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WORK TITLE: THE GULF
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WEBSITE: https://kumerish.com
CITY: Toronto
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COUNTRY: Canada
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School Library Journal vol. 70 no. 3 Mar., 2024. Alicia Abdul, “DE SOUZA, Adam. The Gulf.”. p. 94.
Kirkus Reviews Feb. 1, 2024, , “de Souza, Adam: THE GULF.”. p. NA.
Publishers Weekly vol. 270 no. 50 Dec. 11, 2023, , “The Gulf.”. p. 70.
Kirkus Reviews Nov. 1, 2021, , “Campbell, Jen: THE SISTER WHO ATE HER BROTHERS.”. p. NA.
Publishers Weekly vol. 268 no. 40 Oct. 4, 2021, , “The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers: And Other Gruesome Tales.”. p. 157.
Publishers Weekly vol. 269 no. 14 Apr. 4, 2022, , “Ish.”.
Booklist vol. 118 no. 11 Feb. 1, 2022, Hong, Terry. , “Ish.”.
My name is Adam de Souza and I am based in the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as Vancouver, British Columbia. I write and draw comics, illustrate children’s books, and have worked as a freelance designer in animation.
My first graphic novel The Gulf released through Tundra Books in March 2024. I’m currently working on two unannounced projects as well as my on-going and award-winning comic strip Blind Alley. You can also read the first chapter of my comic strip Brambles online as well.
Feel free to reach out!
Linktree / Twitter / Instagram / Patreon
kumerish@gmail.com
Adam de Souza is an illustrator and cartoonist. He splits his time between drawing Blind Alley and an unannounced graphic novel set to be released in 2023. His comic strip Blind Alley updates on Mondays and Fridays at www.blind-alley.com. You can find his other work here www.kumerish.com.
Cartoonist Adam de Souza describes his comic Blind Alley as “a strange and lonely neighborhood” where his many child characters exist and interact. Tucker Leighty-Phillips spoke with Adam about the vastness of childhood emotion, taking a cinematic approach to the written word, and the process of creating the worlds we want to envision. Blind Alley is published for free online twice a week at www.blind-alley.com, and Blind Alley: The First Year, a print collection of the biweekly strip, is releasing this Spring. This interview was conducted over Zoom in late April 2022.
TLP: What was Blind Alley born out of? What ideas or concepts were you hoping to explore?
ADS: It was born from growing up with Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, and The Simpsons; reading and watching but not seeing any of the characters age as I did. I really wanted to do a long-form story in the daily format about the nitty-gritty of growing up, where you can watch characters change and grow. The initial idea was horrible; Lord of The Flies-meets-Peanuts, which [Blind Alley] very much is not. I think it’s important to my work to show childhood as a real thing, not in this nostalgic way, but in this “it’s weird and scary” way.
TLP: One of the things I like about Blind Alley is that it feels really respectful of childhood, and holds childhood problems with the same gravity children treat them with, without looking down or making fun of those problems. This is sort of in that same vein.
ADS: Thanks! I remember being a kid and my mom talking about money troubles or knowing someone’s parent had cancer, and being aware of these big feelings going on around you, and even if your parents are trying to shield you from it, you’re still aware, feeling things and processing them in a very real way. I think we don’t often talk about the emotional capacity kids have, but when you give them agency, they actually do feel and understand emotionally complicated things. At least, that was my experience as a kid. I didn’t feel hemmed off in some secret world, I felt like I was a part of the adult world, but not given full access to it––almost like I was receiving only the overflow of emotions from the adults around me.
TLP: There’s a weird blend of the surreal in Blind Alley; bird cameras, a tin can telephone that talks back, a mysterious figure living beneath the manhole cover. Could you speak on how the strange and absurd informs the world you’ve created?
ADS: When people read Calvin & Hobbes, there’s always the question about whether or not Hobbes is real, which to me doesn’t matter, because the strip itself isn’t real, it’s a reflection of what’s real. Whether these weird things in Blind Alley are real or not, it’s really nice for me to try to write for [the sake of] fiction, to write in the space [of knowing] it isn’t real, so it doesn’t have to reflect our reality, even while speaking to truths of it. I think all that really matters is whether or not a character thinks something's true or real. That’s where I’m writing from when I’m thinking about those absurd details and strange elements.
TLP: I’ve had that same gripe, not just with Calvin & Hobbes, but with other media––it doesn’t matter if it’s real for the audience, because it’s real for the characters involved, and we’re on that journey with them.
