Full return
She had said loud and clear that she would no longer touch comics. And since only crazy people don’t change their minds, Julie Doucet is back with outright suicide, a drawn fresco published in the form of a leporello, without panel, which takes place over 20 meters and which can be read in one long stretch. And it is successful, this return? Oh yeah ! Doucet accomplishes something rare here: continuing to innovate while remaining true to herself, in this preposterous and autobiographical love story from a distance between a French soldier, nicknamed the hussar, and a young Montreal comic book author, a bit punk, big on welfare. And if all this seems very complicated, it is because it is difficult to translate into words what gives this uninterrupted flow of black and white drawings, without gray area, which carry a story as strong as the emotions it relates. A must read, as long as you can get your hands on one of the rare copies of this limited edition.
Francois Lemay
outright suicide
★★★★1/2
Julie Doucet, The Association, Paris, 2023, 144 pages
To be (or not) of his time
After several collaborations and a first album released in 2014, Minimaxwhich recounted the misadventures of a master’s student, the author François Donatien revisits this character who has now become secondary to that of Audrée, the protagonist of the Disadvantages of bliss. Audrée, therefore, is a literature student, poet and newly rich, in short, not quite ideal conditions for someone looking for their place in a world whose contemporary values do not please them. She would rather write her sad loves with a pen, in the moonlight. Audrée feels anachronistic in this world fueled by loud music and storylines dictated by Marvel. And if everything in this album portends one of those eternal narrative plots focusing on the transition to adulthood, Donatien breaks the mold with a dynamic and funny design, and a well-paced sense of storytelling, which ends up making attaching a main character who has everything to be unbearable!
Francois Lemay
The downsides of bliss
★★★
François Donatien, New address, Montreal, 2023, 236 pages
Gräkzörk, we have a problem
Having just landed on the unpredictable planet Gräkzörk, a frail and naive employee of the Cosmic Lotto has the mission of giving the winner of the Super Lotto a suitcase containing the staggering sum of 100 million units. But the big winner of the lot, Mr. Mirou, resides in the town of Sickpick, the most dangerous area of Gräkzörk. What was supposed to be just a formality therefore turns into a real way of the cross for our agent, catapulted into an adventure full of twists and turns as crazy as each other. Opportunity for the creators, Matis Monvoisin and Arnaud Rouesnel, to draw unrestrainedly from the raw codes of science fiction composed of bodybuilt aliens and giant robots in a fight of titans. Carried by an inventive story and minimalist drawings in saturated colors, this hilarious first album by the duo of cartoonists is a real eye-catcher.
Ismael Houdassine
Hyper Loto Space
★★★★
Mattis Monvoisin and Arnaud Rouesnel, Atrabile, Paris, 2023, 128 pages
When philosophers fall from their pedestal
The Frenchwoman Catherine Meurisse has been publishing a comic strip section in the pages of the monthly magazine since 2017 magazine philosophy. She depicts, always with humor and in an often quirky tone, the daily life of famous philosophers, thinkers or essayists. His new album – which uses the female version of the title of a work by Nietzsche – brings together a compilation of his best pencil strokes on philosophical questions where we discover great figures, from Socrates to Simone de Beauvoir via Diderot and Sigmund Freud. While taking a tender look at some forty personalities, the 43-year-old author plays with the great precepts of human wisdom, which she demystifies, vilifies and triturates with intelligent drawings. The gesture is impeccable, the speech, piquant and twisting, resolutely feminist in an environment dominated by men.
Ismael Houdassine
Human, too human
★★★★
Catherine Meurisse, Dargaud, Paris, 2023, 96 pages