Gift guide | Comics to offer, to laugh and think

By judiciously mixing images and words, the greatest comic artists tell our world or nourish our imagination. Favorites.

Light in the shadows

Showing without saying everything was the challenge for Manu Larcenet in his adaptation of The roada novel by Cormac McCarthy in which the characters themselves don’t see much. He found the tone and manner to tell the desperate journey of a boy and his dad, who seek the light at the end of a road shrouded in ashes also frequented by bad guys who, sometimes, eat people. A story that haunts readers.

The roadManu Larcenet, after Cormac McCarthy, Dargaud, 155 pages.

Another face of Peter Pan

Inspired by a little-known story by James Matthew Barrie, Munuera delves into the fantastical world of Peter Pan and offers a less pretty vision than Disney. Its style has curves reminiscent of the famous American studio, but this Peter Pan and the fairies that Maimie Mannering encounters in Kensington Gardens once night falls are not only nice… We are, however, seduced by the colors and the line of the Spanish cartoonist.

Peter Pan de KensingtonJosé Luis Munuera, according to James Matthew Barrie, Dargaud, 96 pages.

Like a journalistic investigation

Well known as the ingenious daily cartoonist The SunAndré-Philippe Côté published this year a work that he had been working on part-time for 10 years. OR is as much a reflection on contemporary art as a history lesson told in the manner of a journalistic investigation. We recognize the designer’s touch and his extraordinary sense of light in this intriguing story where ideas and destinies collide.

ORAndré-Philipe Côté, Moelle Graphik, 248 pages.

No gift for the private

What a pleasure to find our clever feline in a well-crafted scenario! Blacksad investigates a series of murders linked to a spectacular corruption affair. The backdrop is New York in the 1950s, there is Shakespeare and nods to Van Gogh. Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido have rediscovered their magic touch with this diptych which constitutes their strongest work since Red Soul.

Blacksad – So it all falls (second part), Diaz Canales and Guarnido, Dargaud, 55 pages.

Small cataclysms between friends

They are neither brave knights nor musketeers from hell: these riders of “Apocadispe” are in fact three rascals who are never short of bad ideas for doing… bad things. The funny trio is at the height of its stupidity in this fourth album which is likely to please children around ten years old. It’s lively and fabulously logical!

Riders of the Apocalypse – On the Road to AdventureLibon, Dupuis, 70 pages.

Ring the alarm

From Saint-Jérôme to Sainte-Julie via Montreal, the same scenario repeats itself: the weakness of the laws and processes put in place allow developers to obtain permits to destroy natural environments. This is the sad observation made by Martin PM, author of this shocking and well-documented work which reminds us that in the expression “sustainable development”, the word “development” often wins the day. Why is sacrificing the environment so natural?

A completely natural sacrificeMartin PM, La Pastèque, 176 pages.