Pigeons are forever
For the fourth volume of the adventures of MacGuffin and Alan Smithee, author Michel Viau (BDQ, The Croc years) and the illustrator Ghyslain Duguay fully press the cinematic reference accelerator for our greatest pleasure. So we find our duo working for S6, a secret service agency based in Paris, immersed in the heart of a mission aimed at solving a curious flight of carrier pigeons. Mission that will take them to Florida, Cuba and Louisiana, in the second half of the 1960s. Obviously, the album is full of reminders of the great spy films, but is also a tribute to popular culture. , as much in the screenplay, whose gags are somewhat reminiscent of Goscinny’s way of writing, as in the drawing, which is reminiscent of Jean-Paul Eid’s sense of detail, Jérôme Bigras era, or even the pop universe of red ketchup. If you liked theOSS 117 of Jean Dujardin, you will find your account there!
Francois Lemay
MacGuffin & Alan Smithee, volume 4 Paloma mi amor
★★★
Michel Viau and Ghyslain Duguay, Éditions du Tiroir, Braine-l’Alleud, 2022, 64 pages
My name is Lisa
It is with great pleasure that we find, for one last time, the crazy western universe of the series calfboy, which finds its conclusion in this third volume. Created by French author Rémi Farnos (“Young Talent” mention at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2014) in 2018, calfboy tells the story of Lise, a young orphan who wants to become a bounty hunter, and the Birden brothers, two rather silly but endearing thieves. A little darker than the first two albums (the theme of revenge is a watermark), we still find there what made the success of the series: drawings that give free rein to the imagination of the reader, dialogues a bit offbeat and, above all, this constant desire to take one last shot (or at least wrap up the previous one) before retiring for good and spending all the loot money. We often smile and, once the reading is over, we say to ourselves that it’s a shame that it ends there. We would have taken a few more albums.
Francois Lemay
Calfboy, volume 3
★★★
Rémi Farnos, La Watermelon, Montreal, 2022.80 pages
Bunny the Gaul
Lapinot, Lewis Trondheim’s famous animal character, falls in a forest. When he regains consciousness, he still has his Rabbit ears, teeth and paws, but he is dressed… as Asterix. Without a big nose. Nevertheless, for Obélix and the others, he IS Asterix. The moment of denial passed (“Is it a shoot?”), Lapinot opines: he is indeed in the world of albums. Everything the same, except that Trondheim is Trondheim and the massacres are damn bloody. Lapinot is horrified: “Do you mind killing people? he asks Obelix. Who responds like Obelix: “How would you like to do it? We will understand later that the presence of Lapinot in Gaul is not as arbitrary as it seems, and that there are other intruders. Extraordinarily skilful, Trondheim respects, in By Toutatis !, the codes of a “normal” adventure, the humor of Goscinny, the characters of each, while continuing the saga of Lapinot. The parody turns out to be a tribute, a tender mise en abyme of a grateful fan. And all of us, fans of Asterix and Lapinot, are jubilant. From August 9.
Sylvain Cormier
The new adventures of Lapinot, volume 6 By Toutatis!
★★★★★
Lewis Trondheim, after Goscinny and Uderzo, L’Association, Paris, 2022, 48 pages
Underground and sovereign
This is not a comic strip, but the illustrated autobiography of Trina Robbins, pioneer ofunderground of the comics in the 1960s. Fascinating and versatile, Robbins was THE girl who imposed herself among the pâtés at Crumb. Friend of Joni Mitchell, she is literally one of the Ladies of the Canyon. His journey is not easy to summarize in 232 pages: in last girl Standing, we follow as best we can the fuzzy thread of his memories and tribulations, punctuated by exploits and major advancements. It is to her that we owe the first publications that were both feminist and entirely drawn by women: the essential Wimmens’ Comix, primarily. Its very clear line style, the opposite of the bushy boxes of the guys in theundergrounddistinguished her as much as a Claire Bretécher in Phelot. His radical boards, but as readable as Archie will change the fate of Betty and Veronica of America. Without the “goddess of the Lower East Side slums,” there wouldn’t be our Zviane, and so many others. His fascinating bio, disheveled, free, is at 83 years old one more success.
Sylvain Cormier
Last Girl Standing
★★★★
Trina Robbins, translated from the American by Marie-Paule Noël, Bliss Comics, Bordeaux, 2022, 232 pages