Le Syndrome du Prisonnier
There is something of the symptomatic in the Little Nothings. Something that belongs to the misery of contemporary creation among the former pioneers of the French-speaking alternative. In the case of...
View ArticleL’ Eléphant
For some reason, Isabelle Pralong’s name lingered with me. Yet, the last time I had heard of her, it was back in 1999 when she had released her Ficus at Atrabile, a short slice-of-life organized around...
View ArticleSerpent Rouge
At first look, The Red Snake is a horror story which appeal resides primarily in Hino Hideshi’s graphic vision. Far from the classicism of Umezu Kazuo, lacking the meticoulous approach of Itô Junji,...
View ArticleCe que je sais de ma maman
Ce que je sais de ma maman is a simple and brilliant children’s book, at least, in appearance. The pages are laid out in a recognizable fashion, invariably repeating the same rhythm and construction :...
View ArticleAshura
Prominently featured in Udagawa Takeo’s book, Manga Zombie, George Akiyama is introduced as “the unstoppable king of trauma manga”. Ashura in particular, did incur his first scandal — when, as he had...
View ArticleContre la bande dessinée
L’Eprouvette is dead, long live L’Eprouvette. Initially a collection, before turning into a criticism periodical over three imposing volumes, it has come back to being a collection without forfeiting...
View ArticleLady Snowblood
“The manga that inspired Kill Bill” — well, that’s what they say in the introduction, so that must be true. It might be true, mind you, but reading those two thick volumes that kick off the “Kana...
View ArticleNeko-me Kozou
“The cat-eyed boy”. Forty years later, the idea resonates with all the retro charm of the most outrageous inventions of the wildy imaginative sixties. And indeed, the (superb) covers of those two...
View Article73304-23-4153-6-96-8
In place of the title, there are six numbers and you try and read them. But if they convey some pluralities, which are those ? You read them but what do they mean ? Seventy three thousand three hundred...
View ArticlePluto
Among manga artists, Urasawa Naoki is certainly one of the few to benefit from a worldwide reputation, acclaimed for his mastery of suspense and celebrated for the success of his two series Monster and...
View ArticleKramer’s Ergot 7
The announcement of the details of the seventh volume of the anthology Kramer’s Ergot (KE7) came with quite the internet brou-ha-ha. While Kramer’s Ergot, as a series of anthologies, has earned a...
View ArticleThe Complete Jack Survives
My favorite room in the Philadelphia Museum of Art holds a series of paintings by Cy Twombly called “Fifty Days at Iliam”. I always spend a few minutes walking around the room, looking at the paintings...
View ArticleMeanwhile
Jason Shiga opens this book on a warning : “This is not an ordinary comic !” And indeed, there are very few comics which need a notice for reading them. Reading a comic book is usually rather intuitive...
View ArticleLynd Ward : Six Novels in Woodcuts
Lynd Ward is the author of six novels in woodcuts published in the United States between 1929 and 1937. Between the vast hope nurtured by potential revolutionaries and the profound angst that goes with...
View ArticleAu travail (t.1)
Comics as an art of memory, made of this memorialising substance which fills that gutter, that snare woven between the panels where the meaning of what is taking place is acquired through reading,...
View ArticleBuilding Stories
(This review can be read in any preferred order) Writing about Building Stories is somehow awe-inspiring : before typing the first sentence, the reviewer holds on for a moment, hesitating to jump in,...
View Article978
Pascal Matthey is one of those authors who can’t stand still in one place, and has to move about through as many comics’ fields as he can. He has done some things that we can today consider somewhat...
View ArticleLes Schtroumpfs noirs
The détournement has been a staple of comics for quite some time. We do not mean plagiarism or an unexpected use of characters in new situations. Comics have been plagiarized from the get-go (Töpffer,...
View ArticleThis One Summer
Even if not everyone, many of us will share the experience of our teenage-years’ summers as neat narratives. Contrarily to the rest of the year, usually spent in the same environment with the same...
View ArticleYekini, le roi des arènes
Here is a book that brings together several genres together, complicating the borders between them but without dissolving any of them. This means that it’s actually possible to describe this book via...
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