Hubert

One man escapes from the mundane into a museum in this sumptuous volume. Hubert lives a simple, solitary life: he eats alone, he travels alone, and he paints alone. His joy and obsession is visiting an art museum, where he is free to lose himself in the glory and sensuality of its many female nudes. Such feminine beauty eludes him elsewhere, however, as personified by his distant, beautiful neighbor, whom he sees when she leans out her window to water her plants. Gijsemans is an artist of towering talent, and he captures Hubert’s life in all its loneliness with a delicacy of line and a mastery of pacing that is nearly unseen in debut comics. But the well-worn clichés that prop up the story (a lonely, middle-aged man drawn to a luminous young woman whose every appearance symbolizes vibrancy and happiness) weigh down the book. One hopes that Gijsemans will apply his considerable talents to more innovative stories in the future. (June)