cultivate mourning
For her first publication in French (in a translation by Montreal author Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau), Portuguese artist Joana Mosi offers us, with mongoose, a gentle foray into the world of mourning. First, there is the main character, Julia, who tries in a not too convincing way to heal herself from the death of a loved one, a mourning which takes the symbolic form, here, of a mongoose which destroys the small vegetable garden that she tries to maintain. Living with her, her brother Joël, who has just lost his job, his relationship and his apartment and who spends his days playing video games, tries somehow not to harm his sister. And there is this mother who understands nothing, but a little bit, all the same. The drawing, minimalist and fine, carries this moment in suspension in which we enter as we put our foot in a swimming pool whose water is just a little too cold and whose depth we ignore, trying to understand this saudade which seems to weigh about this family that could be ours.
Francois Lemay
mongoose
★★★1/2
Joana Mosi, translated from English by Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau, Pow Pow, Montreal, 2023, 192 pages
Freud’s Suffering
For her first attempt in the world of comics, Suzanne Leclair, a psychiatrist who studied at the Beaux-Arts in a former life, takes the gamble of telling us about Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis. But, here, there are no long conversations on the couch or lame attempts to reduce the complex life of this man who was just as complex to a few boxes. On the contrary, Leclair, helped by the French cartoonist William Roy, attacks Freud’s deadly habit, the cigar, the abuse of which will end up killing him. We therefore follow, over the years, the many operations (34) that he had to undergo to try to stop this cancer of the mouth which will eat away at him, literally, for nearly twenty years. With a slightly nervous drawing, in black and white, recounting the documentary, the author does quite well this first album which offers us, as a bonus, a reflection on the use of medical assistance in dying long before the we are thinking of framing it legally. A great surprise.
Francois Lemay
Freud — When the Time Comes
★★★
Suzanne Leclair and William Roy, The bubble box, Saint-Avertin, 2023, 144 pages
Welcome to misogynistic territory
At 21, Kate Beaton left her native Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, to reach Western Canada. By working in Alberta’s tar sands oil industry, she hopes to repay her student loan, which is hampering her life plans. Nearly 15 years later, the designer describes with seriousness and sensitivity this oppressive and painful experience lived in a sexist environment dominated by men. It also recounts loneliness, sexual violence against women, health problems that workers develop and the devastating effects of mining on nature and on indigenous lands. The minimalist drawings bring a moving note to the work, which is not lacking in almost dreamlike scenes, such as the chance encounter with a three-legged fox and the winter nights illuminated by the northern lights. Praised by Barack Obama, this graphic novel is a pure gem, useful and necessary, to put in all hands.
Ismael Houdassine
Toxic environment
★★★★★
Kate Beaton, translated from English by Alice Marchand, Casterman, tournai, 2023, 440 pages
Teresa’s Berlin Quest
How about a bittersweet getaway to 2000s Berlin? It is there, between the Tiergarten and the Kreuzberg district, that we meet Teresa, a brilliant insomniac Italian archaeologist, who accepts a contract of several months in a prestigious university of the German metropolis to prepare an exhibition on the treasures of Tutankhamun. She crosses paths with the irresistible Ruben, an uprooted like her, a punk and bohemian artist with whom she falls madly in love. The couple longs for each other, argues and reconciles against the backdrop of chaotic and feverish slices of life. True to form, the brilliant Italian designer Manuele Fior invites us on an inner journey made of nostalgic sweetness and poetry, bathed in shadows and fine golden lights. We are amazed by the beauty of the images and the finesse of the story where two eras intertwine, without breaks, the modern romance of Teresa and the discovery of the pharaoh’s tomb by Carter in 1922.
Ismael Houdassine
Hypericon
★★★★1/2
Manuele Fior, translated from Italian by Christophe Gouveia Roberto, Dargaud, Paris, 2023, 144 pages