ADS: Totally. It’s a knee-jerk response, not to my comic, but for a lot of fiction in general; Marvel, comics––the need to explain and organize everything. And I think it’s important for me in my work to explain enough that it’s satisfying, but to leave room for interpretation and for strange things to exist that don’t necessarily need an explanation because it’s not real, and it’s fun to play with that.
TLP: I think it creates a lot of possibility too, because it gives the premise that anything can happen, and I think that’s exciting.
ADS: Yeah!
TLP: How has this world evolved since you’ve began creating these comics? I know you said it started as Lord of the Flies-meets-Peanuts, has it changed in other ways?
ADS: It's always changing! It started as the LOTF concept in my sketchbook five years ago, I wrote out a bunch of strips, character ideas and plot points. Last year, when I returned to the idea, I thought it was dog-shit, and I was like you know what? I’m just going to start something [with] a very rough idea on the plot, and more of a strong grasp on the characters, so it feels like it changes every time I draw a strip. I want it to be fun and intuitive and a process where every strip informs the one after, so it’s always evolving, and not necessarily something pinned down as a project. I think that’s really important to me.
TLP: A lot of these children grapple with different forms of grief––loss, the afterlife, body anxiety. Have you found children to be a more accessible vehicle to explore these issues in your work?
ADS: I don’t know that it’s necessarily easier to tell these stories through kids, but I think there’s something in couching these very complicated emotions and feelings in kids that makes it more accessible to readers, whereas my longer-form comics, strictly because they’re longer, you have to actually sit down and read the whole thing, which requires more of someone. Maybe we're more inclined to treat adult characters like they are individuals, and more readily willing to relate with children characters because they're "cute" or "wholesome" or maybe it's just natural? Having cute characters in bite-size strips makes it easier to talk about these things because I think there's an element of expecting it to be funny and kind of silly, so there’s almost an irony to a child talking about grief.
TLP: Are there drawbacks to exploring these concepts through children?
ADS: Not really, honestly, there’s nothing off the table with Blind Alley in terms of content. For better or worse, it’s not necessarily made for one audience. There’s swearing and it will deal with heavy stuff in the future. I don’t know if there’s drawbacks, because, at least, in my strip, and how I approach writing it, I don’t view them differently from how an adult character would be. I think the only drawback in terms of telling a story in that format is that it does have to be bite-sized, and each strip needs to feel like it has a beginning, middle, and end. It’s a really weird but fun format to work in, because everything has to be very coherent.
TLP: Treating the kids like adults feels similar to your approach to the possibilities of the surreal. It’s respectful of the children, and you’re willing to take them wherever you feel they should go, but it also feels wide open.
ADS: I definitely don’t ever want to feel like I’m saying they’re kids, they shouldn’t go through this, because if you think about life and the variety of experiences any one person could have as a kid, it’s not always fair, and it’s not always good, and it’s not always right either. I don’t want it to be a dire strip or a sad strip, but I think it’s really important to talk about childhood grief, or not being comfortable in your own body, or accidentally killing something.
TLP: You were recently named the 2022 winner for the Cartoonist Studio Prize in webcomics––how did it feel to have Blind Alley recognized in such a prestigious fashion?
ADS: It’s pretty surreal! With Blind Alley, I have a sense that people are reading it but it's indirect enough that I am never sure if people really enjoy it. For someone to call it the “best” is a very nice feeling but I try not to get caught up in it, or personally think of it that way, because that would change how I work on it.
TLP: Does it put pressure on you? Are you feeling like you now have a reputation to uphold?
ADS: Not yet. Maybe. A few people I admire were congratulating me on Twitter who I didn’t realize read it. It’s humbling to know people are reading it. For as seriously as I think of Blind Alley, the characters, and how much love I have for it, I don’t want to consider the responses to it too seriously, because I did start it as a project where I wanted to have fun. So I try not to get caught up in response or what people think of my work because comics are so much work that you have to be a little selfish. You have to have your blinders on, and forge forward in order to get anything done. But I am really grateful people like it, it’s such a nice feeling.
TLP: When I think of the popular dailies (Calvin & Hobbes, Garfield), my assumption is that they were always intended for longevity, trotting ahead until the creators grew tired of it. I don’t typically imagine it as a form with a predetermined beginning, middle, and end. Are you approaching Blind Alley as a world of infinite expansion where you can keep building continuously, or do you have an endpoint in mind you’re building towards?
