't keep. He goes diving one Halloween night when Jack is a kid and disappears; the town presumes him dead but Jack can't shake the feeling his father is still out there somewhere.Jack Joseph is thirty-three, the same age his father was when his father disappeared. Jack makes his way as an underwater welder on an offshore oil rig, diving just like his father used to, and he's married to a woman named Susan. They are expecting their first child any day. Jack can handle the immense pressures and darkness of the ocean floor, but he can't handle the looming pressure of his impending fatherhood or the dark shadow of his own father's disappearance. One day while diving he sees something that can't possibly be there. He fights with Susan and winds up diving again only to end up in a space that seems ripped out of time, a sort of purgatory-like holding tank of his own memories.This book hit me very hard. I grew up with negligent, promise-breaking alcoholic parents. The imminent birth of my own kid sent me head-first into a maelstrom of Unresolved Childhood Issues, too. Like Jack, I had to make the choice between wallowing in the past and embracing the future. I, too, was haunted by the specter of turning into my parents. I didn't go into the book blind--the back copy talks about parenthood and the ghost of a father, etc--but I didn't expect Jack's story to mirror my own so closely. I wonder how much of this is drawn from Jeff Lemire's personal experiences. The book explores these feelings and themes so deftly, with such pitch-perfect resonance, that I wonder if it's possible for someone who hasn't lived through it to capture it so well. I can already see I will fpoist this book on people who are having difficulty navigating the tricky waters of becoming a parent. I can already see it's a book I'll return to over and over. I give it five stars out of five stars, but if you are not a parent who has grappled with the demons of your own unreliable parents your mileage may vary.

I'm a new fan of Lemire, but I was hesitant to pick this up because it is not super hero work. I'm glad to say that that I was pleasantly surprised by how thoughtful this story expresses humanity, love, fatherhood, and marriage. At some point, I'm going to get the physical copy of this book. It was so good. And it would make a great movie too! Easy Oscar contender work the right actor and director.

This is a perfectly good story, well told and drawn. However after reading all the gushing 5 star reviews here I think maybe I was expecting something incredible. I love the cover illustrations with muted grey’s, greens and rust colours but was a little disappointed that inside is just black and white. Not to detract from the fact that I admire Lemire’s style but if Amazon put a couple of pictures from the inside of the book rather than just the cover I would have been prepared.The story follows Jack, the underwater welder of the title and his subconscious fears. Will he repeat his own parents mistakes now he has a child of his own on the way and was he partially responsible for his father’s disappearance? There are some supernatural twists that move the plot along but don’t expect a ghost story, this is ultimately about the real world with fleshed out characters and real emotions.Not the best graphic novel I have ever read but good enough that I will be checking out some of Lemire’s other work in the future.

I started to read this late at night, just wanted to read first few pages, but I could not stop and read it all immediately. Lemire is amazing at writing human feelings and relationships with a bit of a fantasy/sci-fi twist.

This is a fantastic little story that really shows what the medium is capable of. Lemire's ink washes capture the bleak coastal skies expressively whilst his sketchy characters are engaging and heartbreaking. Mysterious and melancholy though it is, the book is ultimately optimistic. I'm going to go hug my son now and read him the lullaby contained within.

I was recommended Jeff Lemire to me as something different to my normal graphic novels. The artwork is great and certainly adds to the eerie feel. The plot allows you to read around it opposed to being appointed. I would recommended this to anyone that likes interesting plots & imagery.

Emotional insightful and I couldn't put it down. The way it's drawn really drives home the darkness and loneliness the character feels