By Lewis Trondheim & Hubert Chevillard, translated & edited by Mike Kennedy (Magnetic Press)
ISBN: 978-1-54930-771-3 (HB/Digital edition)
Until so very recently, comics in the English-speaking world were largely comedy or genre adventure, with a small but vital niche of breakthrough biography, autobiography and reportage such as Maus, Palestine, The End of the F**king World and Persepolis. What we have never had, and still largely don’t have, is an equivalent to general fiction and drama/melodrama.
That’s not so in Europe, where a literal “anything goes” attitude has always accommodated human-scaled slice of life stories that depict ordinary people in the quiet as well as extraordinary moments. Think of such comics as the sequential narrative equivalent of watching mainstream broadcast TV. In the UK that would be BBC 1, 2 (and maybe 4); ITV1 and Channels 4 or 5. But in comics even that resource offers a vast variety, and in Euro Comics it isn’t hard to find almost impossible genres thriving. For example, there’s a wealth of superb material just about going on holiday…
That’s not really a fair comparison for Americans, but quite frankly, your TV networks are a hellhole of your own devising; although we are proudly debasing our system to match yours. Still, it’s a miracle that you have generated so many great shows and programmes over the decades and it’s also why I keep banging on about comics. In them, there are always infinite worlds and possibilities…
So, now that our own Powers-That-Be (hopeless, whoever you vote for) have arranged it so that it’s now all-but-impossible for any UK-based folk to pop across and have une petite vacance in Europe unless immune to passports and able to teleport, over there organized timewasting and energy-restoration is still an inescapable right, and they have some fabulous tales about taking a simple break. This is arguably one of the best you’ll ever read…
A sublime example of everything I’m talking about, this is Lewis Trondheim & Hubert Chevillard’s Je vais rester. Translated by Magnetic Comics as Stay, it challenges all the commercial pressures I’ve alluded to above: an intriguing, engaging drama in both print and byte-sized versions for me to recommend and you to fall in love with. It also means that if you’re stuck in road, rail or airport queues you can download it after getting bored with me…
With north of 100 books bearing his pen-name (his secret identity is actually Laurent Chabosy), writer/artist/editor/animator/educator Lewis Trondheim is one of Europe’s most prolific comics creators: illustrating his own work; overseeing cartoon adaptations of earlier successes like La Mouche (The Fly) and Kaput and Zösky or editing young-readers book series Shampooing for Dargaud.
His most famous tales are such global hits as Les Formidables Aventures de Lapinot (seen in English as The Spiffy Adventures of McConey); the Donjon series of nested fantasy epics (co-created with Joann Sfar and translated as conjoined sagas Dungeon: Parade, Dungeon: Monstres and Dungeon: the Early Years); comedy fable Ralph Azham and his utterly beguiling cartoon diaries collected as Little Nothings.
In his spare time – and when not girdling the globe from convention to symposium to festival – the dourly shy and neurotically introspective savant wrote for satirical magazine Psikopat and provided scripts for many of the continent’s most popular artists such as Fabrice Parme (Le Roi Catastrophe, Vénézia), Manu Larcenet (Les Cosmonautes du futur), José Parrondo (Allez Raconte and Papa Raconte) and Thierry Robin (Petit Père Noël).
Ostensibly retired but still going strong, Trondheim is a cartoonist of uncanny wit, outrageous imagination, piercing perspicacity, comforting affability and self-deprecating empathy who prefers to scrupulously control what is known and said about him…
I must admit that, at this moment, from all his vast canon, STAY is probably my absolute favourite…
Born in Angers in 1962, Hubert Chevillard (Le Pont dans la Vase, Corcal, Terra Incognita, Le Facteur, Pavillon Rouge, Donald’s Happiest Adventures) is a French cartoonist who studied animation at the Gobelins School and School of Fine Arts in Angoulême. He worked at Walt Disney Animation France’s Montreuil Studious for almost a decade before switching to comics as illustrator of Didier Crisse’s Luuna. He thereafter branched out and carried on, scripting his own stuff whilst remaining an in-demand artist for others…
Here his softly endearing images paint us a picture of idyllic summer holidays at the seaside for affianced couple Roland Matturet and Fabienne Guillardin. For their trip to the South of France, he has meticulously (it’s his way) planned everything and paid for it all in advance as a build-up to asking her a certain question. Sadly, the entire sunny escapade is cut short – as is Roland himself – when a bizarre accident leaves Fabienne instantly and utterly alone in a strange but welcoming resort of happy strangers…
Shocked and stunned, but still posthumously guided by Roland’s notebook itinerary, Fabienne seems to pause inside. Not even informing the families of the change in circumstance, she roams like a ghost, sampling all the prepaid amenities, diligently attending to Roland’s checklist of events… and gradually reinventing herself.
Avoiding all past connections and her current situation, she savours being unknown, alone, and not yet bereaved: pondering the ramifications in her pensive way, as she grudgingly befriends eccentric, exotic and quixotic local Paco… a man unlike any she has ever met before.
With no idea how she feels about anything, Fabienne allows herself to be intrigued as Roland’s hold on her diminishes and fades away…
What’s next…?
Lyrical, laconic, blackly comic and engagingly demure, this gleefully morbid, platonic holiday non-romance unfolds with a minimum of verbiage and powerfully understated silent visuals: exploring life and death, addressing denial, avoidance and coping mechanisms through a soft-focussed lens of friendships in adversity and those ever-present, never-acted upon holiday impulses…
Vacations are built of never-seized moments of seductive might-have-beens and affable strangers, channelled here in astonishingly compelling episodes that make the mundane magical, and encapsulating those brief spells of transient opportunity that comprise such “holidays of a lifetime”. This is tale of woe and wonder writ small, and all the more perfect because of it.
Stay published 2019 by The Lion Forge, LLC. © 2019 The Lion Forge, LLC. Originally published in France as Je vais rester, scenario by Lewis Trondheim, illustrations by Hubert Chevillard © Rue de Sevres, Paris 2018. All rights reserved.
Today in 1951 Wendy (Elfquest) Pini was born, as was inker Josef Rubinstein in 1958, but the date also marks the loss of artist and back-stage comics boffin Sol Brodsky in 1984 and premier cartoonist Dik Browne (Hägar the Horrible, Hi and Lois, The Tracy Twins) in 1989.
Today in 1938, Britain’s Daily Mirror launched Bernard Graddon’s long running Just Jake strip, and Keiji Nakazawa’s epic Barefoot Gen began in 1973. In 1988 Steve Canyon parked the jet for the last time and in 1994 the initial Alternative Press Expo opened in San Jose, CA.