ADS: It’s a bit of both! I love comic strips, and I’ve been reading through early Peanuts, which is interesting because the daily format has such a short memory. You’ll see Charles Schulz trying the same joke over and over. It’s a strip built to have no memory, and I’ve always thought of Blind Alley as the opposite; I don’t have a specific place where it’ll end, but I do have things I want the characters to go through, and things I want to happen in the world, because it’s important that the neighborhood itself is a character that people wonder about. I want readers to feel rewarded when they recognize a character changing and growing. There is a history of strips that tell a longform story in the daily format, but I wanted to do something in the middle, something that feels like a daily slice of life strip, but could, when you take the broad view––in five years or whenever––has a bit of an epic scope. But I also don’t want do it forever. I don’t want to keep doing it until it gets bad.
TLP: These characters also have a keen relationship to nature and everyday fascination––April sniffs a flower, inhales deeply, and offers it a word of thanks. Oliver cries to Pod’s music. Sweetpea and Pod speak to a tree. What made it so important for Blind Alley’s children to be conscientious of the world’s beauty?
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ADS: For me, as an adult existing in the world in its current state, I feel like we treat nature as a commodity rather than a living entity, and it’s important for me to recognize that as something we’re taught, rather an inherent thing to being human. We’re taught to think green spaces are spaces in terms of use, and trees are lumber and not just a tree that exists as a tree, a lifeform of its own. I think it naturally comes from my own awe when I think of how diverse life is, and how complicated even the simplest organism is, and even though humans have taken over the earth it doesn’t mean those living things we view as peripheral to being human are actually peripheral. It’s myself coming through in how I feel and comforting myself when I think of the state of the world. I think it’s important to treat a tree like it has integrity. A tree is its own thing, and it’s important to not allow ourselves to think of everything as a commodity or something to be taken advantage of. I believe the nature in Blind Alley is its own character, and these characters are responding to it a way that is natural, before being taught to view it otherwise, and when these characters say they’re talking to the tree, it’s important for me to consider what that means.
TLP: When I was returning to the strips, there were a lot of comics where it felt like, even in such a short space, there were moments where silence felt vital to the strip. Do you have any thoughts on the role of silence in your work?
ADS: It’s funny you ask, because I’m working on a graphic novel right now, and I’ve been going through editing to get the page count down, and I've realized I am inclined towards having wide-open pages of silence. The pacing of a comic is so important; to have contrast between energetic moments, and to know when to let a moment ring, and to try and trick the reader into sitting with it. You can’t control how fast someone reads a comic, but outside of the daily strip format, you can make efforts to by using a big panel with no words in it, or you can make a detailed splash page so someone will spend more time with it, but with this strip it feels like silence is important because it has the opposite effect of a punchline. Sometimes, there’s no punchline to a strip, so we’re just going to sit and watch the clouds go past because that's where the feeling is. I think subverting the structure we expect in a daily strip gives these moments of nothing more space. Who knows how long that trick will work for! I don’t know why, it just feels important to me. Sometimes, being quiet and contemplative is just as powerful as or even better than saying too much. I haven’t considered why it’s important to me. I really like Hayao Miyazaki, and he talks a lot about [the importance of] having space in stories where it’s not necessarily moving a plot forward, and is more of a vibe or pause, and I think those moments are really important, even if, as a reader, it just makes you wonder why that decision was made.
TLP: It feels like such a Western concept to interrogate what everything is doing for the greater capital-S Story, so I appreciate how Blind Alley pushes back on that.
ADS: I like the idea of an idle strip, where two kids lie in a field or something. I think moments are more important than plot sometimes.
TLP: If this series had a family tree of influences, what or who would exist on it?
ADS: Oh my goodness. Peanuts, probably. Definitely Hayao Miyazaki. Maurice Sendak. Oh, that’s hard. I love Taiyo Matsumoto, Akira Kurosawa. I do watch a lot of movies, and I find they’ve been some of the biggest influences on my work––when you watch a scene and it hits you emotionally. I think those are probably the biggest ones right off the top of my head, but there’s so much. I grew up reading Shonen Jump and so much manga and watching anime and it’s not necessarily [present] in my work, but it’s hard to say what influences come through, in terms of a family tree. I feel like it would be the things that are really there in the anatomy of it.
TLP: I had wondered about movies informing your work when you spoke about moments versus plot, because I think they feel cinematic.
ADS: I’ve been re-reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which is one of my favorite books, and while rereading it, I realized I want to make comics that feel like that book, like you’re in a place, and the world is alive around you. I would maybe add that to my family tree.
