By Denis Mérezette & Jean-François di Giorgio (Editions Michel Deligne)
ISBN: 2-87135-019-1
Even in these cosmopolitan times of easy access and no borders a truly monolithic amount of world comics still languishes untranslated and thus unappreciated by a vast pool of potential fans. It’s certainly not the Japanese or Europeans’ fault. Over the decades many publishers, Eastern and Occidental, have tried to crack the American market (let’s be honest here; Britain alone is certainly too small for the effort to mean anything or be cost effective) with usual painful and costly results.
However it does mean that circulating out there are many intriguing lost gems of graphic narrative such as this dark and moody adult thriller that came and went largely unremarked in 1985 but is certainly worthy of a second look and a larger audience in these more cosmopolitan times.
Desperation Row (or more accurately ‘Street of Shadows’) was the debut pairing of Mérezette & di Giorgio, appearing on a few British bookshelves in 1986, a year after publisher De Ligne launched it in France as ‘Rue Des Ombres’ – a terse and intriguingly intense period crime drama set in the mythical, movie-immortalised gutters and slums of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen.
Artist Denis Mérézette’s first published work was ‘Le Berger’ (written by Sédille), released in 1981. He went on to illustrate Duménil’s ‘Algérie Française!’ before joining with Jean-François di Giorgio on ‘Rue des Ombres’ in 1985 and ‘Julie Julie’ in 1986. In 1988 he produced ‘Hank Wetter – Les Carnassiers’ with Philippe Illien, for Magic Strip and adapted, with author De la Royère, B. Clavel’s epic ‘Harricana – Le Royaume du Nord’ in 1992.
Di Giorgio moved from editorial to authorial creativity with his debut albums ‘Rue des Ombres’ and ‘Julie Julie’ after which he began the serial ‘Munro’ (illustrated by Griffo and André Taymans for Spirou) as well as novel adaptations of novels such as Le Pays Perdus and many other strips like ‘Fous de Monk’, ‘Sam Griffith’, ‘Les Aventures de Bouchon le Petit Cochon’, medieval blockbuster ‘Shane’ (with Paul Teng), ‘Le Culte des Ténèbres’ and ‘Mygala’… all stuff I’d love to see make the jump to English.
This bleak noir homage pushes all the visual, tonal and narrative buttons of mythic 20th century America as it follows the foredoomed path of burned-out Parisian Paparazzo Paul; moving through the mean streets of the Bowery and immigrant districts, capturing the sordid glamour of America’s underbelly for the bored readers of Europe.
Tracking an unexplained spate of suicides Paul spots a high roller slumming on skid row and gets far too close to a big story…
Inexplicably ignoring the tawdry instincts of a lifetime, Paul sells wealthy Mr. Ofield the undeveloped film-roll of his Bowery escapade and in return the millionaire offers him a high-paying gig… obtaining compromising and legally airtight photos of his cheating spouse.
Paul succeeds and things start to get really messy: his apartment is searched, thugs beat him up, terrorise his hooker girlfriend and then his building – and the ones either side – are torched. As his fellow news-photographers happily snap away at the maimed and homeless survivors of the conflagration, Paul reaches an epiphany and realises he’s no longer one of their conscienceless fraternity… and that’s when the cheating wife he so recently exposed confronts him and the photographer begins to regret keeping those negatives….
It would seem Mr. Ofield never intended to divorce his wandering wife and now Paul is fatally involved in a deadly, devious war between rival gangsters and an equal ruthless government agency. Paul trades his camera for a hastily purchased gun, but when his old pal and street tipster Shorty is brutally murdered by the beggars who run the Bowery Paul finds himself remorselessly pulled between, honour, ambition and survival and having to decide if he’s a recorder of or participant in life…
Cunningly twisted and nihilistically bleak, this grim thriller suffers somewhat from a mediocre translation, but the plot and art are fearfully engaging and this moving, stylish adult yarn is long overdue for a more sensitive interpretation and new English edition.
© 1985 Editions Michel Deligne S.A., and Mérezette & Giorgio Productions. All rights reserved.