I am Kyle's self-indulgence

This graphic novel was praised by many critics as one of the greatest comics of 2005. I avoided buying it, though, because at the time I was getting burned out on autobiographical comics (I'm beginning to think that the autobiography is to independent comics as the superhero genre is to mainstream comics--although there are some great stories, reading just one genre all the time gets a little old). I noticed this book at the University library's new comics section, though, and decided it's worth checking out. After reading it, I'm sorry I prejudged it last year. It is one of the most interesting, original, and exciting comics I have read in a long time.

On a basic level, the graphic novel is about the author's relationship with his epileptic brother. It begins with them as children in France and continues to their adulthood. At the same time, Epileptic is about far more than that. It reveals a lot of the author's personal, internal life, and the struggles he had at the time. It's very difficult to explain in words because it is the kind of story that really can only be told in the visual comics format. That's because the events of the story are not nearly as important as how they are told.

From Wikipedia I learned that Epileptic is a poor translation of the book's title. In French, it is L'ascension du haut mal, which has multiple meanings:

haut mal is an archaic term for epilepsy meaning literally "high evil" or "great sickness" (formerly used as a medical term in English, now replaced by grand mal), and ascension can mean either rise or climbing, as seen in a recurring image of the family climbing a steep slope into unknown terrain.

Such a title is understandably difficult to translate into English, but it says a lot about the nature of the novel. David B expresses abstract ideas and emotions through visual symbols, such as a serpentine monster (for his brother's illness) and ancient armor (for his own emotional detachment).

The symbols are clearly explained when they are first introduced, but David continues to use them throughout the book, creating his own kind of visual shorthand of symbolic language. As a result, the style becomes less realistic and more symbolic and expressive as the story goes on. It's a style of storytelling like nothing else I've seen before (the closest comparison I can make is to some of Art Spiegelman's earlier work).

The writing of the novel is very dense, but never feels obtuse or unnecessarily confusing. David B isn't using this symbolic storytelling style just to be unusual or pretentious--everything he draws is for a very clear purpose, and expresses what he is saying more clearly and effectively than he could with only words. For me, this makes Epileptic a true masterpiece of the comics medium.