TLP: Do you want to talk about how cinema has informed your work? Are there specific ways or moments in film you feel you’ve taken from?
ADS: Yeah! I do think there is a benefit to learning from film; visually, how directors tell stories, how they lay out a scene or let a moment ring out. Sometimes I think of panels as cameras shots moving through a scene, but I do think thinking of a comic as similar to film can do you a disservice. There’s something so evocative when you watch a movie. Have you seen Stray Dog? The Kurosawa film? There’s a scene at the end that I’m always thinking about because there’s so much wrapped up in it; theme and visuals that aren’t necessarily beautiful, because it’s two men wrestling in the grass over a gun, but there’s so much at play, and I think about that moment because there’s no dialogue I can remember, but it’s so striking. Whether or not I can translate that feeling into comics, it’s a feeling that sits with me, and I think it does inform my work. Whenever I watch a movie and it feels like it fundamentally reorganizes my atoms, it’s hard not to feel like [I’m] carrying that forward in some way, even when it’s hard to pin down. I don’t know if I can say Blind Alley is influenced by this movie or director, but there is something about when a certain moment in a film really speaks to you, or an image, it’s something so evocative and full of emotion that it’s hard not to carry that with you and have it be your own memory you can recall. With all my work, and how I write fiction, which is from the first-person, but buried and placed in a bunch of different characters, I think having images from film and those moments and characters living in your mind, almost like your own memories, is a good well to draw from. Same with books, of course, but there’s something about how automatic film is; it’s so easy to lose yourself in, at least personally.
TLP: Is there a specific character you find yourself gravitating towards as you create new comics? Are there characters you’re still getting to know?
ADS: That’s a good question. When I write five Kaye strips, or five Crane strips, I try to balance it so I don’t play favorites. To a certain extent, I feel like I’m getting to know all of [my characters], because I don’t want them to be a fixed point. If I write a strip with a character and it feels natural for them to respond a certain way, I’ll do it, even if it seems counter to something they said earlier, because I believe people are that way. I don’t believe we’re fixed points. I try to be nice to all my children and give them equal time. I definitely have characters I really like writing, in that I feel like I’m accessing them a bit more, but to a certain degree, they’re all enigmas that I’m figuring out and teasing out over time. I would never want to write something where I have bullet points about what the character is or isn't like.
TLP: Because Blind Alley is so character-oriented, do you find the story or dialogue or character actions changing when you’re in the process of writing it?
ADS: Totally. My writing process for Blind Alley is horrible. No one would be able to figure out anything from it, because it’s just gibberish in the Notes app on my phone. I’ll write a sentence, or the punchline, or the heart of the comic or whatever. That’ll be what I work from. I think it’s necessary for ambiguity when writing comics. If I had everything figured out, there’d be no point in drawing it. Sometimes I’ll have an idea where I know what a character wants to say, and I ask myself which other character is best to be in that situation, and I’ll start drawing and be like what would [that character] say here? and the strip changes or I’ll get an idea for another strip. It’s always changing, it’s never fixed.
TLP: There is a thoughtfulness to these children, even the ones who bully others and cause trouble. Can you speak on how these kids represent the larger world they exist in? Where do they divert from the larger world?
ADS: Like, the world of Blind Alley?
TLP: Yeah, because we don’t really see a lot outside of the neighborhood, and we don’t see the adults, so as a reader, I’m not really sure what the world is like. There are little divergences from our world, so I’m curious how these kids represent the world we don’t see.
ADS: I think the idleness of their childhood, the fact there’s not been a mention of school says something. There’s Pokémon and video games and the internet, but it’s intentionally a very different world from ours. That will slowly come into play, and I don’t know how much I can answer without giving away too much, but I do feel like the idleness represents something about Blind Alley as a place, as well as the lack of parental supervision and the birds and the sewer. All of these things point in a direction, and I would rather err on the side of being too vague. There are definitely readers that ask where the parents are, if they’re dead, but it’s in the text that they aren’t dead, even if you don’t see them. I think it’s a very different world they’re growing up in. I’m tempted to talk more about it, but I really want it to be a slow reveal. I think the idleness is the biggest thing. That says a lot about the world they’re in. And the way they interact with each other and the world, the things they know and don’t know. It’s intentional. It’s not an oversight. I always knew what the world of Blind Alley would be.
TLP: Have you received any great or bizarre BA fan theories?
