Two From The Louvre: Nicolas De Crecy and Enki Bilal

NBM's had some success in publishing the translated versions of comics originally published by France's Futuropolis inspired by the famous Louvre. The series has been so successful that NBM just reprinted Nicolas De Crecy's Glacial Period, the book that kicked off the series. NBM is notorious for reprinting European comics at a much smaller size than their original albums in order to save costs, but the reprint is pretty much identical to the original in terms of size. For a long time, not printing the original big album size made economic (though not aesthetic) sense, as Americans seemed to actively resist buying any kind of comics in this format. With the slow acceptance of European comics in American book stores and comics shops and a greater insistence on maintaining the fidelity of the original comics (and a willingness to pay for such fidelity), NBM is now showing a greater willingness to take risks and publish comics in such a way that properly flatters the art of their creators.

In the Louvre series, this has been especially important, since most of the books have been light on narrative and heavy on Louvre-inspired imagery. One of the oldest and greatest art museums in the world, the sheer variety of works in the Louvre means that no two artists would react to its holdings in the same way, even in a museum with a number of pieces so famous that even laymen are familiar with them, like Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. De Crecy was interested in the concept of interpretation and wove a funny tale around an old story concept: what would archaeologists from the future make of objects from our society from today without any kind of hermeneutic context? In this case, in a future world where climate change has induced the titular Glacial Period, a group of explorer-archaeologists manages to find the Louvre, buried under ice and snow. Like the proverbial blind men examining an elephant, each explorer's background and biases makes the Louvre seem like something different. In one remarkable sequence, one explorer sequences paintings to create a "history" of an island nation that was a city of vice and carnal pleasure, whose economy was based on water, and that fell in a torrent of fire and monsters rising from the sea.

This is one of many silly interpretations that is only brought to bear after De Crecy carefully spends time establishing his characters. There's the grizzled veteran who's a misogynist, the idealistic archaeologist, the clever daughter of an explorer who now functions as his legs, and the genetically altered dog that proves to be the most important character in the book. Named Hulk (after one of the "old gods"), this talking and intelligent creature is part pig, giving it a nose that can actually discern the ages of the objects it smells. When the artwork of the Louvre starts talking to him (including a score of Jesus Christs in one of the book's best jokes) and tells him what the Louvre actually is and how it's in danger of falling into a crevasse, Hulk saves the day by getting them to combine into the shape of a dog and run out. It's a ridiculous ending to what is really a silly book, one that lampoons scientific hubris with lines like "What beings are naive enough to express themselves through drawings?" What distinguishes it is De Crecy's wonderfully scribbly, fragile line and the beautiful watercolors that have almost a burnt quality.  De Crecy also does a fine job balancing images from the Louvre with an actual story.

The same can't be said for Enki Bilal, the well-regarded fantasy and science fiction cartoonist, in his Phantoms of the Louvre. Those expecting a mind-blowing series of Louvre-inspired drawings will be bitterly disappointed. Instead, Bilal spent most of this project looking inward, imagining the phantoms and/or muses that might have inspired or played a part in the creation of each work of art. He then spins a biography of each of these figures' life from cradle (including birth weight) to grave, creating a frequently rich imaginary history. It's not an accident that he hits on famous works like the Mona Lisa and Hammurabbi's Code, because it's fun and tempting to come up with historical fiction surrounding these works. The same is true for the famous Christ Dead, as he comes up with a detailed backstory for Longinus, the guard who pierced Christ's side with a spear. It was actually more interesting to see Bilal conjure up the lives for other works, imagining Frans Snyder's Fish Market and seeing a boy who was born in a fish market and became a daring sailor. Bilal also imagined Lakshem, attached to the piece Human Headed Wood Bull, as an ancient man who had a special rapport with bulls. Analia Avellaneda was a color savant who was an assistant to El Greco, before her involvement in a romance led to her being poisoned.

