By Loran, translated by FNIC (Sloth Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-908830-00-5
The Continent has long been the home of superbly crafted, challenging comics fare – unbelievable amounts of it in all manner of styles and genres – and English readers have suffered for decades due to the paucity of decent translations to our churlish mother tongue.
That’s not to say that what we have seen (especially recently with the advent of the wonderful Cinebook line of European classics) hasn’t been wonderful; it’s simply that there’s so very much we still haven’t…
Thus I’m delighted to welcome a new company into the Anglo-arena with this gloriously anarchic offering from cartoon wild-man Laurent Crenn AKA Loran and his horrifically hilarious Bouyoul, who’s jumped the Pond and had his passport stamped – in blood – as the cute and cuddly catastrophe-in-action Booyah!
Loran’s work was first seen in Anus Horibilis, working with co-founders Fred and Jean-Louis Marco, producing the shocking shenanigans of not only this effervescent, well-meaning pariah but also Captain Caca, Gringo Malo and Les Rangers de l’Espace and latterly at Atelier du Préau and Le Cycliste.
The little devil’s – Bouyoul, not Loran’s – second swing at fame is covered in this delicious initial translated collection and commence with ‘Happy Birthday’ as the well-intentioned green gargoyle hosts a celebration for the local kids, before his customary lack of fine coordination and impulse control, combined with sheer bad luck, turn the joyous anniversary into a bloodbath that is many attendees’ last…
A little old lady, her cat ‘Domino’ and Booyah’s determination to prove he’s not a monster all conspire to ruin the emerald atrocity’s day before ‘Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Scream’ reveals a disastrous, savage and surreal encounter with the master of dreams which clearly shows why neither of them should be trusted as babysitters, whilst the short, sharp ‘Interlude’ features a silent exploit that proves the amiable horror is no fisherman’s friend…
The rest of this supremely engaging, perilously poor taste comedy of terrors features the epic extravaganza ‘Night of the Living Dead Scout Zombies from Hell’ as a troupe of pious lads and their redoubtable guardian Father Barnaby come upon Booyah asleep in the woods. After an initial misunderstanding where the aged cleric tries to exorcise “the demon†and dies of a heart attack, the affable abnormality takes charge of the cub pack and tries to lead them out of the wilderness. Tragically the earth where they first bury poor old Barnaby is a secret testing ground for a new genetically modified crop – one the scurrilous Monsanlys© Corporation are only just discovering has some rather terrifying side-effects…
By the time Booyah gets the scouts to the edge of the forest he’s lost two more kids to tragic, explosively explicit accidents. They too have rejoined the bosom of the earth and the kingdom of heaven. As darkness falls the soil is ruptured by ghastly vegetable zombies sporting the standard super-infectious bite and soon the green goon and his last two charges (no longer good clean-living Christian boys, alas) are fighting for all they’re worth to suppress the horticultural horrors who have decimated the National Scout Jamboree…
Outrageously off-kilter, starkly sardonic and brutally hysterical, Booyah is the absolute antidote to anodyne touchy-feely cartoon capers, and if you love your comedy dark and your fantasy unexpurgated and splashed with spurting gut-bustingly jovial gore, this manically inventive immature-readers-only hoot (think of The Simpsons‘ Itchy and Scratchy with the kid gloves off) is definitely worth a few moments of your time.
© 2011 La Martiniere. English translation © 2011 Sloth Publishing, Ltd.