ADS: Definitely. Someone recently asked if Oliver was an alien, which I think is cool. It’s not a bad take, he’s a weird kid. There’s been some stuff with the birds. I don’t receive a lot directly. A lot of questions about where the adults are. If they’re dead, etc. But nothing too involved. I’ve gotten a few DMs about it. Someone was wondering if Lula was a real vampire, and had a theory about it.
TLP: If she says she’s a vampire, why not?
ADS: Sure!
TLP: It feels in line with the internet fan theories for older cartoons, like Rugrats, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Ed, Edd, n Eddy. There’s as much richness here as there is in those.
ADS: I love stuff like that. There’s not a single one I point to as a favorite, but I do think engaging with things in that way is fun and rewarding.
TLP: It’s a signifier of a well-written world.
ADS: Yes! Thank you.
TLP: Maybe this is one you can’t answer because of future story knowledge, but has it been difficult or rewarding to reject the assumed logistics of world building? Like, refusing to answer why the kids aren’t in school, or allowing them being a certain age to play a role in how they act. Again, maybe this is fueled by you knowing something I don’t, but has it been empowering in rejecting logistics in favor of story?
ADS: It's absolutely empowering. I frankly know so little about the formal do's and don'ts of fiction writing or world building and I feel like the less I know the better; believing there's a correct way to make art is strange to me. I think it’s important to write about what you think is worthy of attention. In BA, bad things will happen to the kids, and I don’t ever want to be cruel or give in to it solely being a plot-oriented thing, but I think it’s important to write from a place of caring about every detail, from what is true to you personally, even if it isn’t on display. Idleness, the environment, those concepts are important to me, and [I enjoy] thinking about what it would be like to grow up without school, in an environment without much parent supervision, not being taught the same things we’re taught; you know––the focus on what you’re going to be when you grow up, how you measure value based on work output, how successful you are, how much money you have. Some of that hasn’t come into play in BA, but it’s very much the place I’m writing from, because while BA isn’t exactly a world I’d want to exist in, I think it’s important to write about the world how you’d like it to be despite bad things happening, despite traumas and horrors in your neighborhood. The whole underlying story with this first year of BA is the [children] being watched, which is a very insidious thing. I don’t necessarily want it to be a haven, or wholesome, but I think it’s important to write about things that need attention, to write what I care about and believe is worth considering. I spend a lot of time wondering why things are the way they are, and I used to give into grief about it a lot, which is fair, but I also think it’s important to write about the ways and worlds you’d like to exist in. Sometimes I’d love to be an idle child in Blind Alley.
TLP: Is Blind Alley a utopia?
ADS: It’s not a utopia, but it’s not a dystopia either. I don’t know. Utopia is such a loaded term. There are glimpses of it for the kids. When Sweet Pea and Pod are lying in the soil, watching the clouds, talking about drifting into the soil beneath them. To me, that’s something I’ve felt, and it’s peaceful and comforting. There’s utopia in that idea, and in being a kid that could exist like that. But I also don’t think that’s realistic, and there are bad things that will happen in BA, and there are bad things happening currently, and I think it’s important for me to reflect the real rather than a utopia or dystopia.
Tucker Leighty-Phillips is a writer from Southeastern Kentucky. His work has been featured in The Adroit Journal, BOOTH, Passages North, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. His work can be found at TuckerLP.net.
Vancouver author's graphic novel explores the fear of adulthood and running away
Adam De Souza's The Gulf aims to capture raw emotion of being a teenager nearing the end of high school
CBC News · Posted: Apr 23, 2024 8:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: April 23
A man wearing a white sweater stands against a white background. He holds an open book up to his eyes to read it.
Staring down the final days of high school, a group of friends in Adam De Souza's The Gulf run away from home in order to join a remote island commune off the coast of Vancouver Island. (Penguin Random House Canada)
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A remote island commune off the coast of Vancouver sets the scene for a coming-of-age graphic novel detailing a group of friends' fear of adulthood and the enticement of running away from home.
The Gulf, written by Vancouver-based cartoonist and illustrator Adam De Souza, aims to capture the listlessness, restless energy and raw emotion of how it feels to be a teenager nearing the end of high school.
De Souza sat down with Margaret Gallagher, host of CBC Radio's North by Northwest, to discuss the book before an event on Thursday at Lucky's Books.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
North by Northwest13:30
Adam de Souza on his new graphic novel, The Gulf
Award-winning cartoonist and illustrator Adam de Souza talks about his new graphic novel, The Gulf. It's about a group of East Vancouver teens who run off to join an island commune.
What's behind the title The Gulf?