To be clear, this book does not contain anything resembling comics. Instead, there's a big image of the original work of art overlaid with a "phantom" drawing by Bilal. That's then explicated by a small image of the original piece, Bilal's extended text regarding the phantom's history, and then a small reproduction of his original drawing. Those drawings are pretty rough and sketchy, and the result seems overblown and overproduced. I would have loved to have seen Bilal pick maybe five or six of these phantoms and actually draw a story instead of the padded, tedious and undercooked package that we saw here. Indeed, the novelty of the book quickly wore off after the first couple of phantoms, and Bilal even started repeating himself in terms of ideas, as several of the phantoms were killed by jealous lovers. Several had ancient, mystic qualities. Bilal spent a lot of time thinking about the phantoms but didn't seem to want to spend very much time actually doing what he's best known for (drawing), which is certainly unfortunate for those who might shell out for this book hoping to see his virtuosity on display.

Juggling Act: Salvatore, Volume 2

If there's one thing I've noticed about the comics of Nicolas De Crecy, it's that he's willing to pursue a tangent as far as it will take him. There are five different plot lines winding through the second english translation of his Salvatore graphic novel, but he's perfectly happy to ignore dangling plot points in favor of a tangent that yields a great series of gags. As the quest of the title character lurches slowly through the book, De Crecy slowly introduces more characters into the mix, each with their own motivations and plotline to call their own. It's a highly successful juggling act that retains all of the elements that made the first volume of this series (the first two volumes, actually, just as this one contains volumes 3 and 4 of the original French albums) such a delightful success. Once again, De Crecy's character design is top notch and drives much of the book's humor. His characters are anthropomorphic animals that frequently retain a surprising amount of their original animal nature. For example, Amondine the pig is usually depicted as nude, and De Crecy takes that in some hilarious directions. Forced to get a job to feed her brood of piglets, she first is fired from her cashier job when a customer buys a suckling pig that she fears might be her lost piglet, Frank. Then she puts on overalls for a manual labor job but is fired for getting stuck inbetween two boxes. Finally, she wears a frilly pair of panties as a topless waitress before she's fired for being too fat. That latter job is the kind of clever sight gag that De Crecy unexpectedly peppers into his narrative.

Of course, the lead narrative is Salvatore (an anthropomorphic dog) and his little friend (a miniature human being) going on a road trip to try to find Salvatore's true love Julie, who happens to be in South America. Of course, Salvatore is driving from France and plans to drive through to Russia, over the Bering Straits, over to Alaska and down to South America from there, which is every bit as crazy as it sounds. He's a deluded blowhard who heaps abuse on his friend until he's separated from him at the end of the book (and has a tearful reunion), but there's an essential kindness to his character, even as he finds himself tempted by a woman he helps out by giving her a ride. Meeting her German shepherd boyfriend is a highlight of the book, as De Crecy draws him as a leering, wolfish fashion photographer who is nonetheless nattily dressed (depicted in exquisite detail by the artist).

The quest to find Frank is the second major narrative in the story, as Almondine hires an inept and vaguely existential private detective to find him. They wind up inadvertently bumping into another of the storylines in the book that puts them achingly close to Frank. He was rescued by a young woman named Lea after a group of Goths were attempting to sacrifice him on a cross (this book goes from whimsical to grim without much warning), who fancies herself his mother. Her father, a devious businessman (there's a great sequence where he claims to be a self-made man because the factory he inherited from his father had only 6,000 employes when he took it over), finds the piglet embarrassing and hires a couple of roughnecks to try to take him out. The rest of Almondine's piglets create a business empire predicated upon scamming unsuspecting consumers with promises of "organic" food, one of many subcultures De Crecy gleefully takes a shot at in this book (Goths come in for a good-natured beating as well.). The colorist Walter adds some weight to De Crecy's scribbly drawings, but it's the surprisingly nuanced body language of his frequently bloated, grotesque and ridiculous-looking characters that carries the narrative. The authority figures look grim and officious, the litter of pigs chitters away like a miniature board of directors, the young and female characters have a curvy sexiness and sophistication, and poor Almondine careens from one disaster to another as a marvelously realized comedic force. I'd say De Crecy's slapstick and use of body language is more potent than his satire, which at times aims at easy targets. Above all else, things are constantly moving in this book, even if, like Salvatore discovers, all that movement wound up plopping him back at the beginning of the journey. De Crecy ensures the reader that the fruitlessness of Salvatore's journey doesn't extend to the entertainment value and sheer delight found in his cartooning.

