Graphic novelist Guy Delisle, now based in France, grew up in Quebec City and went on to a career in animation before turning his pen to celebrated travelogues about such far-flung places as Pyongyang, Shenzhen, Burma, and Jerusalem, exploring the complex history and politics of each country while immersed in a new culture.

In 2012, Jerusalem, which traced the year Delisle and his wife (an administrator with Médecins Sans Frontières) spent in the conflict-burdened region, won the prestigious Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize (known as the Fauve d'Or) for book of the year.

Médecins Sans Frontières also played a role in his 2017 book Hostage, the true story of MSF worker Christophe André, who was held captive for three months while on a mission in the Caucasus region.

Delisle's most recent work, Factory Summers, brings him closer to home. An autobiographical look at the three summers he spent working at a Quebec City pulp and paper factory, it's also a keen-eyed examination of the tensions of class and sexism in a blue-collar, all-male workplace — and connects those dots back to his distant relationship with his own father.

From his sharply observant explorations from an outsider's perspective to turning the lens on his own youth and adventures in parenting, Delisle's graphic novels take readers on journeys both startlingly unfamiliar and some perhaps all too relatable.

Delisle spoke with CBC Books about Factory Summers, how his background as an animator influences his work as a graphic novelist and his creative approach to telling compelling stories through both words and art.

Well, I got the Fauve d'Or in France, that's a very big one. It's the biggest [comic book] festival in France — probably the biggest in the world. It felt very good to have the people that do comic books tell you that they appreciate the work you're doing. It was a lot of fun. It was right at the beginning of my career. Of course, this kind of press can really help if you're a young artist. Overall, it's been a very nice experience.

Yeah, it goes back to my youth when I started to work and it was in a pulp and paper factory where my dad had been working all his life. So I spent three summers there working in that very big and strange factory where I met some very different people. It was kind of a different country in itself — I've always thought that it was a very exotic place.

Animation for me was the perfect way to find a job and make a living. And I've worked on animation in different fields for about 10 years, and I slowly moved to comic books — that was actually just for fun. And it became popular and I thought, "Well, maybe I can just do that." So it was a strong progression.

Animation is a kind of a way to analyze information through movement. But for comic books, it's the narration. You have the movement and the reaction, and you have to make it very clear so everybody can understand what's going on. They have to reach the same goal at the end of the day — if it's funny, they will laugh. And if they're not laughing, you have to go back to the table — it's the same process somehow.

It actually fits in the narration because my father was the reason why I was working in that factory in the summer, and I wanted to explain a bit of the relationship — or non-relationship — I had with my father. I thought when I was doing the book that the main subject was the factory. But I think I realized after I finished that maybe it was actually more about my father, because he's there all the time. The way I work, I wanted to put more stuff about my father, but there was a limit. The rhythm is super-important – sometimes I draw a page and I read them back, and they don't work. And you say, "Well, this kind of slows down the story." So I take it out.

It's hard to tell, actually. Again, it kind of goes naturally. When I do these books, I'm always afraid to bore people. And the good thing about comic books, is it's very efficient. You don't want to put too much information. And if you can put information in a drawing instead of talking about it, it's better. I like that. And if you want to explain something, it's very efficient to draw a little map. You put an arrow where you go. You have all these narration tools now that you have in your hand.

When someone says, "I've read your book — I couldn't stop and I've read the whole thing in two hours before going to bed," I'm happy, but not happy at the same time, because sometimes I spend like two years on the book and they've read it in two hours. [laughs] But then I said to myself, "Well, I'm glad that they turned the page."

Well, I don't do it on purpose, I have to admit. People say, "You have such a candid way of looking at things," but I don't see that really. For me, that's the only way I can tell a story. Basically, I like when it's funny and I go in deep places and see how it is. Even when I was going to North Korea, that was in 2001 — a long time ago — I thought maybe it's actually not that bad, because we didn't have a lot of information at the time. Now it would be kind of strange to think that way, but at the time, I thought, "Let's see, maybe it's a good country." But a few hours after I was there, I changed my mind. I thought, "Well, maybe there's going to be enough material to make a book about that. It seems like a really crazy place."

Jerusalem, at the time, I didn't know a lot about the situation, but I thought, "Okay, I have it here in front of me to try to understand what's going on," and that was how the book started.

