The Owls Are Not What They Seem

by
Jeffrey David Cantwell
Contact: cantwell76@yahoo.com

The Book Discussed:
Owly: The Way Home and The Bittersweet Summer by Andy Runton. Top Shelf Productions, 2004. $10.00

Owly is our plump, anthropomorphic hero in author and artist Andy Runton’s all-ages fable of a lonesome sylvan bird living in a furnished tree house and rescuing worms from puddles. In gleaming black and white, Owly trundles through an outdoors reminiscent of Runton’s own Georgian backwoods, scaring off the local wildlife while in mellow but poignant pursuit of new friends. Originally two separate publications, collected in 2004, Owly: The Way Home and The Bittersweet Summer is no cloying children’s book; rather, a sophisticated graphic novel, and though moralistic, the two stories that split the book halfway are never sentimental.       

    In the event that anyone is embarrassed to ask, a graphic novel is the polite way of saying comic book; instead of a bit of text and full page illustration as is typical of children’s books, Owly is told in sequential panels merging illustration and text much like a daily comic strip, but the greater length (157 pages, all told) encourages exposition and allows for a range of panel design which evokes precise and instant emphasis in a way words alone cannot, allowing for a significantly nuanced storytelling flow. With that said, Owly is a silent book. Speech only comes through punctuated hieroglyphics of the old “screw” plus “ball” linguistic school. This lack of proper dialogue gives a function to every panel, whether in service of plot or character. It also means you can read through Owly while watching a cloud pass by from the corner of your eye.

    Owly himself has eyes the size of wintertime radials, studded with a bean of a beak that opens to signify joy; heavy black lines lid his eyes in moments of fright or concern. A pair of tiny wings can scarcely touch across the bubble that is his body (he seems incapable of proper flight). Together these modest items express the entire range of Owly’s emotional vocabulary, though indeed they are plenty.

    Although he would look fine on a plastic pencil case or tattooed on the small of a woman’s back, Runton’s creation is so unlike the empty, languid beasts stacked high at the local San Rio depository. Owly is complicated, showing both courage and doubt; meanwhile, Hello Kitty wears a pretty pink bow. Simple circles and lines are organized to portray a full personality, and not just cuteness as some complete and precious aesthetic end to itself. 

    Early in The Way Home, the elegiac image of a dejected Owly walking through a rain of thick scribbles in his raincoat, droopy eyes on his feet, made my stomach disappear. He scoops a drowning worm up with a leaf, and nurses it back to life by candlelight in a wonderful series of single page panels that mark a rhythmical passage of time. Runton’s minimal line work and supple blacks give the scene an ideal subtlety. Consider the wise old Elizabeth Cotton singing a childlike blues by way of soundtrack.

    As an awkwardly sensitive kid applying compassion without limit, Owly immediately becomes a far-out work of fiction, never mind that he is an animal that uses binoculars and wears a pith helmet while doing so. He does not reserve his kindness only for select friends and family the way human beings tend to do; however, Owly behaves the way most of us, presumably, were raised to behave: to be modest and to help others, regardless of reward. In this way Owly shares sympathies with Charlie Brown, in addition to already resembling the disembodied head of that character. Strip a person of their arrogance, their vanity, the guile that holds their ego so high, and perhaps we will find consistent decency and Owly making a cup of tea.  

    Of course, this creates an oblique fear that exists apart from the plot: Owly could be utterly destroyed by the conceit of social predators. Though the reader hopes (and secretly knows) Runton will not venture there, the potential for disaster looms as large as Owly’s dewy-eyed headlights. Just as a generous deed might make Owly hover with joy, a bully could obliterate him. Such is the virtue of this character, that if some crude woodland pest were to hurt Owly, even through a snide remark, I think it would crush me as well.        

    Fortunately, Owly’s quest to find a friend bears fruit and several hummingbirds, and at no point does anyone pull a football away from him. Lessons are comfortably learned about trust and sacrifice, though in life no one could possibly reach adulthood with such beautiful sensibilities as Owly’s intact. Nonetheless, if the kids don’t respond to Owly, then buy them some corporate law textbooks or drown them yourself.

~In Memory of Ray Cayer~