{"id":26593,"date":"2022-10-02T09:55:12","date_gmt":"2022-10-02T09:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=26593"},"modified":"2022-10-02T09:55:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-02T09:55:12","slug":"werewolves-of-montpellier-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2022\/10\/02\/werewolves-of-montpellier-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Werewolves of Montpellier"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Jason<\/strong>, translated by Kim Thompson<\/strong> (Fantagraphics Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-60699-359-0 (HB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

Jason is secretly John Arne Saeterr\u00f8y: born in Molde, Norway in 1965 and an overnight international cartoon superstar since 1995 when his first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn<\/em> (Pocket Full of Rain<\/strong><\/em>) won Norway\u2019s biggest comics prize A Sproing Award<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

He won another in 2001 for the series Mjau Mjau<\/em> and by 2002 was almost exclusively producing graphic novels. Now a global star, he has won many more major awards from such disparate regions as France, Slovakia and the USA.<\/p>\n

Rife with his signature surreality, this novella was first released in 2010; populated with cinematic, darkly comic anthropomorphs and featuring more bewitching ruminations on his signature themes of relationships and loneliness, viewed as ever through a charmingly macabre cast of bestial movie archetypes and lost modern chumps.<\/p>\n

Here he focuses on the hollow life of expatriate Swede Sven<\/em>, a purposeless artist who has gravitated into a stagnant, romance-lite existence in a provincial French town. Sven fritters away his days just like his close friend Audrey<\/em> – another listless intellectual looking for the right lady to love.<\/p>\n

The only thing quickening his pulse these days is the occasional nocturnal foray over the rooftops: burglarizing houses dressed as a werewolf. Unfortunately, Montpellier already has a genuine lycanthrope community and they don\u2019t look kindly upon gauche parvenus intruding into their world with criminal cosplay\u2026<\/p>\n

This post-modern short-&-spooky fable unfolds in Jason\u2019s beguiling, sparse-dialogued, pantomimic progressions delivering resonances of Hitchcock\u2019s bubbly comedy-thrillers, quirkily blended with Bergman\u2019s humanist sensibilities. The enchantingly formal page layouts are rendered in his minimalist evolution of Herg\u00e9\u2019s Claire Ligne<\/em> style: solid blacks, thick lines and settings of seductive simplicity augmented here by a stunning palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.<\/p>\n

Jason\u2019s work always jumps directly into the reader\u2019s brain and heart, deftly probing the nature of \u201chuman-ness\u201d 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 \u201cfunny-animal\u201d characters still uncannily displays the subtlest emotions with devastating effect, proving again just how good a cartoonist he is.<\/p>\n

This comic tale is best suited 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 medium should move to the top of the \u201cMust-Have\u201d list. Buy, borrow or even steal it if you must, but be aware that actions have consequences\u2026 even for faux monsters\u2026
\n\u00a9 2010 Jason. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jason, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books) ISBN: 978-1-60699-359-0 (HB\/Digital edition) Jason is secretly John Arne Saeterr\u00f8y: 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 Norway\u2019s biggest comics prize A Sproing Award. He won … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Werewolves of Montpellier”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[75,63,66,125,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-comics","category-european-classics","category-horror-stories","category-humour","category-mature-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-6UV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26595,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26593\/revisions\/26595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}