by Kat Simmers and Ryan Danny Owen RENEGADE ARTS ENTERTAINMENT 2025/$29.99/272 pp.
“I wish… we got to choose what memories we hold on to,” says a character in Pass Me By: Lily, by Kat Simmers and Ryan Danny Owen. The graphic novel captures the feeling of old memories, and although this is the third of a promised five-book series, new readers should have no trouble picking it up. Book one, Gone Fishin’, introduced us to the daily life of Ed, an old man living in an unspecified part of rural Alberta who suffers from dementia. Book two, Electric Vice, followed a young Ed in 1973 on tour with his queer glam rock band. Lily returns to the present, when Ed’s estranged granddaughter, Lily, a 17-year-old transgender girl, comes to stay for the summer.
Simmers and Owen know how to make the graphic novel format do exactly what they want. Simmers’s illustrations are clean and expressive, using mainly light teal with pink accents that emphasize details such as Lily’s hair and leopard print car seats. To distinguish Ed’s memories from the present, this colour scheme flips to dark pinks, purples and blues. Sometimes without context the setting will change from one panel to the next. At one point Ed walks through a door in his memories and enters his present-day living room. His clothes have changed, but he is still drawn as a young man and the colours suggest he is still mentally in the past. In this way we wordlessly understand the confusion Ed’s dementia causes him, as well as his relief when he returns fully to the present.
Lily flows seamlessly without chapter breaks or captions. My favourite part is a span of seven pages with no dialogue, just a snapshot of Ed’s and Lily’s parallel lives—taking medications, fishing, gardening, going for walks and sharing meals. The pace of small-town life gives Lily time in nature to read, listen to music and be herself near the Rocky Mountains and local wildlife, which feature constantly throughout the book.
But the rural location has drawbacks for the characters. The local pharmacist gleefully refuses to fill Lily’s HRT prescription. He tells her taking hormones “is a major decision that can have lifelong consequences!” He doesn’t ask, but Lily has taken the medication for the last 14 months and spent over a year on a wait-list to receive it in the first place. In a time when gender-affirming care continues to be restricted in Alberta, Lily’s response, “Okay… well… you are not my doctor,” feels especially poignant. She doesn’t need this pharmacist’s approval to know who she is. She puts her headphones on and finds another pharmacy. Later Lily tells Ed, “Please don’t ever hide yourself away.” Her request is central to the Pass Me By series and hopefully resonates with queer people and anyone else who has found belonging in unexpected places.
Quin Lancaster is a writer in Calgary and the circulation manager at Alberta Views.
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