Post by whitecomics on Nov 26, 2023 16:13:25 GMT
I've just begun reading the new Fabrice Neaud comic, which I know a few others here have read or plan to read. So let's have a Neaud thread...
Maybe it's interesting to summarize the trajectory of this work for anyone who isn't aware...others should chime in with corrections to the following which I'm sure isn't a perfect summary.
So Neaud draws four volumes of a comic called Journal from 1996 to 2004. It's critically lauded, now frequently cited as one of the great untranslated comics, with Volume 3 in particular seen as a high point. But that volume is also forcefully criticized for its depiction of an important love interest, Dominique, which critics I suppose deemed unfair or invasive. It's important here to mention Neaud's photorealistic style, which meant that characters are arguably easy to identify even if their real names aren't used (as was the case for Dominique, I believe).
Here it gets a little fuzzy, and has to be pieced together from Neaud interviews, short comics, and now from the new work. Neaud definitely intended to draw a Journal 5 at one point, and even produced many pages for it - he confirms this in a recent interview. That interview includes the clearest recounting I've seen as to why the project fell apart; he cites other demands on his attention due to the critical success of Journal, the need to make paying work, an abusive relationship and a deep depression. He doesn't mention the criticism of Vol 3 as a factor, so maybe it weighs on him less now, but based on previous interviews and the short story Emile it seems to have affected him significantly. So I've got to imagine that also contributed to his break from autobio work.
In any case, the fact is that Neaud produced no longform autobio work from 2004 to 2023. Aside from a few shorts, his main focus was two scifi series, only one of which he also wrote. This would be as if, say, Jeffrey Brown stopped making autobio work and started drawing Star Wars comics instead. To take a random example.
But now he's back at it, with the first of four projected new autobio volumes recently released. I read the first dozen pages of it and then decided to go back and reread Journal 3-4 first. It's been years since I've read these comics, and they remain truly astounding. What a pleasure to read them again. Describing Neaud's style as photorealist isn't completely inaccurate but it also doesn't communicate the degree to which his nibwork is loose and expressive. Even when he's staying on-model for himself or any of the other characters in his work, which of course he doesn't do always, there's a real tenderness to his line. I remembered this work as textual dense, and it is in places, but I'd somehow forgotten sequences like the first conversation with Dominique in Vol 3 - a stunning, wordless, and visually ambitious sequence. He usually works on a 9 panel grid and manipulates it with more skill and subtly than whatever you might compare it against, from Watchmen to City of Glass.
Anyways! I'll probably say more as I read through the new comic, but that's probably enough for now.
Maybe it's interesting to summarize the trajectory of this work for anyone who isn't aware...others should chime in with corrections to the following which I'm sure isn't a perfect summary.
So Neaud draws four volumes of a comic called Journal from 1996 to 2004. It's critically lauded, now frequently cited as one of the great untranslated comics, with Volume 3 in particular seen as a high point. But that volume is also forcefully criticized for its depiction of an important love interest, Dominique, which critics I suppose deemed unfair or invasive. It's important here to mention Neaud's photorealistic style, which meant that characters are arguably easy to identify even if their real names aren't used (as was the case for Dominique, I believe).
Here it gets a little fuzzy, and has to be pieced together from Neaud interviews, short comics, and now from the new work. Neaud definitely intended to draw a Journal 5 at one point, and even produced many pages for it - he confirms this in a recent interview. That interview includes the clearest recounting I've seen as to why the project fell apart; he cites other demands on his attention due to the critical success of Journal, the need to make paying work, an abusive relationship and a deep depression. He doesn't mention the criticism of Vol 3 as a factor, so maybe it weighs on him less now, but based on previous interviews and the short story Emile it seems to have affected him significantly. So I've got to imagine that also contributed to his break from autobio work.
In any case, the fact is that Neaud produced no longform autobio work from 2004 to 2023. Aside from a few shorts, his main focus was two scifi series, only one of which he also wrote. This would be as if, say, Jeffrey Brown stopped making autobio work and started drawing Star Wars comics instead. To take a random example.
But now he's back at it, with the first of four projected new autobio volumes recently released. I read the first dozen pages of it and then decided to go back and reread Journal 3-4 first. It's been years since I've read these comics, and they remain truly astounding. What a pleasure to read them again. Describing Neaud's style as photorealist isn't completely inaccurate but it also doesn't communicate the degree to which his nibwork is loose and expressive. Even when he's staying on-model for himself or any of the other characters in his work, which of course he doesn't do always, there's a real tenderness to his line. I remembered this work as textual dense, and it is in places, but I'd somehow forgotten sequences like the first conversation with Dominique in Vol 3 - a stunning, wordless, and visually ambitious sequence. He usually works on a 9 panel grid and manipulates it with more skill and subtly than whatever you might compare it against, from Watchmen to City of Glass.
Anyways! I'll probably say more as I read through the new comic, but that's probably enough for now.