NBM Spotlight: Yslaire/Carriere, Nix, De Crecy, Geary

Let's run through a number of recent releases from NBM.

The Sky Over The Louvre, by Bernar Yslaire & Jean-Claude Carriere. This is the latest volume of NBM's series done in conjunction with the Louvre and French publisher Futuropolis. It's also the biggest and flashiest, with the script written by legendary French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere and art by hugely popular Belgian cartoonist Bernar Yslaire. Carrier wrote most of the scripts for surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel as well as scripts for Milos Forman and Louis Malle, among others. This was his first comic, and what was surprising was how relatively spare the text was. That was partly illusory, as there are several text sections, but the creators found a way to emphasize image above all else. Yslaire is a scratchy and scribbly penciler whose line reminds
me of MAD's Mort Drucker, believe it or not. His characters have long, narrow faces, prominent and pointy noses, puckered-up lips and retain a lively naturalism even when their actions are cartoony. He wisely uses a highly muted palette so as to make the actual paintings depicted in this book really pop off the page.


That's a fitting treatment, considering that the book is about the earliest days of the Louvre right before Robespierre's Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Its main protagonists are the famous painter David (founder of the Louvre) and Robespierre himself. As a narrative, The Sky Over The Louvre is simple, as it follows the two friends as their relationship fractures in light of The Terror and Robespierre's obsession with David depicting the Supreme Being in a painting. The through-line of the narrative focuses on a mysterious young boy named Jules Stern, whose presence becomes the catalyst for the conflict between the book's protagonists.


Thematically, this book is complex. The precise relationship between Jules and David is unclear, though the homoeroticism surrounding the aesthetics of the Revolution is quite evident. The intersection between art and politics is another major theme, as David is happy to act as official portrait propagandist for the Revolution (painting portraits of martyrs and training
future generations of artists). Robespierre is portrayed as a somewhat sympathetic figure despite the paranoia of the Terror; he's an idealist given absolute power. Still, David is willing to along with this until Robespierre becomes obsessed with depicting the new Supreme Being, reintroducing the specter of religion back into the culture. Once the guillotine caught up with
Robespierre, it didn't take long for David to glom on to his true model for Supreme Being: the "handsome like antiquity" likeness of Napoleon.


The book is filled with people facing a vacuum of morality, as the Committee For Public safety's reliance on "reason" becomes just as capricious and merciless for the people of France as the old monarchy. As a result, it's easy for Committee members to attempt to justify their actions in the interest of rooting out traitors and protecting the Republic, a story that doesn't have to be presented as a history lesson for it to become instantly familiar to a modern reader. At the same time, David's willingness to sell out the revolution and Robespierre's absolute devotion to his principles (no matter how insane) muddies the waters as for whom the reader should feel sympathy. At just 66 pages, The Sky Over The Louvre moves along at an economical clip, quickly & efficiently setting up its protagonists and their conflicts. That efficiency allows for long looks at historical paintings, while the oversized album size provides a proper format for appreciating the sumptuous art.


Salvatore Volume I, by Nicolas De Crecy. This compendium of the first two translated volumes from De Crecy is slyly charming both in terms of its narrative and its aesthetic appeal. The story follows a dog mechanic named Salvatore who surreptitiously steals parts from his customers in order to build a strange vehicle to take him to his true love, half a world away. De Crecy uses an anthropomorphic style that's both cute and slightly disturbing. The character design is disturbing because De Crecy clearly finds it funnier to draw his characters closer to animal than human, and as a result his choices of pig, bull and cow lead to hilariously grotesque and bloated figures. The narrator of the story is frequently harshly judgmental, so much so that even the characters comment on the narrator from time to time when it explores and sometimes condemns their questionable moral decisions.


