SKATING WILDER

A journey through time as viewed from atop a skateboard by childhood friends from Los Angeles.

This dual-toned graphic overview opens in the orange-tinted past, with a young Dumais witnessing a stream of passing skateboarders who blow his young mind with gravity-defying tricks. The impact of this flashback immediately sells the appeal of skateboarding. Later, in purple-tinted pages, the adult Dumais clears out his old bedroom, leading to a book-length exploration of the evolution of skateboarding along with his personal reflections on the subject. In 1959, the first mass-produced skateboard appeared against a backdrop of “the American surfsploitation craze,” appealing to “sidewalk surfers.” Later, “the Dogtown kids projected waves onto the urban wasteland around them.” In the 1980s, stars like Christian Hosoi and Tony Hawk rose to prominence, ushering skateboarding into the critical mass pop culture appeal of the ’90s and beyond. Reminiscences by Dumais and his friend Dungo, the work’s illustrator, include “Trick History” sequences rendered in a black-and-white zine style befitting skateboarding’s DIY ethic. Poetic language describes how skateboarders “summoned the ocean” from dried-out swimming pools and “left the Earth” with their prowess. The graceful skating sequences often resemble frames of an animation and include diverse skaters and crowds of enthusiastic onlookers. The limited palette, which uses different colors to distinguish past and present, will hit readers in the feels when the effect is poignantly combined to convey memories.

Made with care for historical detail that matches its nostalgic passion.