It speaks to the geographic location of the book but also to the emotional place the characters find themselves between adolescence and adulthood.
They're kind of stuck there, so I wanted to address that.
Why did you want to write about this time of life?
We put so much pressure on kids to make good decisions that will impact their whole lives. What you want to do with your life is such an enormous question, and I think it's important to focus on what that actually means to a youth.
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Tell me about the friends who are at the centre of the story. How much of you went into Milo, Alvin, Oli and Liam?
They're a lot more out there than I was at that age. There's a bit of me in each of them, but they're much cooler and out there than I ever was. I remember feeling so strongly about how I wanted my life to be or how I thought things ought to be.
But writing a coming-of-age story that isn't neat and tidy is reflective of the reality I had growing up.
Three young people sit on a glassy hill on an island.
De Souza, a Vancouver-based cartoonist and illustrator, says that writing a coming-of-age story that wasn't straightforward was reflective of his upbringing. (Penguin Random House Canada)
For those who haven't read it, can you describe the trajectory these kids are on?
They're about to graduate from high school, and they decide not to enrol in university to go to a commune, which Oli, the lead character, found a pamphlet for on her parents' shelf when she was young.
They're pursuing this [utopian] vision of a world that makes more sense to them.
This commune is called the Evergreen. It's on a Gulf Island. What inspired the Evergreen?
Whenever I visited the Gulf Islands growing up, I was always struck by how wild they felt. It's a place where the human is de-centred, which is what I like a lot about Vancouver itself. I've always found it easier to imagine other ways of doing things there.
What is it about the Gulf Islands that speaks to you?
It is that remoteness, wildness and beauty of it all. It is really inspiring.
Writing about a commune on the island is also about me, as a city dweller, and my vision of what life could be like if I were to pack it all up and buy a cabin on the island.
Why did you choose to set the book in 2007?
I could write about that time well, because I was 13 or 14. Writing about a specific time allows you to reflect on what was happening. To me, 2007 was the tail end of the Bush years, and Obama was right around the corner.
So, writing about someone like me who grew up in that "War on Terror" era and has a memory of the Twin Towers falling informs how she feels politically, which is that she feels lost.
An animated youth sits on a patch of grass. She reads a book while listening to music.
Youth face a lot of pressure early on to make good decisions that will impact their whole lives, according to De Souza. (Penguin Random House Canada)
You also capture some of the folly of that youth. They make assumptions about adults, but you do this without judgment. How do you hold both the adult and the youth perspectives in balance?
It's important for me, as a writer, to write them with kindness so I understand they're coming from somewhere, even if they're reprehensible or terrible. A lot of the feelings in The Gulf, that Oli is feeling, are things that I felt.
I remember being in Grade 11 and being told to choose a career, apply to the university I wanted to attend, and have this whole plan. When you're forced to think about it, it's scary.
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You're an award-winning illustrator and cartoonist. How did you end up choosing this path?
Through a lot of idleness. I was in a band in high school. After high school, there was nothing I wanted to do in university.
I'd always drawn growing up. It's the only way I can spend my time and actively enjoy it.
How does the story of The Gulf lend itself to a graphic novel?
It's a lot more focused than my other storytelling. I came from doing a lot of zines and alternative comics, which allows you to be a lot less focused and a lot more vague.
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But writing a book with an editor allows you to sit down and think of every moment and ask yourself why it's happening. It's a lot more precise and a lot easier to get into.
Do you think you'll return to these characters? I want to know how their lives turn out.
A few people have asked me that. Since finishing the book, I have wondered, "Where is she now? Is she just working in a coffee shop? Is she still living on the island?"
I don't have an idea for it, but I would love to figure that out for myself and see if there's a story.
DE SOUZA, Adam. The Gulf. illus. by Adam de Souza. 240p. Tundra. Mar. 2024. Tr $20.99. ISBN 9781774880739.
