Monsieur Jean (Dupuy/Berberian)

[mamalips]

I just read a Monsieur Jean story in D&Q's big book vol 3. Very good work, similar to Michel Rabagliati, who also happens to feature in the book.

I've seen there's a few Monsieur Jean books in English:

Monsieur Jean: from Bachelor to Father
It Don't Come Easy
Get A Life
Maybe Later

Can anyone recommend a certain one? Does each book contain different stories or is there some overlap? Worried about diving into a new cartoonist (to me) and getting a lot of repeated stories.

Thanks!

[teemcgee]

Hey mama, so I think I've managed to reconstruct the order for you - I'm only familiar with some of their books in French but enough to puzzle it out.

Get A Life corresponds to what I think based on a cover match is the third volume in French - this is the first book that actually came out in English, via D&Q.

However, the two Humanoids volumes you've mentioned Monsieur Jean: from Bachelor to Father and It Doesn't Come Easy collect all seven Monsier Jean books in chronological order (including the material in Get a Life). From Bachelor to Father collects the first half, which are mostly shorts, so there's probably some overlap of material there with the strips in the D&Q anthology. The other book collects the rest which are book length narratives. There is also one you haven't mentioned, Singles Theory, which is a 'hors série' in French - not connected to the main narrative.

Maybe Later is actually not a Monsier Jean but an autobiographical book where the artists talk about the reception of the Monsier Jean books (It's called Journal d'un Album in French - you might loosely translate that in English as 'Diary of a Graphic Novel'). It has cultural significance as part of the autobio wave that was happening in French comics at that time (there's a sequence in one of Fabrice Neaud's Journals where he depicts some of the pages and critiques them), but probably not the first place to start.

[mamalips]

Damn, Travis! That was incredibly kind of you to lay that out for me. I'll get It Don't Come Easy then and take it from there. Thank you again, really!

[Ian M]

You liking Rabagliatti, yeah, M. Jean would be up your alley. I read them both in D&Q back at the time, and it always kept them on my radar. I have the two bigger D&Q books, but I've bought some of their art books. It's really a vibe of cartooning that hits me. Proper cartoons, but with a life and character fine art. It takes me back to classic New Yorker cartoonists like Arno in places.

[Ian M]

And a couple more. This book is just sketchbooks from traveling around New York and Southern Europe.

[mamalips]

Those look really nice! Damn, more books to add to the list..