The Vagabond Valise

Those who pick up this autobiographical graphic novel might at first be thrown by its whipsaw volleys between abject pain and darkly slapdash humor. But those who stick with it will find its initially mystifying rhythms powerfully redemptive by the end. Siris opens in the 1940s with the story of his father, Renzo, depicted as the world’s worst sailor and a knockabout drunk who sires five children (who are ultimately hauled away by social workers). The youngest is quiet little Chick-o, drawn with an actual chicken head (as Siris typically draws himself). One horrific foster family after another treats Chick-o as little more than a receptacle for abuse, a pattern that continues into his teen years. Relief comes in the form of his dreams of becoming a cartoonist; he also has the improbable luck to turn 17 in the late ’70s, just as punk rock shows up to provide a launchpad for adolescent rage. He dives into the Montreal music scene for carousing and clubbing that’s cathartic but also shadowed by the memory of his father’s hell-raising. Siris’s loopy lines and crackpot visual humor pulse with lived-in pain. This dark tapestry, just barely threaded with light, rewards readers who can bear to witness it. (Oct.)