Happy who like Real
Opening an album signed Réal Godbout and his son Robin is experiencing the pleasure of reuniting with an old friend who hasn’t changed too much and has plenty of new adventures to tell us. In short, we know that we are going to have a great time and that is exactly what we feel throughout this intrigue which could have been experienced by Michel Risk, a character created with his late sidekick Pierre Fournier for the magazine Fang in the 1980s. A journalist specializing in tourism, Ugo covers the inaugural cruise of a yacht whose route is inspired by that of Ulysses from theOdyssey of Homer and which, of course, does not go as planned. Smirking, we look for references to ancient Greece and we find a tribute to classic comics. The drawing is, as Godbout has accustomed us to, full of details and observations that add a few layers to the reading. So much, in fact, that we forgive him a somewhat too hasty and dreamlike end. Happiness from the first to the last page.
Francois Lemay
Glad who like Ugo
★★★★
Réal Godbout, Robin Bourget-Godbout, La Pastèque, Montreal, 2023, 192 pages
Embrace the change
The Franco-Chinese illustrator Zovi dives with both feet into her own story, that of a young woman living in China who, while waiting for her lover to come and live with her, will surprise him by going to join him in New York during the holidays. New Year’s Eve. However, the COVID is starting to act up and she will no longer be able to return to China. Someone unplugged the Big Apple is therefore a personal and intimate story about resilience and our ability to adapt. Although busy and a bit stuffy with its wine red tones, the drawing allows us to share with the character his anguish in the face of several drastic changes. Change of plan, country, lifestyle and, above all, a still misunderstood virus that resisted this first confinement which was to last only a few weeks. However, we criticize a certain lack of readability with regard to the text, whose rendering in cursive is far from ideal when there is a lot of narration. We still love this first album.
Francois Lemay
Someone unplugged the Big Apple
★★★
Zovi, General mechanics, Montreal, 2023, 128 pages
I love you…me neither
Having an ultra-famous dad adored by everyone is not always easy. Talk to Caleb, a failed artist in his fifties, alcoholic, who broods over the slightest thought of his father. The latter made a fortune by publishing a comic book that became cult where he told the perfect family relationship between a father and his son, when he had actually neglected his son. For Caleb, whose cruel memories come to the surface with every attempt at introspection, the time has come to face this past that is too heavy to bear. Will he be able to conquer his old demons? Especially noting that he looks more and more like this hated father. Immature and centered on himself, Caleb drives his loved ones crazy, especially his companion, who can no longer take his neuroses and his victimhood attitude. Despite an oedipal subject loaded with bittersweet inner resentment, the Ontarian Joe Ollmann signs a well-crafted graphic novel full of black humor, whose translation respects the tone and the acid dialogues. A total success.
Ismael Houdassine
fictional father
★★★★
Joe Ollmann, translated from English by Luba Markovskaia, La Pastèque, Montreal, 2023, 212 pages
As if you were there
Three years later RevolutionWe were eagerly awaiting the second volume. The wait was worth it. The rest of the historical saga, set in France from 1789 to 1795, is absolutely remarkable. Once again, the Breton authors-designers Florent Grouazel and Younn Locard spared no expense in the graphics and scripts for this sequel full of fury, exposing the chaos of complex and colorful popular characters. The common people – those forgotten in the national narrative – again take a prominent place in pages where abounding details. This is also one of the great qualities of the ambitious, very well-documented comic book: combining the small with the big story through a skewer of varied, credible and surprisingly authentic destinies. With its precise drawings and its meticulous and referenced reconstruction of an effervescent Paris blown by a romantic wind, the fresco does not have to be ashamed of the first opus, winner of the Fauve d’or for the best album at the Festival of comics of Angouleme in 2020.
Ismael Houdassine
Revolution, volume 2 – Equality, book 1
★★★★
Florent Grouazel and Younn Locard, Actes Sud “L’an 2”, Paris, 2023, 300 pages