Every year, I take a trip out to San Diego for Comicon, and that's really about as much travel as I like to do. The uncertainty of where and how you're going somewhere, where you're going to stay when you get there, if you'll even be safe, let alone comfortable and happy, keeps me relatively home-bound. Reading about travel, on the other hand, is something I can very much get into. Especially when it's done with the wit and perceptiveness that Neufeld shows throughout the pages of A Few Perfect Hours. Neufeld balances the needs of showing how foreign the countries he traveled to are with the obvious needs of making the book accessible to an audience that hasn't travelled to this country, and also does a really good job of portraying the pitfalls and dangers without losing the fun and adventure of travel.
It's interesting that there have been enough comics about travel to compare and contrast them as a genre unto themselves. The three "big" releases in this genre of late have been this book, Baraka and Black Magic in Morocco and Carnet De Voyage, but what's interesting is that within all three books, there's a lot of variety. First of all, there's variety of locale, and A Few Perfect Hours sets itself apart by being a travelogue through Southeast Asia and Central Europe, unlike the often Middle Eastern or Western European locations of the other two books. There's also an interesting difference of approach in each of the books as far as point of view goes. Carnet De Voyage is the journey of a single, newly successful artist, while both Baraka and A Few Perfect Hours focus on a couple. A Few Perfect Hours, however, seems to be more about a couple for whom travel is a big part of their initial draw to one another, while for Baraka it was more about a pair of travellers who didn't know entirely what they were getting themselves into.
Of course, all of this is mostly just ruminations on the travel genre as applied to comics, and not the specifics of A Few Perfect Hours per se. Neufeld has a likable, funny approach to narrating A Few Perfect Hours that makes the reader feel much more comfortable than Neufeld and his girlfriend Sari Wilson probably were on the actual journey. It is this "in hindsight" style of narration and storytelling that makes A Few Perfect Hours work so well for me, I think, because the discomfort is seen much more in a comfortable, "someday, you'll find this funny" context rather than a life-threatening or unbelievably uncomfortable context.
Which is not to say that Neufeld fails to convey the discomfort or outright danger that he and Sari experienced in their travels. The descriptions of their hotels bordered on horror movie fare for an American like me who needs his clean bathrooms and readily available hot and cold running water. The description and visuals of the cave and its claustrophobic, dangerous interiors encouraged a sort of sympathy fear in me as I read them. And I definitely got the sense of intimidation and minor fear, mixed with a bemusement, at the aggressive Serb who kept forcing Josh to drink Schnapps on the train.
However, Neufeld really goes right in that, without losing the downsides and dangers of international travel, he still plays up the joys of such things as well. There's a nice balance between, say, the almost creepy religious fervor of the Baptist missionaries and their kind offer of free lodgings, or between the lonely vibe at Ong's Organic Farm and the beautiful view of the night sky that Josh experiences while he's there. Neufeld has no problem poking fun equally at the "ugly American" stereotype that he (and no doubt, all of us Americans) might sometimes embody and the equally strange behavior of some foreign countries, the latter most effectively in the hilarious tale of "How to Star in a Singaporean Soap Opera."
I hate to again explore A Few Perfect Hours by way of contrasts, but I'm afraid that all future travelogues will be measured to some degree by what I liked about Carnet De Voyage. Neufeld's artwork is quite different from that of Craig Thompson, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Neufeld's work has a cartoonish, almost cute, vibe to it that I really like, but that doesn't get in the way of his also doing impressive detail work. His backdrops really bring the locales to life, whether it's the exotic temple in Bangkok, the mountaintop garden of Mr. Ong and the funeral in Bali or the more mundane settings of a plane, a train and a Singaporean recreation of New York City. I also really like his expressive characters, and he does a great job of conveying the personalities of himself, Sari and other characters, most notably his grandmother Gus in a particularly memorable segment that combines slice-of-life and travel journal quite effectively.
A Few Perfect Hours is an interesting insight not only into the customs of different countries but into the lives of two interesting lead characters and how they interact with these cultures. It's light and fun, well-observed and always engaging. 10/10
