Caroline’s comic strip
For his first comic, Sarah’s moviethe author, designer, animator and illustrator Caroline Lavergne packed her bags and left for Schefferville for a month with the aim of telling us, like a diary, about the filming of New Quebec (2021), first feature film by her friend Sarah Fortin, with all the hazards that entails. We are therefore dealing with a documentary story with a very sketched line, fast and of a formidable efficiency, in which time is elastic and goes according to the frantic rhythm of a filming almost impossible, given the conditions, in Innu territory and naskapi. In addition to the work of the craftsmen of the cinema, it is the sensitive and intelligent look that Caroline Lavergne has on this mining town in the North, eternally dying, so far from everything, which is the real driving force of the album. And, of course, this meeting with the inhabitants, mostly Innu, who wonder if they really want to play in a film…
Francois Lemay
Sarah’s movie
★★★
Caroline Lavergne, New address, Montreal, 2022, 236 pages
time is a spiral
Oh that there is matter, in survivors of eternitythe new album by Grégoire Bouchard (Planet TwistThe 400 Blows, 2001), author of which Jean-Paul Eid (The little astronautLa Pastèque, 2021) has already said that he [était] to Quebec comics what David Lynch was to the cinema”. Here, we find his character Bob Leclerc (The nightmare silver and Terminal, Earth, Mosquito, 2017), a former fighter pilot who lives in a Montreal City of the 2050s, a universe that could be described as a kind of scientific-optimistic uchronic fantasy, whiter than white, directly coming from the brain of a misogynistic science fiction author from the 1950s. At the center of this plot? The singer, actor and racing driver Jim Flash, perfect prototype of the American hero of the beginning of the glorious thirty, amalgamation of James Dean, John Wayne and Hank Williams, ready to do anything to save his sick wife, even if it means having her lobotomized in the process. A Lynchian universe, you said?
Francois Lemay
survivors of eternity
★★★
Grégoire Bouchard, Moelle Graphik, Quebec, 2022, 276 pages
Finally the end, alas!
In the last box, a cafe owner, tentacles sticking out of his ears, interrupts the story in the best soap opera tradition: “Do you want to know what’s next? And the zig to lure the customer with a title: The Buttes-Chaumont baby. And then… nothing. Tardi confessed in these pages to have given up the last volume of Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, tired of war, after a dozen boards. He took 15 years in the trenches. Once released, Adele remained in limbo, the last ball. Alright, said Tardi, let’s get it over with. Finally, we know the end of the story of Doctor Chou and his poison that makes you cow and stupid. Final end, alas! Tardi has tied everything up, bringing back all the characters, nice mummies, rotten cops, multiplying Adèle by six explosive clones in her murderous launch. It smells fed up, the tone turns moralistic, but it’s Tardi, so we’re happy. And it ends at the Natural History Museum, where it all began. Author’s warning: beware of counterfeiters.
Sylvain Cormier
Adele Blanc-Sec, volume 10
★★★★
Jacques Tardi, Casterman, Tournai, 2022, 64 pages
Marilyn between the lines
Drawing all in clear lines, close-ups to the extreme, flat areas of clinical blue for the play of shadows: an art of illustration that befits the graphic novel. Think Rabagliati, originally an illustrator. It could be Paul at the shrink, this book by Louison, illustrator, novelist and cartoonist, except that the Paul of history is Marilyn. Monroe. Because it is also the adaptation of the novel by Michel Schneider, written from the notes of Ralph Greenson, the last of the four shrinks of the actress. Paradox: over the decantations, the subject becomes clearer, as if we were going back through the novel in the other direction to find the fragments of a hitherto elusive truth. We understand better between the lines of Louison. Example ? Making of the movie The misfits. Session. The shrink’s cursive writing provides the context, the speech bubbles carry a voice. “I don’t want to play a woman […] who has found refuge only in a gaze of wonder for the pure, the children, the beasts. So many bios said less.
Sylvain Cormier
Marilyn, last sessions
★★★★
Based on the book by Michel Schneider Louison, Futuropolis, Paris, 2022, 224 pages