We feel, from the first boxes of djondjon, Keelan Young’s first album, an immense and assumed desire to simply tell a story and thus present his personal perspective on the world. 31-year-old Young, a nurse who also went through college in the arts, gives us the impression of having made comics all his life. And yet…
Yet there is nothing there to revolutionize the genre. djondjon, it is the very biographical story of Keelan who, turning in circles after his studies in nursing, decides to undertake a research trip to Haiti to learn more about the djondjon. This black and edible mushroom growing in the north of the country is very popular in Haitian gastronomy, not only for its way of flavoring rice, but also for certain virtues attributed to it, such as treating stomach aches or jaundice. In short, the plot behind djondjon is a classic case of a character coming out of his milieu who finds himself confronted with a foreign country in which he will have to walk in order to forget what one guesses is a vague heartache. But, when it’s done well, it’s done well, and that’s exactly the case with this album.
In fact, what is surprising here is not so much the subject as the high quality of the form. If Keelan never really made comics before this one, he consumed a lot of them. “I’ve always had a great love for comics. I learned to read late, but I was already reading the images, explains the young author. I’ve always been interested in the idea of doing a comic, but it’s a big project that needs to be completed. It is therefore necessary to find one that gives enough desire to invest! Here is the result of a trip I made to Haiti, in 2017, and I started working on djondjon at the end of this year. It took me two years to finish it. I actually finished at the start of the pandemic, and the album took the dust because I wasn’t very good at selling myself and the timing wasn’t great, until I finally found my great editors! »
I’ve always had a great love for comics. I learned to read late, but I was already reading pictures.
So, without training in the genre and without having cut his teeth in the fanzine or the blog, as many did before starting out, Keelan only trusted his instincts. “I don’t know if it’s instinctive, but I really haven’t had any training or a mentor to help me. In fact, it’s a language that I was trying to understand: how time is articulated in a comic book, how we cut up the story. I watched a lot how others were doing and it was a big learning process for me. »
All the same, there is a margin between starting, for example, writing a novel, thinking that this one would be the right one (several people will recognize themselves here), and carrying out such an undertaking, or producing a comic strip and publish it. “I’ve been disciplined enough! I set myself the goal of doing one plank a week. I started with the draft, the sketch, and by the end of the week I had finished my own. And I managed to do that every week. Even when it was hard. I was a student, there were lots of things going on in my life, it wasn’t always easy but it helped me a lot, too. »
On the hunt for mushrooms
Let’s talk mushrooms now. Because between going to pick some on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in autumn and going abroad for several weeks to conduct such in-depth research, there is quite a step! “Comically, I don’t really like eating mushrooms! But picking them, on the other hand, is one of the activities that I enjoy the most. I found it more interesting anthropologically, as a subject for my album. It allowed me to not focus solely on the human being. »
A human being who remains, after all, a central element of djondjon. Because we learn that this mushroom, according to the person who speaks about it, does not always have the same virtues. There is a question of perception. We can see a commentary on the diversity of the Haitian people, much less monolithic than one might think. “It took me a long time to understand how I was going to deal with this subject. It’s not just one culture, it’s cultures that have their own complexity, that have their perspectives on many things, and that’s what I wanted to convey. A bit like the geography of the island, by the way. It’s very mountainous, there are several ecosystems, in short, it’s a very diverse country. »
As for the drawing, we are dealing with a clear line, totally assumed, with, in the center, this character who is the avatar of Keelan. How to draw yourself? “At the beginning, I wanted it to really relate to my research project and, the more I advanced, the more I found that it became personal. How do you reveal yourself while not being the center of attraction? The result is also somewhat reminiscent of the approach of American comic strip author Joe Sacco, who uses the same processes, particularly in pay the landwhich focuses on Aboriginal communities in the Northwest Territories.
In short, a first album that suggests a certain talent for the genre, with a maturity in the way of telling that demonstrates, beyond any doubt, that Keelan Young could continue to surprise us. With sensitivity and intelligence.