By Jason, coloured by Hubert and translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-742-1
Jason is secretly John Arne Saeterrøy: born in Molde, Norway in 1965 and an overnight international cartoon superstar since 1995 when his first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won that year’s Sproing Award (Norway’s biggest comics prize).
He won another Sproing in 2001 for the series Mjau Mjau and in 2002 turned almost exclusively to producing graphic novels. Now a global star among the cognoscenti he has won seven major awards from such disparate regions as France, Slovakia and the USA.
Now his latest novella is released, rife with his signature surreality; populated with cinematic, darkly comic anthropomorphs and featuring more bewitching ruminations on his favourite themes of relationships and loneliness, viewed as ever through a charmingly macabre cast of bestial movie archetypes and lost modern chumps.
In this brief full-colour tract – originally released in France as Hemingway – Jason puts his quirkily-informed imagination into literary overdrive and postulates what might have been at a moment of intense intellectual cross-pollination.
It’s Paris in the 1920s and émigrés F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway are all struggling to make their marks on the world – and most especially on the other artistic Men and Women of Destiny congregated in the enclave of creative excellence that has grown up around the Latin Quarter.
As wannabe cartoonists their own meagre efforts seem paltry and trivial in comparison to the masterful comic books being produced by Dostoyevsky or Faulkner, whilst true artists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Man Ray all seem to have no trouble with their medium or message…
Worst of all Scott thinks something is bothering Zelda: she might even be cheating on him…
The disaffected Young Turks are all plagued by nightmares of the past and frustrated dreams of mediocre futures and everyday life keeps coming at them demanding vile money just to stay alive and keep on fruitlessly toiling. And then Hemingway says it: why not just rob a bank…?
Blending literary pretention and modern creative mythology with the iconography and ironic bombast of Reservoir Dogs is a stroke of genius no one else could pull off.
As always, this visual/verbal bon mot unfolds in Jason’s beguiling, sparse-dialogued, pantomimic progressions with enchantingly formal page layouts rendered in the familiar, minimalist evolution of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style; solid blacks, thick lines and settings of seductive simplicity augmented here by a stunning palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.
Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, always probing the nature of “human-ness†by using the beastly and unnatural to ask persistent and pertinent questions. Although the clever sight-gags are less prominent here his repertory company of “funny-animal†characters still uncannily depict the subtlest emotions with devastating effect, proving again just how good a cartoonist he is.
This wry mis-history lesson is strongly suggested for adults but makes us all to look at the world through wide-open childish eyes. Jason is instantly addictive and a creator every serious fan of the art form should move to the top of the “Must-Have†list.
All characters, stories and artwork © 2007 Editions de Tournon-Carabas/Jason. All rights reserved.