BUSTER

A graphic novel focuses on the life of Hollywood legend Buster Keaton.

Barnett’s book, illustrated by Tavares, opens in Montreal in 1963. Thirty-two-year-old animation director Gerald Potterton is struck with the inspiration for a new film, the story of a funny “little man who travels across Canada on one of those little rail-speeders” and has lots of misadventures along the way. He brings his idea to the National Film Board of Canada along with his dream: to cast an aging Keaton as the protagonist. Keaton agrees, and Barnett’s narrative splits between chronicling the day-to-day triumphs and challenges of making The Railrodder and looking back at the celebrity’s long film career. Early on, he writes, directs, and appears in the 1921 silent movie The Playhouse. Keaton’s story progresses, flashback by flashback, through all the triumphs and challenges the star experiences on the path to becoming a cinematic titan, from pausing his career in order to serve in World War I to the making of the films that cemented his reputation as the greatest comic actor of all time. Since many of Keaton’s early movie projects have a spotty preservation record at best, every flashback has the feel of captivating speculation. Barnett has obviously steeped himself in Keaton lore, and the cast of characters, from studio foils and collaborators to the various people the filmmaker has personal relationships with through the years (the author provides a handy list of the players), is intriguing. But the consistent strength of Barnett’s writing is its complex, grounded affection for the older, more disillusioned Keaton, who works with Potterton on The Railrodder. That mature Keaton is also consistently well captured by Tavares’ artwork, particularly when contrasted with the younger, anything-goes, idealistic version of the man seen in flashbacks. Through the illustrator’s artwork and Barnett’s unaffected prose, a bygone Hollywood era beautifully comes to life.

A nuanced and surprisingly tender depiction of a movie giant and a vanished industry.