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Carol Swain's Foodboy

By LJ Douresseau
November 1, 2004 - 15:22

In the small rural, Welsh village of Llanparc, Gareth and Ross have grown up together, but after a verbal confrontation with the leader of a traveling group of Evangelists, Ross undergoes a spiritual and physical transformation that changes his relationship with Gareth. Soon, Gareth becomes "the foodboy," supplying Ross, and sometimes his wild friends, with food. Ross apparently becomes increasingly feral, but Gareth never gives up on him even as the task of feeding Ross, who is increasingly dependent upon the food Gareth supplies him, becomes...stranger.

An examination of the original graphic novel, FOODBOY, and its author, Carol Swain, would be faulty if one attempts to separate the narrative into mundane "script and art." Foodboy is the work of a cartoonist; an examination of the process is almost divorced from the finished work.

Swain's exquisite, lush, and layered art is a pencil and charcoal dream world. Swain clearly wishes to convey something deeper than the story of two friends spiritually and physically growing in different directions. There is something larger her that suggests that none of us lives in a vacuum. The past, the present, and the future play a part in each choice we make and in each direction we take. What's exactly going on may be difficult to discover, but I may learn when I start my next reading, my third. A-

Last Updated: November 29, 2025 - 16:51