A village in Iran, in Kurdistan to be exact. That morning, men arranged to meet in the square. They shout at each other, scold each other. The jokes are going well. Yet, once again, they will risk their lives. They are preparing to cross the mountains which mark the border with Iraq to bring back on their backs enormous packages containing contraband goods, televisions, refrigerators, Chinese sneakers or cigarettes which the mafiosi will then send to the major markets. cities. Equipped all the more dangerous as the porters are at the mercy of border guards who shoot and kill without warning. That day, a snowstorm was also forecast. To attempt passage is madness, but these men need money. Reduced to poverty by globalization, which has caused their artisanal trades to decline, persecuted by the Tehran regime, which has executed many heads of families, they have no other recourse than to sell their hands. Meanwhile, a young girl weaves a carpet, and monologues in prose and verse. She thinks of her lover, with whom she plans to flee to invent a new life in the city, because her father has promised her to an old merchant.
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Paper Birds, by Mana Neyestani, It
Do you know the “magnoles”? Every year, seasonal workers take turns tirelessly taking care of these plants throughout their growth. You have to whisper sweet words to them, tap their leaves between your thumb and forefinger, caress them with the back of your hand, alternating between placing them in the sun and in the shade using mini-parasols… Finally , massages precede picking and grinding. “L’affection des magnoles” is one of the ten chapters of Digging Voguer, the latest comic strip by Delphine Panique, available from Cornélius. Each time, it involves describing, in the style of a report, a fictitious profession that is particularly precarious, difficult, thankless, uberized and/or dangerous: delivery of meals to “bibinette”, miner of “ploiron”, trainer of ” pijaune”… Ten false reports which evoke the very real suffering of precarious workers of our time.
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Digging Voguer, by Delphine Panique, Cornélius, 24.50 euros.
Over time, even the strongest friendships are put to the test. You know what it’s like: the years go by, friends move away and end up not hearing from you anymore. Walter is well aware of this, which is why he decides to invite his eight best friends on vacation to a magnificent villa by the water. An offer they won’t be able to refuse! Except that once reunited, the group of friends discovers that the rest of the world is burning: it’s literally the apocalypse. Did Walter know? How can we continue to act as if nothing had happened? Can we leave the villa? What if everyone had a role to play? This closed session, worthy of the best Stephen King, resonates with the anxieties of our time. The second part is part of the Angoumois selection.
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The Nice House on the Lake, by James Tynion IV (screenplay), Álvaro Martínez Bueno (drawing) and Jordie Bellaire (colors), translated by Maxime Le Dain, Urban Comics, 15 euros.
A village clusters at the foot of a small island made up of several grassy plateaus, linked together by rope bridges. The wind blows and activates the blades of a mill. Wearing pointy hats, natives harvest grapes which they throw into their backpacks. An angular aircraft suddenly appears in the sky, followed by a plume of black smoke. It’s the crash. The pilot escapes, staggers, then collapses. He’s not local, he’s an imperial. For the moment, it is impossible to leave. We will have to integrate into this community with foreign customs. A landscape to explore, unidentified technologies, an enigma to elucidate: these ingredients are found in all of Jérémy Perrodeau’s comics, although in the end each recipe differs from the previous one. The Face of Pavil is no exception to the rule: if we find there the geometric obsessions of its author and his taste for mystery, the story takes the opposite view of the very dark Le Along des ruines (2021). This time, the scenario grabs the reader without resorting to violence or the slightest antagonist. A challenge masterfully taken up by an author-architect in perpetual evolution.
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The Face of Pavil, Jérémy Perrodeau, 2024, 29 euros.
From album to album, Pierre-Henry Gomont plows his artistic furrow without anything or anyone being able to divert him. The most surprising thing is that over the pages his graphic style becomes even more refined, gaining depth while preserving its lightness. The author of Malaterre had already brilliantly imposed his unique universe in the first volume of the Slava trilogy, whose first volume, After the Fall, had left its mark. This volume 2, entitled The New Russians, goes even further. In the first book, he plunged two protagonists worthy of Laurel and Hardy into the heart of Russia in the 1990s. Lavrine, the little fat guy, had flair and ambition. He dreamed of himself as a new oligarch by carefully applying the basics of the scammer… Slava, his skinny apprentice, was more candid and naive, clinging to some memory of artistic studies for which he retained a certain nostalgia. In this new Russian Wild West without faith or law, the improbable tandem had wanted to do well in the game. Bad luck had come to them. We don’t play with the kingpins of the Russian mafia with impunity. This second volume continues the picaresque epic of these two now separated antiheroes.
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Slava, volume 2, The New Russians, by Pierre-Henry Gomont, Éditions Dargaud, 21.50 euros.
Contrition Village, an isolated town in Florida, is a haven for sex offenders who have served their sentences. State laws requiring them to reside more than 1,000 feet from a school, park or playground make their reintegration nearly impossible. Listed for life on the internet, these undesirables find a social life in Contrition Village, make a living from odd jobs and go to mass every Saturday. The community is governed by a reverend, himself a sex offender who has served his sentence. This community is disrupted by the suspicious death of a resident, burned alive in his sleep. Marcia Harris, a local reporter who lives near the community, is leading the investigation. Contrition village is not entirely fiction. This place offering a haven of peace to former sex offenders exists under the name of Miracle Village. The Spaniards Keko and Carlos Portela were inspired to develop an extremely dark thriller while inviting the reader to reflect. In Angoulême, the work is part of the Fauve polar SNCF voyageurs selection.
