TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Blutch

However, as he grows older, he finds himself increasingly less inclined to draw “what I call ‘transitional images,’ which don’t convey much. A comic consists of memorable scenes, the ones you really want to draw. You have to draw the others so readers can follow along, but . . . there’s something mechanical and frustrating about it. It’s not sensual enough.” Already evident in Peplum , this itch to omit might seem at odds with what originally drew Blutch to the Satyricon : “the fact that parts are missing lets you reconstruct the missing passages yourself.” Perhaps it is that he asks of readers nomore than hewould of artists: an immersion inmoments of vivid sentiment thatmoves toward the completion of an imagined universe. Peplum took Blutch twoyears, duringwhich timehealsosidelined in projects for other publishers in France’s budding Nineties alternative comics scene. By the time it was done, À Suivre was on its legs. Peplum was unceremoniously dumped in its pages as essentially a studio cut, butchering Blutch’s work—eliminating, among other thigns, any page without words. Casterman, the publishing house behind À Suivre , promised to restore these in a laterpublication, but thatneverhappened. Thehandsomeedition that eventually came out from the influential comics publisher Cornélius in 1998 and has since become a modern classic owed much, by Blutch’s own admission, to founding editor Jean-Louis Gauthey. Gauthey commissioned an epilogue from Blutch and devised the book’s structure: ten chapters prefaced with new vignettes and chapter heads. The result maintains a special place in the heart and oeuvre of an artist always guided by feeling, restlessly in search of the new.

—edward gauvin

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