Displaced Persons, a stunning graphic novel by Eisner-nominated writer Derek McCulloch (Stagger Lee; Gone to Amerikay), follows three stories that overlap at various points spanning 120 years. Though the characters first meet in 1879, through the means of time travel, they cross paths again in unexpected ways in 1909, 1939, 1969 and 1999. Illustrating with a predominantly monochromatic palette, artist Anthony Peruzzo uses slightly different era-specific highlight colors for each timeline. When characters from one era are temporally displaced, they bring with them the colors of their age, creating a striking visual cue that identifies them as time-travelers.
These displaced characters wander without the benefit of their own memories, relying on the people they meet to help them piece together a past they can no longer access. Their one anchor point is a house in which they have all lived. It's the only feature of any new world that the time-travelers recognize upon arriving in their new era, though they can't recall why it's familiar. They do not fit, but they have no way to return home (wherever or whenever that may be). Without this sense of their own origin, they take on new names, create new identities, live and die without knowing it's not amnesia they have--they just don't belong. The few people who could identify them often find them too late in life, or not at all.
The brilliance of McCulloch's story is that readers are kept wondering exactly when these displaced people originated, and the story does not reveal the fullness of itself until the very last page. --Justus Joseph, bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company