From: [mat t m] at [mail.utexas.edu] (Matthew Madden)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 15:26:26 -0500
Subject: From Paris (part 1)

- -Poster: [mat t m] at [mail.utexas.edu] (Matthew Madden)

That subject heading is just a teaser: there is no mention of Alan Moore in
this post!!

Hi everyone, it's me, Matt, and I just got back from Paris this weekend
with a bagfull of goodies under my arm and some more stuff coming in the
mail. (BTW, yes it was a fantastic trip and no I didn't spend all my time
in comic book stores -- I also saw some movies...)

I was very impressed by the comics scene in Paris, in quantity if not
always in quality. As a matter of fact, there seemed to be plenty of
garbage being churned out and, apparently, selling well. But I was in no
position to complain -- there was more than enough to keep me dazzled and
envious of you Europeans' access to such high quality, nicely produced
material.

We American comix fans and artists hold dearly to the myth that comics are
revered and respected as High Art  in Europe --it's like blind faith in an
afterlife-- and while they certainly get more respect from the general
population than here in the US, I have to say that I didn't see any broody
academics discussing Asterix in smoky cafes, nor society ladies reading
_Dirty Plotte_ under parasols in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Furthermore, the
people I saw browsing the comic sections were pretty much the same
demographic you would find in a US comic store -- male, white, middle
class, students (hey waita minute: that's me!) -- only perhaps generally a
bit older. However, I did see more women buying comics than I do in the US;
that is to say, I actually did see some women buying comics! What little
French criticism I read about the industry seemed to say that it's
definitely an uphill battle and that it's actually gotten harder for people
to make a living doing comics in the last 15-20 years. But they do seem to
be making progress, as the Centre National de la Bande Dessinee in
Angouleme testifies (I didn't make it down there, Mark --next trip!).

Comics are everywhere in Paris, and not just in book stores. Tintin's
presence as a pop culture icon easily rivals Mickey Mouse's or Batman's
status in the US. What is strange is that the red, checkered rocket from
_Objectif: Lune_ (there's a bar with that name!) is almost as prevalent as
Tintin's cheery mug: I saw it in countless gift stores, over the entrance
to an elementary school, decorating the backdrop of a TV talk show... I
also had the honor of eating a croque-monsieur and getting fairly stinko
off a pint of Leffe (man, that's strong stuff) under a life-size poster of
Tardi's (and Leo Malet's) Nestor Burma, and this was just in a garden
variety (if such a phrase can be used when speaking of Paris) street-corner
brasserie. 

The French kids these days, what they seem to love are those mangas. In
every store I went to there was always a swarm of 12-18 yr. old boys
hovering around the rapidly expanding beds of mangas, eagerly extracting
their sweet, violent nectar. It's a tenacious species: in one Fnac (a huge
store chain in Paris), I followed the shelf labels to where there were
supposed to be books of comix criticism and biography, only to find the
shelf completely overgrown with little Japanese paperbacks, and sweaty
adolescents buzzing around my knees.

In Mark's Angouleme Diary, he sang the praises of a small Paris publisher
called L'Association, and I would like to wholeheartedly join in that song
(...perhaps in  a round?). L'Association puts out an anthology called
_Lapin_, a growing number of paperback B&W albums, and a series of
minicomics called Collection Patte de Mouche ("fly foot"). Their editorial
slant is an admirable mixture of serious, "literary" comics and very
appealing, simple, humour comics. The two poles are represented by two
artists I really like: Edmond Baudoin and Lewis Trondheim.

 Many of you will know Baudoin from his strip in _Verre d'eau_ ("Suzanna,
you are America..."), which to my knowledge is the only thing of his to
have appeared in the US. Baudoin has been around for almost 15 years and
has done a lot of stuff, which I hope one day to read. I bought his newest
Association book, called _Eloge de la Poussiere_ (Eulogy of Dust), which is
a very poignant autobio essay, taking as its starting point the descent
into dementia of his mother, who lives in a nursing home where she
repeatedly exclaims "Voila!" "...with the gravity of an artist content with
a finished work." In a series of visits to his mother, Baudoin conjures up 
childhood memories and reflects on the distortion of those memories over
time, especially as they are mediated through his art. It sounds
heavy-handed to synopsize, but Baudoin maintains a steady, contemplative
voice throughout, refusing to play up the tear-jerker potential of parts of
the story (his mother's dementia, witnessing his father's death, memories
of childhood cruelty), and by grounding his ruminations about the value and
function of art in personal experience. The book mixes straight comix
narrative with pages of illustrated journals, some collages, even a 2-page
funny animal comic by a friend of the cartoonist. The drawing alternates
between the thick brush style of the _Verre d'eau_ story and sketchy
crowquill drawings. I can't really think of a comparison to any
English-speaking cartoonists, although Mazzucchelli's story in _D&Q_ #2
bares some resemblance both in art and text. Speaking of Drawn & Quarterly,
Baudoin seems to me a prime candidate for their anthology.

At the other end of the spectrum, Lewis Trondheim draws very simple,
humorous comics which are a bit reminiscent of Jay Stephens' Nod stuff. I
got his Collection Patte de Mouche comic, _Imbroglio_, which is an absurd
twist on the _Shallow Grave_/_Les Diaboliques_ (those are films) theme of a
backstabbing trio and their shifting alliances. Trondheim takes the
scenario to the extreme, having three characters repeatedly "murder" each
other in turn, each crime however turning out to be a hoax in used to frame
or trap the third character. The three characters are all  animals, except
that you would be hard put to say exactly what kind of animal any one
character is: they are all mixtures of cats, dogs, and mice... Trondheim
keeps the book lively with a minimum of detail --a fireplace, a bar, a
stairway, a dash of zipatone-- by altering angles, long shots and close
ups, and with his very funny dialogue and sound effects (when the woman is
shot in the neck with a poisoned Amazonian blow dart, the sound she makes:
"h"). Trondheim is quite prolific; I think he also does some mainstream
stuff. I didn't get any of his albums, but what little I have seen I think
is great. However I did read a review of one of his books in _(A Suivre)_
which pointed out that Trondheim is one of those "you love him or you hate
him" artists.

(a suivre),

Matt Madden