Idle Days is an engaging story. The reader can feel Jerome's pain but I could not help but dislike him. Because he was serving in WWII, a war much more important than Vietnam, Korea and some others, I did not like that he deserted his post. WWII was a war over the continuation of life as we knew it. No one should have declined to serve. Including women. That said, this is a well told story. Many of the comic book panels did not have dialogue and it was easy to "read" what was the meaning contained in them. The dialogue itself presented Jerome's inner thoughts ably. Although Jerome's conversation with his grandfather was stilted, I thought that the combination of their dialogue with the illustrations was executed skillfully.
The artwork was drawn in comic book panels and colored in deep dark oranges, reds and browns. I presume that illustrator Simon Leclerc used this pallette to enhance the sense of isolation that Jerome was feeling. Even when Jerome was walking in the open forest, he felt the confinement of the darkness in the forest during the rare evenings when he left the cabin.
Idle Days is a fantastic graphic novel. I highly recommend it to comic book fans. 5 out of 5 stars.
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