The name Michel Gagne may not be very familiar to you, but in actuality, this Canadian-born cartoonist has had a hand of being an animator and visual effects consultant in many animated films including Ratatouille, The Iron Giant, and more recently, Spider-Man Into The Spiderverse. In late 2010, Michel Gagne released a graphic novel simply titled The Saga of Rex and it was met with high critical praise at the time of its release.
Rex is an adorable little fox who has been abducted by an alien species so he can be cloned for research purposes. Rex meets his female clone named Aven and the imminently form a connection. Before he can get a chance to meet with her, Rex is whisked off to a different planet and begins to face many different adventurous challenges and comes across many dangers and many allies along the way.
The overall narrative can be rather complicated to take in, but the feelings and emotions you get from reading This graphic novel really leave an impact on your soul. There are many challenges and hardships our adorable little friend has to face and it’s hard not to feel bad for rex and hoping he’ll even get just a little bit of a break. Twists and turns happen with very shocking results even for young readers which makes the story even harder to guess how things will turn out. A romance blossoms between Rex and Aven as the story progresses and it is just downright adorable to watch those two in action.
The illustrations are both hauntingly atmospheric and downright lovely. You can tell that each page has been constructed with the utmost passion and every single panel is ambitious in its design when it comes to showing the world the story takes place in. There is no dialogue outside of some narration and this graphic novel proves you don’t need dialogue to convey the emotions of the charcters. The expressions on Rex are simple and yet they can succeed at showing how he feels in certain situations.
Even though storywise it can seem rather complicated to follow at times, there is no doubt the Michel Gagne’s The Saga of Rex is a graphic novel I would recommend to any reader. It may be a little shocking for younger readers, but I can guarantee you’ll be falling in love with Rex when you first meet him in this adventurous and bold space tale.
(Final Grade: A-)