Helen Chazan, The Comics Journal:
“His mask, both the representation of his mind and a barrier to reader’s knowing his self, remains over his head, but doesn’t it seem to rest slightly different now? Doesn’t he seem weary in a weathered way now, not so much exasperated? In this moment, Lucille is still “you,” but the reader ceases to be Lucille. He is no longer a hero but a man who has spent his years cultivating his own life. Transition is that great hero’s journey, that overwhelming allegory, weaving together our most anxious uncertainties about consciousness and our staunchest political convictions, but eventually it is a personal experience, deep meaning for one and not for others to partake. “You” becomes “Lucille.” We relinquish Lucille’s body and mind to his own thoughts and feelings. Leo Fox’s Lucille stories are about transition, and they are about that transition, from archetype, hero, persona, into person, from story into life lived. Lucille looks out at us in My Body Unspooling flanked by mysterious foliage. Boy Island leaves Lucille on its titular shores, spending its final moments after the world has been rebuilt whole on remembering what has been lost, turning away from people to the land itself. Once Lucille knows who he is, he becomes a mystery to readers. His mystery is that of a life after transphobia, life after liberation, reunion after the split that cleaved mind from body, boy from girl, and poisoned the earth. Someday that will be a story we can write about.”
Read the full review on The Comic Journal’s website here!