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Contrition, by Carlos Portela (screenplay) and Keko (drawing), Denoël Graphic, 25 euros.
Ah, Belo Horizonte! Its spacious streets, its pretty tramways, its hills in the background… In 1937, the capital of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais was booming thanks to mining activity. It is precisely in iron ore that Oswaldo Wallace made his fortune. Smiling and good-natured, the businessman is however in no hurry to pay his workers who are threatening to strike. Damn “communist scum”… Nothing a beating wouldn’t solve, that said! The two young Wallace sons, Severino and Ramires, witness the scene and will be deeply marked by it, although not in the same way: one will become a left-wing journalist, the other a zealous supporter of the military. Chumbo tells the story of the decline of the Wallace family, from the 1930s to the 2000s. Inspired by his personal history and relying on extensive documentation, the Franco-Brazilian cartoonist Matthias Lehmann (The Favorite) details – not without a certain cruelty – the trajectories of the two brothers. This imposing 368-page comic strip brilliantly explores the question of social determinism and that of relationships of domination between rich and poor, men and women, with humor that is as tasty as it is merciless.
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Chumbo, by Matthias Lehmann, Casterman, 368 pages, 29.95 euros.
Our reading advice
In a suburb of Barcelona, Yanira and Kilian have to stay at home to look after their little brother while mom is away for a few hours. “If you make a mess of me, your ears will get hot!” she warns. While they are playing “Scarred Billy vs. Sheriff Makenrou” on the couch, (imaginary) gunshots ring out and the boy hits his head violently against the table. Blood flows, the sister goes to look for the neighbors, who agree to take them to the hospital by car. On the way, the driver smokes a big firecracker… “I need to relax.” What could go wrong? Drawing inspiration from his own memories or those of those around him, Aroha Travé paints an unfiltered portrait of a working-class neighborhood from a child’s perspective. A first comic strip that is both tender and raw, startling and hilarious, supported by a salutary freedom of tone and very successful semi-caricatural graphics. The Spanish Aroha Travé is clearly an author to follow!
Cannon fodder, by Aroha Travé, translated from Spanish by Thomas Dupuis, FLBLB, 92 pages, 15 euros.
Hayao Miyazaki fans no longer believed it. The Journey of Shuna (Shuna no Tabi), a work published forty years ago in Japan, is finally published in France, in an enlarged format and in colors faithful to the original watercolors. After ten years of absence from the cinema, Hayao Miyazaki, 82, made his big return on November 1, 2023 with The Boy and the Heron. The same day an unexpected masterpiece from the master of animation was released, Le Voyage de Shuna, a forty-year-old illustrated book previously unpublished in France! Entirely done in watercolor, this hybrid manga, sparing in panels and often closer to an illustrated short story, adapts a Tibetan tale in which a prince sets off in search of a miraculous seed to save his people threatened with famine. The adventure will not be easy, populated by monsters and slavers. A darkness not recommended for sensitive children. However, hope exists and the beauty of nature, so dear to Miyazaki, irrigates the entire story. The title is in the Éco-Fauve Raja selection at the Angoulême Comics Festival 2024.
The Journey of Shuna, by Hayao Miyazaki, translated by Léopold Dahan, Sarbacane, 26 euros.
Eva Rojas is a psychiatrist. She is free, exalted, without limits, eccentric… This is why this time, it is she who finds herself on the couch of one of her colleagues, Doctor Llull. The young Barcelona resident risks losing the right to practice. Eva must then tell the therapist in detail about the week that has just passed. A clever trick that allows the author to well orchestrate the flashbacks that punctuate this album. Eva has indeed not been idle in recent days… She has spent most of her time trying to solve a murder case in the sumptuous estate of the Monturos family, a rich dynasty of Catalan winegrowers. This sunny thriller, in the Fauve polar SNCF voyageurs selection, succeeds in taking the reader into an authentic Catalonia. We happily find the drawing between shadows and lights by Jordi Lafebre (Les Beaux Étés, Despite everything). All the places drawn by the Spanish author really exist. The scenario is rhythmic. Both the main and secondary characters are very well developed. Above all, the fall is truly unexpected. That’s what we ask of a good thriller.
I am their silence, by Jordi Lafebre, Dargaud, 19.99 euros.
In 1950, Puerto Rico was occupied by the United States. After having tried for a long time to free themselves by legal means, the nationalist leaders decided to take up arms. This little-known insurrection will be ruthlessly repressed. An assassination attempt on President Truman even took place at the Capitol. “No one knows this story, not even most Puerto Ricans,” says John Vasquez Mejias, whose parents left the Caribbean island to settle in Spanish Harlem. An excellent reason to work on creating this “engraving novel” for six years, alongside his work as a teacher. The result is striking, extremely dense (demanding?) but aesthetically fascinating. The amateur artist does not have to be ashamed of the comparison with his models of wood engraving, Lynd Ward and Frans Masereel.
And the island burned, by John Vasquez Mejias, translated by Julien Besse, Ici-bas, 25 euros.
