In early August, comic book author Quentin Zuttion decided to publish one post per day on his Instagram account. He is seen counting down the release of his new graphic novel, Beauty salon (Dupuis, 184 pages, 24.50 euros). With about ten copies of his album, he builds sometimes a small cabin, sometimes a bedside table, sometimes an exhibition display case… A way of desacralizing the book object that makes you smile.
On August 28, at the Olympic Café, in the 18the arrondissement of Paris, it was to the drag queen Sciatique that he entrusted the animation of the launch evening of his book. After a series of questions and answers as funny as they were touching (including a ” Do you love me ? “ (expressed in a facetious tone), the flamboyant performer enchanted the sixty or so guests by performing The world is stonedby Fabienne Thibeault, extract from the musical comedy Starmaniaet Hi… Lolitaby Alizée. Iconic pop hits from two very different eras, the 1970s-1980s and the 2000s. Two songs that occupy, with the catchy Tainted Loveby Soft Cell, a place of choice in the imagination of Quentin Zuttion as in his Beauty salon.
This apparent lightness contrasts radically with the tragic tone of this adaptation of the novel of the same name by the Mexican Mario Bellatin (Stock, 2000). Jeshua, Isai and Alex are three homosexuals who enjoy shampooing their clients’ hair during the day as much as partying and frolicking at night in drag. A strange syndrome suddenly puts an end to their carefree daily life. This evil that eats away at them manifests itself among other things by the appearance of fish scales on their skin… A graphic choice of a certain poetry, a clear metaphor for AIDS and Kaposi’s sarcomas, these skin tumors caused by the disease.
The discovery of the novel, which Camille Grenier, his editor at Dupuis, put into the hands of Quentin Zuttion, was a shock for the latter. “I had never read anything in fiction about AIDS. And even though it is a work of fiction, the movie 120 beats per minute [de Robin Campillo, 2017] remains very inspired by real facts”says the 34-year-old cartoonist, whom we met at his home, a former caretaker’s lodge in the backyard of an 18th-century building.e Parisian district, in the torpor of an early August evening.
Representations of the male body
Mario Bellatin’s short text, which contains no dialogue and does not name the characters, seemed at first glance to be an ideal framework: “As I read it, a lot of images came to me, and I thought that the work would not be complicated. In reality, it was much more difficult.” It took Quentin Zuttion two years to appropriate the original work, who published his first comic, Under the bed (Editions Lapin), in 2016. This laborious creative process was accompanied by painful but salutary psychotherapy – a subject that regularly comes up in his discourse, in the form of a joke or in a more solemn tone.
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