By Nicolas de Crécy, coloured by Ruby & Walter, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-593-1 (TPB)
Nicolas de Crécy was in the Class of ’87 – the first year to graduate from the École supérieure de l’image d’Angoulême. After a stint at Disney he moved into bande dessinée and has released upwards of 3 dozen books and albums since he began professionally working in 1990: both one-offs like Journal d’un fantôme, Escales, Plaisir de myope and La Nuit du grand méchant loup and serials such as Léon la came, Monsieur Fruit, and Salvatore.
That last one is about a dog who’s a grease-monkey…
Salvatore mends cars: a mechanic and absolute wizard with all things metallic and oil-spattered, but a grumpy sod who dislikes customers so much he built his garage on the peak of a mountain to discourage them. However, he is simply so good that they all come anyway, prepared to put up with the hassle and his attitude, if only he will fix their ailing vehicles.
Moreover, Salvatore has a secret he needs peace and quiet for and that’s so attractive…
He has plenty of pain in his life but has struggled on, buoyed by an artisan’s dedication and sensibilities. It’s what makes him such an exceedingly good mechanic. One day, the tragically short-sighted widow Amandine pulls into his frosty, cloud bedecked garage with a suspicious knocking in her engine and his life changes for ever…
As well as practically blind, Amandine is heavily pregnant with twelve piglets (not unknown for a sow of her breed) and something softens within the cold canine. Offering her the unexpected hospitality of his fondue lunch, the spanner jockey nevertheless succumbs to his one weakness – “borrowing†a surplus part from her vehicle for his great project.
The little mutt has a dream and is prepared to sacrifice his principles to achieve it. Once, he loved and lost Julie. The bitch – don’t know what breed or her pedigree – moved to South America and since then he has devoted all his spare time to building a fantastic vehicle to follow her, where undoubtedly, love will reunite them forever…
His super-car is almost ready: the last part necessary can be picked up on the way; all he has to do is reach an understanding with its current owner – a perfectly reasonable bull named Jerome. Amandine, however, has not quite left his life: visually impaired to a comic degree, and heavily pregnant, she cannot be trusted to drive a small family runabout down a snow-capped alpine slope…
Her chaotic and magnificently slapstick journey leaves her and the car stranded many kilometres away atop a Parisian garret where she prematurely delivers her dozen babies. Horribly one little piggy goes missing on the way to hospital, and one fine day that stray waif will have a huge impact on Salvatore’s fate…
First seen in 2005 as Transports Amoureux (beautifully coloured by Ruby) ‘Transports of Love’ seamlessly segues here into the second album, Le Grand Départ –‘The Grand Departure’ – with tints and hues provided here by Walter.
Finally off on his dream trip in the almost-perfect Julie-Mobile, Salvatore has hit a snag. Jerome might be an amenable type, but the wife who just divorced him is not. She took the car – including that desperately needed final component – as part of the settlement and had it dismantled as an art installation – or possibly just out of sheer spite.
Amandine, meanwhile, has broken out of hospital with eleven piglets, driven by maternal hormones to find her missing infant. The lost cherub has fallen into odd circumstances, amongst sewer scum, political activists and a seductively dark and twisted catwoman siren of the underworld…
Hard-pressed by defrayed and delayed desire for his distant Julie, Salvatore’s ethics have degenerated to the point where he’s contemplating fraud and outright theft to get that vital last component. Fortunately, he has allied with a mysterious and peculiarly moralistic tiny mute man with a knack for computers. Perhaps together they can find a way to ease true love’s path?
Surreal and joyously whimsical, but with a delightfully dark edginess, this lost delight from multi-award winning cartoonist de Crécy – who revolutionised French comics with such popular and groundbreaking works as Période glaciaire /Glacial Period and The Celestial Bibendum – is a hypnotically addictive, daftly sophisticated fable of the dangerous accelerant called love and remains one of the best comics you STILL haven’t read.
Funny, gently adventurous, subversively satirical and filled to bursting with empathy and pathos, this beguiling yarn will schmooze itself into your head and make itself far too comfortable to have removed…
© 2005 Dupuis, by de Crécy, Ruby. © 2006 Dupuis, by de Crécy, Walter. English edition © 2010 NBM. All rights reserved.