The designer who goes from Thomas Pesquet to dinosaurs

Marion Montaigne likes to understand things. And there’s nothing like science for that. Then she explains them to others. She does it in comics. Marion is also anxious about life and the title of her series which features Professor Mustache sums up the designer perfectly: “You will die less stupid (but you will still die)”.

In 2017, she scored a big hit with “Dans la combi de Thomas Pesquet”, the story of the French astronaut told with humor. Because yes, this is one of the essential characteristics of Marion’s work: we laugh a lot. Popular science comics are more and more numerous, but many are deathly boring. Those of Marion Montaigne are not only remarkably popularized, but there is also no risk of yawning, we laugh so much. How does she do it? We asked her the question at BDFIL where she came to present her latest album: “Our lost worlds”, which talks about dinosaurs. But how do we go from Pesquet to diplodocus?

“The success of the Pesquet comic strip gave me the luxury of taking my time to come up with an idea. I was obviously asked to do other bios of famous people, but you have to have a lot of perspective and take responsibility to find yourself sketched with humor. It didn’t mean anything to me to do another one. And then there was Covid, the confinement: I said to myself, throw yourself into the drama, you are strong in your head. Or make a fiction: no, I’m going to wallow, I don’t know how to do that. I accumulated tons of projects and ended up throwing them all away!”

It is then that Marion comes across the story of the conflict between two paleontologists, Cope and Marsh. Because for science to be interesting, you also have to put a little hatred and a lot of ego into it. So, Marion wonders (she posts herself full of questions all the time): how could the man who always thought he was the most important creature on Earth discover the existence of dinos? This is what his book is about.

“Yes, because a dino is cool. I have seen “Jurassik Park” dozens of times. And like in the movie, in my comic, apart from the first cause, the dinosaurs will take a while to arrive. Because ultimately, it speaks more about us, about humans, about the place we believe we occupy, about science in the making.”

The album also talks about Marion, her place in all this and her role as creator. “I love reading the lives of other authors, but I go backwards to talk about mine. It was the most difficult for me to put down these pieces of existence, sometimes I tell myself that I have said too much while the readers ask me for more.

Marion’s editor has work to do, admits the author. “She has to slow me down. When I draw a scene in the 18th century, I think about lighting, so I document what it was like at the time, then hygiene (new documentation). I get to Darwin, I would like to explain everything (and extend the album by dozens of pages) and that’s when the editor shouts to me: Stooooop!

What Marion Montaigne fears more than anything? “Bore the reader. So I add what I know how to do: humor. I sometimes make myself laugh alone at my table. But hey, science is often funny when you think about it: a scientist who confuses a megalosaur femur with a scrotum… And many geniuses are unbearable people: it must be said that devoting your life to two vertebrae is is special.”

This love of knowledge, she who would have liked to be a scientific designer, perhaps owes it to humiliation. “I was 4 years old and there was a ventriloquist at a birthday party. I told my mom afterwards that I saw a sock that talked. She told me that I was very naive, that it was the gentleman. I blamed myself to death for being so gullible and that I would do anything to stop being fooled.”

May Marion Montaigne continue to ask herself a lot of questions and deliver the results to us, always with this delicious humor. “I am preparing volume 6 of Professor Mustache”. And it certainly won’t be boring.