Graphic Novel Review: Call Me Nathan by Catherine Castro & Quentin Zuttion

Posted on September 15, 2022 at 6:30 am by Gene Ambaum

Call Me Nathan by Catherine Castro & Quentin Zuttion. Translated by Evan McGorray. SelfMadeHero, 2022. 9781914224010.

When Nathan was a girl he hated dresses. He preferred playing sports with boys, and felt disgusted with his body when he hit puberty. He liked borrowing his brother’s clothes and wanted to cut his hair. Luckily he had a girlfriend, Faustine, who saw right through him and told him he wasn’t a lesbian, but that he was really a guy. She is the first person he asks to call him Nathan, but he’s still a bit depressed and uncertain about who he is. He starts cutting himself. And then he finally tells his parents that he’s a boy and starts to transition. (This all sounds heavy, but Nathan has friends throughout (though there are idiots around, too). And his story has moments of humor — my favorite is when he says his counselor looks like the old man from Dragonball Z.)

After meeting a trans teenage, Lucas, at a party, Castro (a reporter) asked him and his parents if she could tell the story of his journey to become himself. This gave birth to Nathan’s story, a slightly fictionalized version of the truth, that she wrote as a graphic novel with artist Zuttion. It reads like a well-edited, pointed graphic memoir (though I do wonder a bit about which parts she made up, which she mentions but doesn’t specify in the introduction). The art and colors are wonderful, the panels are borderless, and the book left me feeling hopeful.