Just out as of a week ago, legendary French cartoonist Blutch in his long-overdue, first full-length English language translation. What an honor it was to work on this! Earlier, I’d only been able to smuggle excerpts of the man’s work into print: for instance, “That Was Happiness” at Words Without Borders (with video and critical appreciation by David Varno). I’d love to do Peplum, Mitchum, Blotch, Le Petit Christian, or even Rancho Bravo… here’s hoping they await!
Over at BoingBoing, Craig Thompson interviews the artist who influenced a whole generation (including Thompson himself, whose powerhouse Blankets was, rumor has it, unjustly rejected by L’Association for being to Blutch-like), a veritable one-man indie industry who reinvents himself with every book.
And Noel Murray at The Onion AV Club covers the release in his regular roundup, calling it “the comic-book version of one of Jean-Luc Godard’s cine-essays, ranting about the phoniness of the movies while also damning them for their power to burn images into viewers’ brains.”
A debut not to be missed! Pick it up!