ARE YOU WILLING TO DIE FOR THE CAUSE?

The founder of Drawn & Quarterly offers presents the first of a two-part graphic chronicle of the ill-fated efforts of the Front de liberation du Québec, covering the period from 1962 to 1970.

In Oliveros’ telling, the separatist violence was triggered by the casual, public bigotry of an Anglophone, Montreal-based railway executive. The FLQ began in Georges Schoeters’ tiny apartment, where he and his confederates (many in their teens) drafted a manifesto and mixed Molotov cocktails. These initial scenes are often quite funny, Molotov cocktails arcing from one panel to the next in front of imposing gray armories to explode with BOOMs and speech balloons filled with Nos as the down-at-their-heels revolutionaries seek one among them with a car to take them to their targets. But the violence was real and claimed victims, so the mood darkens. Oliveros creates a device to carry the story: a fictional CBC documentary with the principals and prominent figures of the day narrating events. When Schoeters was imprisoned, the mantle passed to François Schirm, who tried to start a guerrilla army and was sentenced to life in prison; and then to Pierre Vallières, who returned to the FLQ’s early, incendiary strategies. It’s an absorbing treatment of a story mostly forgotten in the U.S. Oliveros works in mostly six-panel-per-page layouts, peopling them with unprepossessing-looking white characters (mostly men) whose expressions frequently enhance the overall feeling of their incompetence. Largely missing from the tale are French Canadians’ genuine grievances. Readers must pore over the copious backmatter to learn that Quebec’s Francophones—87% of the province’s population—labored as an underclass in an Anglophone-dominated economy. Confining the focus to the FLQ’s leadership and their bumbling attempts makes for an entertaining read, but it’s hardly a nuanced one. The bibliography includes both contemporary and retrospective accounts, many in English, and meticulous notes detail Oliveros’ research and artistic choices.

An engaging introduction to a fascinating historical and cultural flashpoint.