re:mote voices

Title: In My Darkest Hour
Writer/Artist: Wilfred Santiago
Publisher: Fantagraphic books

Isn’t it funny how Y2K and the millennium seem so long ago? That is the thought, which to some degree, is at the back of my mind as I start to read Wilfred Santiago’s graphic novel In My Darkest Hour. This is the story of Omar, a story of our times.

Omar has hit one of those periods in life, where he doesn’t really know what he is doing with himself. His relationship with Lucinda isn’t going too well, she is younger than him, full of conviction about what her future holds, and she seems embarrassed to be seen with him. In a fatalistic manner he is flirting with other women – the even younger daughter of his boss, the girl in the Chinese laundrette across from where he works, and another student where Lucinda studies.

As the book goes on we get a certain insight into Omar’s views on pleasure and pain. There are suggestions of mental problems, an indication that despite his protests Omar may be bipolar. Which in this contest serves to provide an extra intensity to the story’s emotions. And perhaps also informing the colour of Omar’s nightmares, as the book is interspersed with dark, twisted and haunting images.

Essentially this is a story about relationships, but with that comes a cultural snapshot. In the background there is often a TV or a radio, contextualizing the narrative with news stories. Which is where the impact and irony of the story comes from. Omar has been through his dark times, and is starting to take stock of the pieces, just as the world goes mad. The period from the millennium to September 2001 sums up the bulk of the book, then from September 2001 to November 2002 we flash past in a few pages, where Santiago’s art embodies the darkest days.

While writing I come up with the thought that that In My Darkest Hour has comparisons to Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye Berlin, which was written in the Germany of the 1930’s showing the rise of events, which led to world war 2. In this context we have the rise of bush, of anti-globalisations, and the first mutterings of assaulting Iraq – all warning flags for current events.

My first contact with Wilfred was when his art caught my eye on the Pop Life collaboration with Ho Che Anderson. In My Darkest Hour has some parallels with Pop Life, the idea of people and their relationships, and of course Wilfred’s art. But, this is Wilfred’s project, and no doubt more personal with that. As such, the art shows more of his range. The front cover a stripped, featureless figure in a bedroom, the back a dingy wall with peeling wallpaper, and a framed, blurred picture of a two headed man, which I take to be Omar and an expression of his two sides. Inside the bulk of the art has Wilfred’s recognisable style – warm, rounded illustrations, built from a knowledge of how people really look. In the course of the book we see some of the photographs Omar takes as photos, or some of the backgrounds are photos with characters drawn over them. Then of course there are the nightmares I talked about earlier, a mix of disturbing artworks and distorted collages – describing on one level the characters nightmares, before transcending to those of the world.

Being a graphic novel is also a different form from a text novel, in the way that text can be played with – integrated into the art, into the flow. Which Wilfred does, turning mantras into spiral texts, adding the news in the backgrounds, letters from characters in different handwriting. So that altogether In My Darkest Hour is a dense, multi layered work, that is as striking a piece of art as it is the story of one man’s life in our world.