A duty to remember
Three years after the terrible murder of the Frenchman Samuel Paty, a history and geography professor beheaded in the street by a young radicalized Islamist of Chechen origin, the historian Valérie Igounet and the cartoonist Guy Le Besnerais unfold page after page of the implacable mechanism that led to the crime. “To tell is to prevent death from having the last word. » It is with this quote taken from a book by the writer Yannick Haenel that this graphic novel opens. The result of an investigation lasting more than two years, the high-level album dissects the thread of events through a profusion of drawings, all supported by the power of testimonies (colleagues, friends, former students) and solid documentation. , including handwritten notes from the professor. The work also highlights the personality of an endearing man, father of a little boy, passionate about his profession and a great fan of rock and philosophy. A life ruined by fundamentalism.
Ismaël Houdassine
Black pencil. Samuel Paty, story of a teacher
★★★★
Valérie Igounet and Guy Le Besnerais, StudioFact, Paris, 2023, 160 pages
I have something to tell you
After his very touching In struggle, a compact album which gently painted the portrait of women engaged in various social and political struggles, Fabien Toulmé offers us a new series that is just as endearing, composed of testimonies that he himself has collected over the years. Ordinary stories, sometimes overwhelming, depicted as slices of life in time-lapse, some of which touch our hearts, like that of Emilie, who joined Jehovah’s Witnesses despite herself. There is also the story of this young repeat offender broken by bad luck, but who will find a final path to redemption following his multiple years spent in prison. The minimalist pencil strokes of the author of Hakim’s odysseya masterful trilogy devoted to the fate of a Syrian refugee, give this new opus a tender and beautiful humanity.
Ismaël Houdassine
Unforgettable
★★★ 1/2
Fabien Toulmé, Dupuis, Paris, 2023, 126 pages
Sketch Dalí
Salvador Dalí is, without a doubt, part of this breed of artists who are as famous and well-known as their work can be. Leader of surrealist painting, a movement which took off during the 1920s in Paris when he arrived from his native Spain, Dalí has built, over the years, a reputation larger than life. A reputation of which one of the foundations is the meeting with the woman who will become his wife and his muse, Gala. It is precisely at this time that this first volume by Julie Birmant on the screenplay (who also co-authored a series on Picasso) and Clément Oubrerie on the drawing focuses. It is therefore a Dali before he became himself who is judiciously presented to us, even though he was only a somewhat withdrawn young adult, obsessed by the idea of woman and by a pictorial approach. which wants to be outside of conventions. A great introduction, which makes us look forward to reading more.
François Lemay
Dalí. T1 Before Gala
★★★
Julie Birmant and Clément Oubrerie, Dargaud, Paris, 2023, 88 pages
Two skinned in Rio
Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini, two strong beings who meet during a shoot, that of Medea in 1969. She is a singer, he is a filmmaker. She loves men, so does he, and they are in love. She, by Aristotle Onassis, who prefers Jacqueline Kennedy; him, from Ninetto Davoli, who tells him that he will marry a woman. Pasolini and Callas meet again a few months later in Brazil to promote the film, but, more than that, it is a platonic love relationship that unfolds, a meeting between two people who are desperate to be loved. The screenplay, signed by the Belgian author Jean Dufaux (Jessica Blandy And Murena, among others), is readable thanks to the intelligent dialogues. But it is above all the extremely meticulous, precise and flexible drawing of the young Italian-Belgian designer Sara Briotti which gives substance to this album which unfolds a bit like a film.
François Lemay
La Callas and Pasolini, an impossible love
★★★ 1/2
Jean Dufaux, Sara Briotti, Dupuis, Paris, 2023, 104 pages