I wouldn't try to be impartial — I don't think that's possible. I was with Doctors Without Borders — all of these people are left-wing people. Being with an NGO is very different than if you go there as a pilgrim, for example — you would see the country differently. And if I would go today, I would meet different people, and it could be a totally different tone and book. But that's what I like about doing autobiography — it's like one picture that you take at a time, coming from this Canadian guy who doesn't know much about the situation. And the reader knows where the information comes from, so I think that's fair. I'm not a specialist — I'm just going to try to understand what's going on.

If it's funny and weird and strange and a bit bizarre, well, it goes in the book and that's good stuff. I have that tendency when I learn something, in that kind of teacher way, to try to explain to everybody because it's interesting. It's somehow very powerful that way, the comic-book language — I really appreciate that.

Oh, yeah — so many. Like most francophones, I was reading all this stuff from Franco-Belgian artists. As a teenager, I moved on to the evolution of comic books, mostly from France; I read a few comics from the States when I was young, like superhero things, but that was not too much of my cup of tea. And then as a teenager, I read Maus, which was such an important book – all the people of my generation who wanted to do comic books, we were all thinking, "I think we can do more with comics than what we have, because it's a great medium." And then the answer of that question with Maus – yes, you can read a comic book, you can cry, and it is powerful. It was very important for sure.

That's a tough question — I don't really define my art; I just do my own stuff. I'm surprised I have readers as young as 12 — I mean, at 12, I wouldn't have read a book on Jerusalem! [laughs] But that's what I like about comics now — it's really broad. In terms of my style, I like to keep things simple — I keep my text and colours simple, but all put together it makes something more complex. It's hard to define.

When I met Christophe and he told me the whole story, I thought, "Wow, what an incredible human experience." And I thought people would like to read about the insight of being kidnapped, especially with the happy ending at the end. And sometimes when you go to countries like North Korea and you come back, you feel your freedom — that you can travel freely from country to country and do whatever you want in your comics, in your writing. It's such a precious thing we all have, freedom. And I thought­­­­ it's such a universal subject. But I was thinking, too: What would I do? And I think that was one of the motivations to work on that book. But it doesn't answer that, because when you're kidnapped and you're in a very stressful situation like that, you're a different person. You don't know who you are and what you would do unless you were in that situation.

Well, now I have a studio that I share with other comic book artists, and we all have kids at home. So it's good to have your own place where you put your stuff and work. So basically, the kids go to school, I go to work and I try to come back when they come back from school. Now they're 17 and 14, so I can work from nine to six or something like that. I can do one page a day if I don't waste too much time. And for this kind of work, because they are simple drawings, I don't prepare the whole book before — I just read my notes and say, "This is interesting. I'm going to put that in the book." So it's actually quite relaxed because I don't have to spend six months and do the whole process and storyboard — I work a few steps at a time and then see the whole big picture at the end.

No digital for me — I like paper; the last book, Factory Summers, was all done on paper. I sketch slightly, and then I ink and write. I really enjoy working with paper and having the real thing in my hands at the end of the day. We spend so much time in front of the computer already.

I have notes that I have taken when away, kind of like a travelling book. I come back home — I don't work while I'm there because usually I don't have the time. And then I decide I have enough material — I don't do a storyboard; I just start with the first day and I try to make that funny. And of course there's a lot of boring stuff, too. [laughs] But I don't plan in advance — I prefer to go as it goes in the notes and that makes it more natural. These books, the feeling I have is like I'm writing a long postcard to my family.

It's more for me like a game. The story of the kidnapped guy, I knew I wanted to do that for a long time — it was a challenge; I've never read a book like that. The travelling ones, after a few of those, I was afraid to repeat myself but the details are different. And then I wanted to do biography, and that was fun to do. I try something and I like it, and then it grows.

Success for me was the prize I got in Angoulême, which is the book of the year, because it's kind of a top achievement. And that gave me a lot of freedom after that, to do the kind of books I wanted to do. To do a 400-page book about someone who is trapped in a room, I could only do that kind of book because I had that prize at that moment, and I thought, "Well, now I can do whatever I want," which is very cool. And some of the books I have in mind are really not books that are going to sell a lot, but I want to do them. And I have the freedom to do it, which is a very big luxury, artistically speaking.