Review by Frank Plowright
Despite the greater complexity of graphic storytelling in the 21st century, readers are still likely to be wrong-footed by the way David and Maria Lapham tell Lodger. We’re so used to the narrative captions featuring the thoughts and comments of the person shown in the panels, that despite their contradictory nature, it might take time for it to fall into place that here those captions aren’t the thoughts of Ricky, who’s followed visually. Cleverly, though, they frequently comment on her. The sleight of hand is visual as well as verbal, since David Lapham doesn’t exactly hide things in the art, but he doesn’t draw attention to them either.
Lodger is the name used by the writer of a travel blog, the name taken from their habit of staying with families in the remote areas they visit. Whether or not this is a reliable narrator is left hanging for a while, but to hear him tell it, he has integrity and passion, and he’s appalled by commercial necessity. As Lodger opens he’s being hunted by Ricky, the girl he left behind six years earlier. The Laphams update on his current activities while alternating with flashbacks about why Ricky’s so determined to track him down.
Although not featuring traditional characters, Lodger is a crime thriller, and Lapham draws a deliberate comparison to his Stray Bullets series by using the same eight panel per page layout. As with that series, the focus is on the dispossessed, those barely scraping by, and why some are willing to believe there may be something better. Instead, in Lodger, hell comes calling.
This is a difficult graphic novel to review without spoilers, and these should be avoided at all costs because Lodger only gradually reveals the appalling truth. There’s a fair bit more going on than is first apparent. Consider instead that David Lapham has been a benchmark for quality crime stories for years, and there’s no detriment to his collaboration here in what’s a dark and compulsive meditation on shifting identities.