Gr 10 Up--Deep emotions emerge throughout this journey that couples teenager Oli's internal struggle with an external quest to find a commune she once read about. Several teens, there for their own reasons, end up with Oli on her expedition, trekking through an area near Vancouver to an island that might hold the meaning they seek. Oli has lost her way, and as a result of significant bullying and shaming at school, she physically attacked another student. Feeling the pressure of graduation nearing, she makes a panicked decision and sets out after school one day, shocking those around her. De Souza's graphic approach includes crowded panels that forfeit standardization in favor of movement and emotion. Showing scenes mostly outdoors, the blue, yellow, and green hued backdrops are ethereal and provide the story's atmosphere of heightened impatience. Comparable to the hero in The Catcher in the Rye, the teens want more from life, including their relationships, but also bond in their shared misery. As the story builds toward the teens finding the commune, each guidepost provides answers to their questions without them realizing it. By the time they reach their destination, both readers and characters recognize that the quiet moments were the profound ones, giving the book an existential quality, aided by the fitting ending. VERDICT While not for every teen, this graphic novel will provide a niche audience a way to reframe how they see the world when facing a crisis, making it a purposeful purchase for social-emotional learning.--Alicia Abdul
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Abdul, Alicia. "DE SOUZA, Adam. The Gulf." School Library Journal, vol. 70, no. 3, Mar. 2024, p. 94. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A786340715/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=69bf2005. Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
de Souza, Adam THE GULF Tundra Books (Teen None) $20.99 3, 5 ISBN: 9781774880739
Three Vancouver teens on the cusp of graduation set off to join a community on an island in British Columbia's Gulf Islands.
The thought of going to The Evergreen has appealed to Olivia ever since she found the commune's promotional brochure as a child. Disillusioned with the grind of modern life, Oli and her two best friends, Liam and Milo, agree to run away to live there together. A run-in with a bully on the penultimate day of high school and an initially unexplained conflict with Liam derail Oli's original plan, however, leaving her without her backpack of supplies--and with Milo and Alvin, Milo's crush, as her traveling companions. As they make their way across the island, Oli plows through obstacles--sustaining injuries, getting lost in the woods, and accidentally abandoning camping gear--with single-minded determination, brushing off the consequences of her impulsivity and conflict avoidance until they suddenly catch up with her. Visual references, including Oli's flip phone, AOL Instant Messenger, and Milo's camcorder, establish the 2007 setting. Oli's frustration with the demands of capitalist society will resonate with contemporary readers. The portrayal of the teens, who are alternately goofy, angsty, brash, and self-conscious, is convincing, particularly in their banter and bickering. The illustrations use dynamic perspectives to emphasize moments of strong emotion, while monochromatic shading in muted colors conveys different moods. The characters are racially ambiguous; Oli's mom has a Korean name.
Evocatively captures adolescent earnestness and idealism for living meaningfully. (land acknowledgment) (Graphic fiction. 13-18)
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"de Souza, Adam: THE GULF." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A780841108/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1f6d5d52. Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
The Gulf
Adam de Souza. Tundra, $20.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-77488-073-9; $12.99 paper ISBN 978-1-77488-075-3
With high school graduation rapidly approaching, cynical Oli is almost free to leave for Evergreen Community, a commune in British Columbia's Gulf Islands, where she plans to do "meaningful work." Her best friends Milo and Liam are set to join, but after a hookup between Oli and Liam turns awkward, Milo's friend Alvin signs on instead. Oli, Milo, and Alvin abscond after their penultimate day of school, and their journey starts and stays rocky due to the confiscation of Oli's go bag and the group's general lack of preparation. Thanks to much-needed assistance from a few nonjudgmental adults, the teens finally make it to Evergreen, which, upon arrival, differs from what Oli imagined. Ample wordless panels allow the teens' actions and conversations to linger and take up space, while shaky, hand-inked drawings by de Souza (Ish, for adults) reinforce the uncertainty and distrust Oli expresses about her future. The limited color palette shifts to reflecr rhe characters' emotions and dialogue throughout their 2007-set journey, making for a contemplative and optimistic take on adolescent fears surrounding growing up in an inequitable world. The book's cover depicts Oli, Milo, and Alvin with tan skin; other characters' skin tones reflect the white of the page. Ages 14-up. (Mar.)
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"The Gulf." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 50, 11 Dec. 2023, p. 70. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A777789791/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5c728ccb. Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
Campbell, Jen THE SISTER WHO ATE HER BROTHERS Thames & Hudson (Children's None) $19.95 11, 23 ISBN: 978-0-500-65258-9
Fourteen international stories embrace their gore.
Poet Campbell directly addresses readers in the foreword to this collection of grisly tales from around the world, explaining that, once upon a time, these "brilliant, horrible tales" were well known. But people altered them and gave them " 'happily ever afters' where nothing really awful happened and, well, a lot of them became boring." This collection of unsourced stories intentionally avoids the Disney-fication of folklore: A Chinese girl is mummified by the skin of a horse that wants to marry her; a greedy Russian prince marries a button-eyed cuckoo resembling his sister; Korean children are tricked into eating their parents. These tales are disturbing--and satisfyingly so--but in ways that might make it hard to find an appropriate audience. Readers who are ready for stories of wine (or could it be clotted blood?) and seven wives impregnated at once might feel like they're too old for a collection of fairy tales, although certainly many gore-loving middle-grade readers will devour these. Atmospheric illustrations pair effectively with the text, and Campbell departs from tradition to include overtly feminist stories as well as gay and lesbian romance without a hint of societal condemnation. An afterword explains more about the author's perspective and reasons behind some of the liberties she takes with the original stories. Characters are presented as racially diverse.
