It takes a certain kind of graphic novel to cross over into the mainstream provided by publishers like Jonathan Cape. It can be nostalgiac and mordant, like, say, Seth’s recent George Sprott. It can emerge from the pen of one of the legends (like, say, Daniel Clowes whose recent Wilson we were so enamoured with). It can be political (like Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza), travelogue-y (like Guy Delisle’s ongoing work) or it can be memoir-y (like Alison Bechdel’s Funhome). It shouldn’t really be super hero-y (although Chris Ware can make that happen). And, occasionally, it may sacrifice narrative on the altar of art (see David Hughes’ Walking the Dog). As charming as Julian Hanshaw’s The Art of Pho is, it still tends to fall into that latter camp.
Little Blue is a small, childlike creature with an open-ended funnel for a nose who is left besides the road somewhere Vietnam-y by a man in a red car. Asked to stand and count to 500, a small community springs up around him that eventually gives him succour, with a roadside stand selling Pho. What is Pho when it’s at home, you may cry if you haven’t been to Vietnam yourself. Well, Pho is a kind of broth boiled up from beef bones and consisting of noodles and spring onions and chilli and coriander in hundreds of different ways (we learn that a bowl of Pho will taste particular and individual to whoever is selling it). Little Blue takes up residence with a group of travellers (all of whom are themselves selling Pho somewhere in the city) and gradually builds up a small coterie of regular customers – one of whom eventually invites Little Blue to cook for her at her home many miles away. This journey appears to presage some sort of crisis in which Little Blue learns something of his origins…
The art itself is lush and vibrant, mixing colours and styles in jarring and unexpected ways that have you scrutinising what you’re looking at to make sure you’re seeing everything you should and the book is chock-a-block with recipes that you can try your hand at yourself if you fancy a taste of Vietnam (in which respect you could arguably draw parallels with Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate). Where The Art of Pho is less successful is in terms of fashioning a narrative. Little Blue himself feels like something of a flimsy construct on which to hang the whole (and his love for fellow traveller Sandy occasionally veers on the Norman Bates as he peers at her naked through a crack in the wall, which distances you and prevents you warming to the little scamp) and his eventual search for the truth of his situation is rendered in such an abstract way as to prevent the reader understanding – whatever it is that goes on.
Any Cop?: Something of an oddity, then, a ragbag of glorious art and either mixed-up or inconsequential narrative hamstrings what perhaps should have been an interesting, loosely linked art installation. Graphic yes – novel, not so much…
Bookmunch 
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