What We’re Reading: Kmart Shoes

Kmart Shoes by Lance Ward (Seventh Avenue Productions, 2012)

Lance Ward’s graphic memoir, Kmart Shoes, sucked me into an intense vortex. His story is a tumultuous, painful story of troubled and meandering journey through childhood and high school. His neglectful father leaves to start a new family, his mother takes up with a verbally abusive drunk, he gets hooked on cocaine and framed for a robbery by a “friend,” fails to get into the military multiple times, his grandparents shun him, and he struggles to find a stable place to live — all within those hormonal formative years. The only thing keeping him surfacing now and again from his dark moments are his drawings, and the hope that some day, he can make a living as a cartoonist.

Ward’s dry, poignant, and sometimes bitter humor bring the strips to life. As a reader, you become invested in his story, and in him. The narrator of the story is present-day Ward, a swearing, but stable guy with a bald head, bushy beard, and glasses. He’s a bit jaded about the past, but his presence is also assuring, because we know that someday, Ward lives a stable life after finding who he calls his soul-mate and has two kids of his own.

Ward as a tween and teenager is misunderstood, has low self-confidence, and is glaringly honest of his own flaws. Ward says he wrote this novel as a therapeutic way to deal with his past hurdles, and it feels just like that: an exercise in purging and self-reflection, and most importantly, letting go. He’s good at calling other people’s bluffs. He can pick out the phony moments, point a finger at the mistakes made by himself and others. When Ward finally goes back to finish high school, he ends up graduating at the same time as his younger sister. Their father shows up after Ward hasn’t seen him in two years, and as Ward says, “Somewhere out there exists a father and son, smiling together on graduation day. And it’s the phoniest fuckin’ picture on earth.”

It’s a raw, corrosive story with a lot going on. Ward’s narrative can occasionally border on too bitter or raw. If this were prose, it would’ve lost some of my interest; however, the fact that this is a graphic novel with humorous and insightful drawings next to a pointed remark makes it intriguing, and I excuse those moments. Also, the presence of present-day Ward helps move the story along, and brings some sagely humorous moments to lighten the load.