All PostsBande Dessinee
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The Zabime Sisters by Aristophane
Aristophane. The Zabime Sisters (1996). Translated by Matt Madden. First Second, 2010. ISBN 9781596436381. Aristophane has been on my radar for awhile as one of those French comic artists I needed to read more of. This year I am extremely happy to have become acquainted with his work. In conjunction with translating an amazing article [...]
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Reading 4-18-10
I’m still working on my class (I’ve got two weeks to get my paper finished) and then, hopefully, there will be more writing and comics forthcoming. I have a bunch of ideas that need to be worked on. In the meantime, a few reading suggestions: Emile by Fabrice Neaud – An english translation of this [...]
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Le Tricheur by Ruppert and Mulot
This post originally appeared at The Hooded Utilitarian as part of a roundtable of eurocomics. The comics (or should I say bande dessinee) duo of Florent Ruppert and Jerome Mulot have made only two appearances in English: a two page spread in Kramer’s Ergot 7 and also a short comic (“The Pharaohs of Egypt”) that [...]
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Translation: Poison River and the vertiginous ellipsis
Up today at the French comics site du9 (which has an English section) is my English translation of a French article by David Turgeon called “Poison River and the vertiginous ellipsis.” I’d be wanting to work on some French translating, and I’d had that article saved to blog about since it was published. So it was a natural fit.
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Reading Bande Dessinee by Ann Miller
Somehow I missed this book when it came out. It’s a kind of textbook for students and general readers on reading comics and the history of bande dessinée in particular. The book as a whole is quite good, covering a wide area though, because of this, occasionally lacking in depth. I’ll admit I didn’t read the whole book. There were sections I skimmed. Miller covers history, followed by a variety of approaches to comics: formal analysis, cultural studies, nationalism, gender, autobiography, psychoanalysis. I read the parts I’m interested in and skimmed the others.
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Le Voyage by Baudoin
Le Voyage brings on these thoughts. Baudoin is a wonderful visual stylist–his art is dynamic, engaging, lovely to behold–but his writing, or at least the story of this volume, is far less interesting, in fact it seems rather clichéd to me. Simon, the protagonist, one day leaves his wife, child, home, and job and starts off on a voyage. This flight is unplanned, rather at the breakfast table his head strangely opens up and starts showing images above it.
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Snowy Sees Double
An interesting, though not unique, case of point of view/perspective in comics. Here we have Snowy getting a drink of Captain Haddock’s whiskey. In doing so, he ends up seeing double. We are effectively seeing what Snowy sees, but we are not seeing it from his point of view. We are both outside and inside the character at the same time.
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Ordinary Victories 2 by Manu Larcenet
This second translated volume of Manu Larcenet’s Ordinary Victories (Le Combat Ordinaire) from NBM includes volumes 3 and 4 of the French version. As I’ve already written about Volume 1 of the English translation and Volume 3 of the French edition (the first half of this translated volume), I can’t say I have a lot to add on the macro level. I’d suggest reading those previous two posts first. Rereading them now, I see my opinions haven’t changed. Outside of discoveries from my previous readings, what stuck out to me in this volume? A few things.
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Francois Avril
Tom Spurgeon linked over to Francois Avril’s website the other day. My main exposure to his work is the story “63 Rue de la Grange Aux Belles” which was published in Drawn & Quarterly vol. 2 no. 1 (1994), a collaboration with Phillipe Petit-Roulet, which is most notable for its wordlessness and use of images [...]
