Graphic Novel: The Displaced

Add To the Memory Bank Here 👉The Displaced

Publisher: Boom! Studios

Writer: Ed Brisson

Artist: Dee Cunniffe, Luca Casalanguida

Oh Canada

Put on your scarves and your sweaters, your beanies and boots, readers, because it’s off to the Great White North in Ed Brisson’s The Displaced. Indeed, the icy nooks and crannies of Canada make for the ideal backdrop of this equally chilling and foreboding mystery drama. When the city of Oshawa in Ontario disappears without rhyme or reason, it throws the country into a chaotic tailspin and acts as a hammer blow to those fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate citizens who managed to be out of town during the event. Yet, if Mother Nature had decided to place all the chips on the table, she raises the stakes by accompanying the disappearance of the city with the disappearance of the land and even the very memory of the place and all that once called it home.

Our group of survivors comes to the shocking realization that any person they once called family, friend, or acquaintance cannot remember them at all, leaving them with the harrowing task of remembering one another, as well as their respective narratives. However, the powers responsible for the swallowing of the city seem to ensure that their accounts balance and even the survivors seem to gradually deteriorate as time goes on. All that seems to be available as a symbol of hope, is one old man who comes to possess intimate knowledge of these events given his experience of past disappearances that the public at large had all but forgotten. Harold occupies the role of resident crazy person but believes that his old age demands he finds a successor to carry the heavy burden of the knowledge that he possesses.

Don't You...Forget About Me.

A young man named Emmett comes to unwillingly emerge as this next torchbearer responsible for giving guidance to the future survivors of these mysterious disappearances, or perhaps possible displacements. The Displaced serves up a thought-provoking story on the importance of identity, and particularly the notion of who we are in relation to others. It highlights the importance of places and place, and how these environments that we call home imbed our very existence within its thoroughfares, its taverns, its hospitals, and its homes.

While so many of us come to desire a move away from the drudgery and familiarity of our hometowns to exciting and exotic horizons new, Ed Brisson and Luca Casalanguida come to craft a brilliant story augmented by dreamy artwork that reminds us that we are a part of these places as they are a part of us. The Displaced makes for a thoughtful and serenely tragic, yet profound read on the imperative role of our memories both individually and collectively, suggesting new ways of understanding identity and personhood.