4 out of 5

Shallow, but not insultingly so; The World Book of Records is your feel-good, quirky comedy; the type of comedy that a talented, light-handed director could easily craft into a vehicle for a chummy Tom Hanks-like character… were it a filn, of course.  In comic form, it’s equally breezy as that imagined format, but writer Tonino Benacquista and artist Nicolas Barral make the most of their medium to have us soak up the pages and characters littering their snapshot of the World Book of Records office, particularly focused on Paul, worn-down inspector of human and animal records.

There’s a light theme about what all these absurd records are “worth,” and the pursuance of fame over doing something of, I suppose, more moralistic value, and that’s where the shallowness comes in: there’s no real soul searching on how and why we rate these things, and Paul’s ultimate solution to his midlife questioning crisis is equally nearsighted.  The story also feels a bit dated in our youtube-documented culture.  But: Benacquista doesn’t really lecture so much as make us see this point of view through Paul’s eyes, and because the character is that chummy, likable sort, that point of view is totally palatable; i.e. it’s more of a character story than a writer trying to be haughty with a social agenda; double i.e. I really enjoyed it because it was fun, and gracefully “directed” by Barral.  The mystery-ish plot that acts as a further catalyst for Paul’s midlife crisis is fairly clunky, but it’s handled with the same consistent charm as the rest of the tale, and offers some good chuckles via comedic timing from an uncaring police investigator.

It’s be interesting to see this creative team take a crack at something a bit weightier, but I also dig just having a good time reading comics on occasion, and World Book of Records offered 60 pages of exactly that.