Creepy and progressive. (Folklore. 9-13)
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"Campbell, Jen: THE SISTER WHO ATE HER BROTHERS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Nov. 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A680615743/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7f49b480. Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
Jen Campbell, illus. by Adam de Souza. Thames & Hudson, $19.95 (120p) ISBN 978-0-500-65258-9
As gleefully retold by Campbell, traditional tales from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and Central America reflect two layers of revision--a reversion to grisly details usually squeamishly edited out, and updated plots and characters that reflect a more inclusive worldview, with queer and disabled protagonists of many ethnicities. Some stories chill, such as "The Souls Trapped Under yhe Ocean (Ireland)," in which a man who uses sign language is troubled to discover that the merman he loves has "tiny pieces of other people's souls, all stitched together" in a composite soul. Others are more forthrightly gory: "The Boy Who Tricked a Troll (Norway)" features a disembowelment, with "guts tumbling out" and landing "with a wet splash," and in "The Princess Who Ruled the Sea (Inuit)," a king uses an axe to cut off his daughter's fingers "one by one." De Souza's convenrionally hip, cartoonish illustrations blunt the well-told tales' sharp edges, but not their messages of resourcefulness and diversity. Ages 9-12. (Nov.)
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"The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers: And Other Gruesome Tales." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 40, 4 Oct. 2021, p. 157. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A679294127/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c9d591d3. Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
Adam de Souza. Silver Sprocket, $14.99 trade paper (56p) ISBN 978-1-945509-88-9
De Souza's fragmented but emotionally coherent comics debut delivers an unusually poignant collage of grief. Opening with a tender episode in which a girl sees her father devastated by the death of her mother in a car accident, the narrative jumps ahead to the protagonist as a young woman still numbed and lost from the tragedy. Undergoing a mysterious sensory deprivation therapy, she is flung into a cacophony of free association flickers. These flashes communicate on two tracks. First, they represent her attempt to bring order to her inner chaos ("this is the hardest part; that all things exist concurrently"). The second is a peeling back of the looping memory of her driving with her mother (which always ends "in twisted metal and searing heat") and the mystery of trauma. De Souza's character drawings are simple, but set in swirling and broken-open panel layouts that communicate the tale's woozy connectivity. He embraces an overtly cubist style, scrambling and reframing narrative, and deconstructing the expectations of comics form. It's an emotionally expansive rendering of a pained but doggedly optimistic quest for permanence "in the horrible and the beautiful." (Apr.)
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"Ish." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 14, 4 Apr. 2022, pp. 36+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A700952499/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=103f6061. Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
Ish. By Adam de Souza. Art by the author. Apr. 2022. s6p. Silver Sprocket, paper, $14.99 (9781945509889). 741.5.
Canadian cartoonist/illustrator de Souza gathers three previously published zines--ish (2017), and so you write it down (2018), and coda (2021)--to forge a loose journey confronting devastating loss and subsequent attempts at moving forward. In a narrative divided into brief vignettes, de Souza initially presents mostly black-and-white images unpredictably paneled, with intermittent colorful pages that seem to designate a narrative shift. Halfway through, tinted lines burst into panels and pages filled with peaches, turquoises, and golds, as if black and white is no longer enough. Vagueness looms throughout, emphasizing life's ambivalence and unknowing. The protagonist is initially a young child who is about to lose her mother--perhaps in a car accident as the cover suggests--leaving both father and daughter understandably bereft. "There is a sadness growing here. Its nature is to consume," the pages continue. Coping mechanisms include the extreme, "dive therapy" into utter darkness, as well as the more accessible writing and remembering. The "coda"--"and here we are, years later"--offers no easy conclusions, "rarely certain," accepting a final "ish." De Souza creates for intrepid readers comfortable with ambiguity. --Terry Hong
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 American Library Association
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Hong, Terry. "Ish." Booklist, vol. 118, no. 11, 1 Feb. 2022, pp. 30+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A693527449/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f5a90c70. Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.