What I like best about this comic is the way De Crecy slips between whimsical flights of fancy and harsh naturalism. One of the main characters in the book is a myopic pig named Amondine. Her husband worked at a slaughterhouse until he was downsized--and the form that this downsizing took was his being turned into meat! It's one of many quietly grim gags in this book, like a piglet of Amondine's being captured and strapped to a cross by a group of goths before he's rescued by a teenage anthropomorphic cat. While there's a definite narrative to follow in this book, what makes it delightful is De Crecy's willingness to follow a tangent for a long time. There's an extended sequence where the half-blind Amondine drives her car off a cliff but doesn't realize she's in great peril as the car bounces on an airplane, soars off a ski lift, and crashes on a roof. This is one of many such sequences in the book, and that incidental character material winds up being the true meat of the book. The rich colors by Ruby & Walter mesh perfectly with De Crecy's scribbly line, complementing the relaxed energy of the pencils without overwhelming them.

The Lives of Sacco and Venzetti, by Rick Geary. This is the latest in Geary's "Treasury of XXth Century Murder" series, and each volume tends to have a different theme depending on the historical event he chooses to cover. Famous Players was about the ways in which the magic of Hollywood was truly founded on lies and illusions that in many ways poison the art that proceeds out of it. The Terrible Axe-Man Of New Orleans was about the ways in which fear can spin out of control, take on a life of its own, and wound the psyche of a city. Sacco & Vanzetti is the rare Geary book that's more about the trial than it is about the crime (though there's certainly a great deal of detail about that as well). As always, Geary editorializes as little as possible, but this case was considered worldwide to be a matter of red-scare blaming and a railroading of two innocent men.


Geary does acknowledge that there's at least the possibility that the gun that killed one of the victims of the crime could have belonged to Sacco (thanks to advanced ballistics techniques), but the fact that the judge was quoted as delighting in punishing the two Italian anarchists and the legal system made it impossible for any appeal to have a chance of success certainly demonstrates that the prosecution lacked anything near the sort of proof necessary to earn a conviction. The case was a simple matter of xenophobia and a fear of the anarchist movement driving the legal system and derailing justice, and there is an obvious resonance between this story and the current xenophobia in the US. As always, Geary's pencils are incredibly tight, as he's the master of hatching. The detail on suits alone makes this book a visual feast, but it's the way he brings people alive that's truly impressive. The facial expressions and body language of the men and women in court is what secretly tells the story; a sneer from the judge, a raised eyebrow from a lawyer tell much more than their actual words. I'm eager to see what he intends to tackle next.


Kinky & Cosy, by Nix. This translated collection of gags about marauding teenage sisters is billed as "shocking! disgusting!" as well as "darkly subversive". It's certainly mild in comparison to actual shock humor, and the gags themselves are more hit than miss. That said, there's a certain self-possessed weirdness about the whole enterprise. The hardback cover has cut-outs for the googly-eyes that pop out from underneath it. There are bizarre, entirely self-indulgent fumetti segments in the book featuring various men dressing up as Kinky, Cosy or their parents. There's an entire section devoted to "Brain Teasers": mazes, matching images, and assorted counting games featuring the strip's cast. Of course, they do things like throw anvils at the teacher, so it's not quite a typical activity page.

Nix's work reminds me a little of Joe Daly, only without the existential ruminations and level of detail in his art. The best way to read it is not to expect shock or killer gags, but instead to settle in and enjoy the strange rhythms of this book. As silly and absurd as this world is, it's clear that Nix has a great deal of genuine affection and enthusiasm for it. He seems to enjoy dropping in on these characters to see what odd thing they're up to with little concern as to either traditional comedic set-ups or lock-solid punchlines. Instead, we get strips about the mother's various forms of vibrator (including buying one from a roaming vibrator truck and finding a miniature alien space probe) as well as her falling in love with a recycling bin. Kinky & Cosy is a singularly odd entry in an increasingly crowded market of edgy humor books, one that's gentler in nature than one might think at first but is not distinctive for its actual jokes.