Pascal Blanchet is a Quebec cartoonist whose work has graced the pages of The New Yorker and covers of books from Penguin.

His new book, White Rapids (Drawn & Quarterly), isn't so much a graphic novel as a graphic social history. It tells the story of a real town named Rapide Blanc (the book's original title - it was translated by Helge Dascher.)

Built in the Quebec wilderness in 1928 to provide a home for workers at a remote hydro-electric dam, Rapide Blanc was a community on the St. Maurice River, complete with a school, curling club, Anglican and Catholic churches, and brick houses facing a park and tennis courts. Blanchet shows happy times until the town was shut down in 1971 after the province nationalized power companies.

Blanchet borrows a retro aesthetic (going so far as to provide a listening list for readers, heavy on Bing Crosby). A restricted palette of brown and orange is countered by dynamic framing and lettering. He shows how the townsfolk made a life for themselves in the middle of nowhere and captures the sadness of the end of it all.

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Prolific Norwegian cartoonist Jason pumps out books at a regular clip.

Jason likes the absurd. The Living and the Dead had zombies stalking the land, and The Left Bank Gang featured Scott and Zelda as animal-faced bank robbers.

The Last Musketeer (Fantagraphics Books) is Jason's take on a French literature classic. The titular character is Athos, inexplicably wandering the streets of modern-day Paris, still in his derring-do garb, complete with sword and cape. He has the face of a cat. Aramis is around too, but he's settled into modern life with a wife and business suit and doesn't appreciate Athos knocking on his door. He seems to have forgotten the Musketeer motto.

Athos is down on his luck, reduced to begging for spare change ("Might you spare a drink for an aging musketeer?") and boozing it up in the park. But when laser blasts from Mars wreak havoc, Athos sees his chance to save Planet Earth from a dastardly plot, but not before a surprise encounter with an old arch-nemesis. Great fun.