It was one of the biggest talking points of the 19th century: whether a galloping horse lifted all four hooves off the ground simultaneously. Painters struggled with the notion, often wrongly depicting the animals doing a sort of leap, their limbs outstretched front and back. Then, in the 1870s, the great British adventurerEadweard Muybridgeclosed the debate, devising photography with quick enough exposure times to isolate the horses in motion – and airborne.
“Lots of people didn’t accept it,” saysGuy Delisle. “When they saw a photograph of the horse gathering its hooves, they said it looked like a dead spider. But when the photographs were projected in sequence, they said, ‘It’s true!’”
The new comic book from the revered Quebecois graphic novelist vividly relates the extraordinary life story of Muybridge. It’s a rollicking ride, told in Delisle’s typically light-footed style: Muybridge gatecrashes the early wet-plate photography boom in San Francisco, suffers a near fatal stagecoach accident, fuels America’s desire for epic visions of itself via his pioneering landscape photos, before murdering his wife’s lover (an incident depicted by Delisle in a motion-study-style sequence that’s arresting in every sense). Then Muybridge finally ushers photography into the new era, projecting his photos in sequence so their subjects appear to move, using his niftily titled “zoopraxiscope”, which prefigured the film projector.
These studies are still standard reference for animators, which is how Delisle – who began his career in the profession – first encountered Muybridge. “But I never realised his photos were so old – from the very start of photography,” says the 59-year-old, sipping a cafe noisette in a bar underneath his studio in the French city of Montpellier. With curly black hair, a whitening beard and an unassuming air, he looks like a stockier John Cusack, casually dressed in black fleece, blue twine bracelet and Reebok trainers.
Delisle knew Muybridge’s unfeasible life story was perfect comic-strip material. The Canadian made his name with a run of gently compelling travelogue graphic novels that explored the peculiarities, hardships and madnesses of day-to-day life in the likes ofPyongyangandJerusalem, where he found himself for various reasons. Did he identify with Muybridge as a fellow explorer and observer? He sidles around the comparison. “The fact he left home saying, ‘One day I’ll be famous’ – that’s captivating. I also left home early and travelled a lot. I didn’t think I’d become famous, but it happened.” The attraction, however, was mainly aesthetic: “I like the scientific, mechanical side of what Muybridge did. And the result was really beautiful photos. That makes me happy.”
What’s thrilling about Delisle’s account is its rich depiction of the heady stampede of new technologies, with painting giving way to photography then to cinema. Muybridge’s patron was industrialist (and equestrian)Leland Stanford, whom Delisle calls “the Elon Musk of his day”. As the pair worked to refine photography, it seemed obsolescence loomed for painting. But it turned out that this new technology complemented, rather than supplanted, the old.
“Painters looked at photography as a new tool, like AI today,” says Delisle. “They no longer needed models and could have perfect light all the time.” His book plays off this sweeping artistic conversation, sprinkling his panels with early daguerreotypes, Muybridge’s photos of landscapes and Native Americans, as well as paintings by suddenly-detail-focused realists such as Ernest Meissonier, whose beard was even more straggly than Muybridge’s.
There’s an equally healthy collision in Delisle’s shared studio space. Crammed into the rooms of this third-floor apartment in a 19th-century townhouse are comic-book artists, animators and illustrators. One is former video game pioneer and now fellow comic-book artistJordan Mechner. Delisle’s own space, in a cubby-hole around the corner, is a bombsite of pens, ink trays and other art paraphernalia. On his computer, there are sketches he’s colouring for an adaptation of a book by Provençal novelist Jean Echenoz.
Delisle and his wife have been in Montpellier for a decade or so. After years of continually upping sticks due to her work as an administrator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), they wanted a more stable environment for their two children. So after winning an award at the prestigious Angoulême international comics festival in 2012 for Jerusalem, its sales of 300,000 making him one of the “happy few” making a living from the profession, Delisle moved on from the travelogue form. His works have since included autobiography, detailing hisstudent job at a Quebec paper factoryand confessionals about his dubious parenting, as well as an account ofan MSF aid worker being taken hostage in Chechnya.
His dispatches from Shenzhen, Pyongyang, Burma and Jerusalem – part of the noughties boom of nonfiction storytelling in graphic novels – arrived at precisely the right time, feeding western curiosity about the wilder climes and blank spots of the wider world. “I was in North Korea in May 2001, just before 9/11, when it became part of the axis of evil,” says Delisle. “Everyone wanted to know all the details about it. And I’d had the opportunity to walk around it all, with my hands in my pockets.”
North Korea was still sufficiently evil in 2014 to cause the cancellation, three weeks before shooting, of an adaptation of his Pyongyang book. Steve Carell was lined up to play Delisle, with Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski behind the camera. But then cameThe Interview, Seth Rogen’s comedy about assassinating North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The rogue state was so outraged, it hacked Sony’s servers and threatened to bomb cinemas, making similarly themed projects verboten.
The film would have pushed Delisle even further into the limelight – maybe one reason why he wasn’t too bothered by its scrapping. He was initially reluctant to make himself a character in his own work, intending to do it only once in Shenzhen, to recount his experiences working in the city as a young animation director. But he kept travelling, and the role of wide-eyed cultural interlocutor struck a chord with readers. “Pyongyang was translated into 26 languages,” he says. “So I said, ‘Well, comic books seem to be working out for me.’”
Emphasising this naivety, his graphic self becomes more unflattering and block-headed with each book. Delisle had “a feeling of being not very legitimate” – especially when his “giant postcards” were set alongside the more journalistic and politicised works ofJoe Sacco. For his 1990s Palestine books, Sacco had a press card that allowed him access to the Gaza Strip. Delisle was turned down three times by the Israeli authorities for his. “When they heard I was a comic-book artist, I think they thought I was Joe Sacco – ‘Oh no, not him!’”
Yet Delisle is rigorous in his own way. “Before understanding something,” he says, “I have to understand it well. But once I do, I tell myself, ‘Yes, I can explain that.’” This pedagogical impulse underlies his travelogues – something he may have inherited from his teacher mother. It’s still visible in his new book about Muybridge, which follows the pioneer’s penchant for breaking things down into constituent elements by rendering his life in easily digestible panels.
Like his long-bearded new subject, Delisle is also juggling the challenges of adaptation and the threats of obsolescence that new technology poses. The question of AI looms over the entire comic-book industry. Delisle still draws by hand, but can see how labour-saving AI could be. “For the book, sometimes I needed a picture of a galloping horse viewed from a particular angle. If AI can do that instantly, it could be useful.”
But by placing Muybridge’s story in one of the oldest mediums, hand-drawn art, it feels like Delisle is reminding us of something. You just have to look at the margins of his beautifully drawn pages, which are dotted with sketches of flipbooks portraying horses, riders and sparring boxers, each requiring fingers and thumbs to animate them. Drawing, he seems to be saying, is not ready for the knacker’s yard quite yet.
Muybridge is published by Drawn & Quarterly on 29 April. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy atguardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.