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fleeing poetry

There’s something fleeting in The invisible tracks by Xavier Mussat. This character-narrator who hides from our gaze (he is never represented), this absence of dialogue (he is alone, so we stay in his head) and even these constant shifts between figuration and abstraction. You have to follow in his footsteps to perhaps understand his impromptu flight into nature… where he will remain for 25 years.

On the day of his disappearance, the narrator is 24 years old. He didn’t premeditate the coup: those who are thinking of leaving don’t go beyond the idea of ​​fantasy, he says, it’s too dizzying. He simply broke down at the edge of the forest and rushed into it. Without looking back, intuitively seeking to hide from the gaze of others and also from himself. Unexpected antidote to the discomfort he has felt since he was very young in the presence of other humans.

Xavier Mussat, who was inspired by the true story of an American refugee in the forests of Maine, advances with delicacy in this story that is both philosophical and poetic. He never really tries to explain the gesture, only to imagine how a human being can be seized with such a desire to escape and how dizzy must be great when one has to face nature and the need to be there. survive – especially in a country that experiences winter.

To achieve this, he gives himself a main tool: stunning graphics, not at all naturalistic, dominated by orange, blue-gray and brown in flat tints. His very precise manner can be perfectly realistic, but is above all marked by contrasts between oneirism, primitive art, total abstraction and figuration. Xavier Mussat, who was with Fabrice Neuaud one of the co-founders of Ego Comme X, a figurehead of autobiographical comics in the 1990s, invites you on a strange, disconcerting, visually fantastic journey. The invisible tracks lives in the mind long after the last page has been turned.

Alexandre Vigenault, The Press

The invisible tracks

Xavier Mussat

Albin Michael

174 pages

8/10

Freud facing death

His stature being what it is, Freud is rarely approached from the height of a man. Diving into one’s intimacy is precisely the project of psychoanalyst Suzanne Leclair, in drawing and screenplay (in collaboration with William Roy). Without letting herself be intimidated by the scope of her subject, she explores her relationship to life and death through the disease that Freud encountered during the last 15 years of his life: cancer of the jaw. Due to his love of Cuban cigars. We discover in these immensely expressive pages, based mainly on more or less faded black and gray, a worried but resilient man, determined to live despite the pain, more haunted by the madness of men (the rise of Nazism) than by his personal tragedy. It’s beautiful, strangely touching, and implicitly an interesting reflection on medical assistance in dying… long before it was called that.

Release: March 15

Alexandre Vigneault, The Press

Freud, when the time comes

Suzanne Leclair and William Roy

The bubble box

133 pages

6.5/10

Pandemic slice of life

Zovi, a Franco-Chinese designer, prepares for the arrival of her boyfriend in Shanghai, where she has lived for 10 years. However, before welcoming him, she is going to visit him in New York. Ordinary? Yeah, except she’s making this trip in February 2020…just as COVID-19 is declared human-to-human and a few weeks before the planet goes on hiatus. Someone unplugged the Big Apple recounts her pandemic anxieties, but also the way in which she reoriented her life in no time: finished the idea of ​​settling in China, the couple will live in the United States and will have to find a way to regularize their situation as soon as possible fast. Between her fear of being caught by the immigration services and her quest for a job, Zovi evokes with touching sincerity and a frankly welcoming drawing her daily life at a time not trivial. Nice.

Alexandre Vigneault, The Press

Someone unplugged the Big Apple

Zovi

General mechanic

125 pages

7/10

For manga buffs

Here are a few manga titles that caught our attention, including two recently ongoing series worth a look in the rearview mirror.

Sinister companion

Originally, Fatal bride was supposed to be embodied in the form of a film, but faced with an insoluble budgetary challenge, the project mutated into an episodic manga, in collaboration with the prolific Naoki Yamamoto. All the chapters have been brought together in this edition translated into French, where we discover the thirty-year-old Kazushi taking over his father’s printing press and witnessing, between helplessness and indifference, a slow collapse around him. The company slowly sinks, one of its employees sees his fingers ripped off, while an insistent couple tries to remind him that a strange power still lies dormant within him. Will the sudden appearance of Mitsuko, a superb high-pitched young woman, save him from his troubles? Dark and anxiety-provoking, with a touch of eroticism, Fatal bride, which leads the reader down eerie hallways, is puzzling without being disheveled. The drawing line, with oppressive deformations, gives a perfect echo to the atmosphere of the story. Without being extraterrestrial, the manga remains extravagant and is intended more for adults who love black stories.

Sylvain Sarrazin, The Press

Fatal bride

Suzuki Matsuo (screenplay), Naoki Yamamoto (drawing)

Akatomo Workshop

Complete compilation 230 b&w pages

6.5/10

Boutades and fights

Marion Glénat, president of the editions of the same name, confessed to founding a lot of hope in Sakamoto Days, a recently launched series, obtained after a showdown between competing European publishers. “The Japanese publisher told us that, for him, there were all the ingredients to make it a One Piece. The bidding has gone very high,” she told The Press while in Montreal. The story: Taro Sakamato, legendary hitman adored by his peers, hangs up his guns and opens a convenience store after meeting the woman of his life. Forced to return to service, he will quickly show that his overweight and his years of retirement have not got the better of his skills. In this manga, a lot of action (served by a very dynamic drawing), fighting and well-sprinkled humor, propelled by a hilarious Sakamoto. Note the comparison with One Piece, Sakamoto Days is still more bloody (with a decapitation from the 4^e box!), even if it remains dosed. A good time of entertainment.

Sylvain Sarrazin, The Press

Sakamoto Days

Yuto Suzuki

Glenat

Current series, volumes 1 to 5; Volume 6 scheduled for March 13

7.5/10

Alternative medicine

Be careful, minefield: works featuring the medical world can quickly become off-putting, especially if professional jargon and sanitized hospital rooms multiply. In Children of Hippocrates, it is rather color and humanity that are put forward, through the protagonist Maco Suzukake, a young pediatrician with false nonchalant airs; with his oversized blouse, his frog-shaped Crocs and his leftovers sticking up his collar. As much as the foal doctor proves to be incompetent to animate his YouTube channel, his approach with children and parents proves to be brilliant, coupled with a spirit of effective medical analysis. He also drags his demons; Will he respond to the invitation of his father, also a doctor, whose only image he keeps is that of a director obsessed with the profitability of his clinics? The drawing without flaflas, which regularly takes us out of hospital wards, and the succession of cases approached with humanity, led by an endearing central character, place this manga in the circle of comforting stories. In addition, the concern for scientific accuracy and the remarkable translation (finalist at the most recent Angoulême festival) form a beautiful ribbon on the package.

Sylvain Sarrazin, The Press

Children of Hippocrates

Toshiya Higashimoto

Mangetsu

Current series, volumes 1 to 5; Volume 6 scheduled for April 6

7/10