The Unlikely Story Of Felix And Macabber is a monstrous graphic novel by writer/letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou and artist Juni Ba. The story contains speckles of greatness and a deluge of eye-catching art, but it ultimately falls short in the narrative department.
Felix is a monster in the literal sense of the word. Everyone who lives in this world is some sort of monster, after all. The other monsters make fun of Felix for how meek he is, forcing him to humiliate himself and take on scary tasks. One such task is to ding-dong-ditch at the scary mansion of a reclusive monster, Macabber. It’s a classic “mysterious old man lives in a mansion but is not nearly as scary as his reputation would have you believe” setup. Felix and Macabber form an unlikely acquaintanceship, and we learn of Macabber’s past as a dominant competitor in the World Monstering League (which is essentially monster wrestling).
I loved two things about The Unlikely Story Of Felix And Macabber: the art style and the world. The art is whimsical and wacky. Juni Ba brings a cartoonish life to the panels, striking a balance between realism (insofar as realism is possible in a fantasy world of monsters) and the abstract. There were points, however, where the art interfered with my understanding of the story because it didn’t clearly depict what was happening. The second facet is the world. Both Otsmane-Elhaou and Juni Ba pepper this world with fun references and playful terms that can be interpreted with context clues. The story benefits from a lack of seriousness in this realm. My favorite was “flugens,” which was likely a stand-in for “days” or some other short-ish period of time.
Beyond the worldbuilding and catchy art, The Unlikely Story of Felix and Macabber struggles to find its footing. The narrative opens with a narrator, who is hinted to be (and later confirmed to be, as far as I could tell) Felix. The narration is abruptly abandoned, leaving the dialogue and artwork as our primary story vehicles.
The tale here is convoluted and messy, often jumping from one time to another without warning. The experience quickly became jarring, and I had to sift back multiple pages to find out when certain events were happening. As I mentioned earlier, the art—despite how fun it is—often obscures the actual goings-on. It was near-impossible to parse what was supposed to be happening in certain frames. I ended up scratching my head during moments when I could tell Ba and Otsmane-Elhaou wanted me to be pumping my fist in triumph instead.
The characters also suffer from the story’s lack of clarity. The book begins with a sharp focus on Felix, carefully leading readers to believe it will be a story of change and growth for the diminutive monster. Then, like a wrestler being hurled from the ring, the book lurches into Macabber’s story and generally leaves Felix’s development in the dust. The book does this all while explaining to readers that both character’s lives changed drastically on different days. As in, narrative bubbles literally say this multiple times. The problem was I couldn’t parse how these characters were growing at all. Macabber revisits his violent past with…more violence, while Felix, who was ostensibly set up to eschew the monstrous lifestyle, falls into it after his time with Macabber. Perhaps it was meant to be a playful subversion of stalwart tropes or a message about broken people hurting other people, but the story doesn’t do the heavy lifting required for that sort of approach to work.
Fans of original art and quirky worlds will undoubtedly find something to love about The Unlikely Story Of Felix And Macabber. For me, though, It completely missed the mark.
Rating: The Unlikely Story Of Felix And Macabber – 5.0/10
-Cole
