#jerome mulot

[ahb-writes]

Comics Review: 'The Grand Odalisque' & 'Olympia'

The Grand Odalisque & Olympia by Bastien Vivès, Florent Ruppert, Jérôme Mulot

anthology

burglary

European comics

thief

My Rating: 2 of 5 stars

Carole is the experienced thief; she's a skilled planner and knows precisely how to take control of the room. Sam is the muscle; she's practical, rides motorcycles for stunt work, and is good at pretending she isn't nervous. Alex is an irrepressible idiot. Insisting these three women broach some semblance of camaraderie to steal a few massive paintings from Paris' most respected art institutions is a difficult ask.

The Grand Odalisque and Olympia are an impatient gamble. These graphic novels feature art that teases beautiful colors and a remarkable architectural design aesthetic. The book also wields deliberately formless character art with washed-out facial expressions, which leaves readers with a plethora of continuity errors, awkward exchanges, and unintentional comedy. The graphic novels feed a duplicitous cycle of characters consistently bailing one another out of their own messes. Carole, Sam, and Alex comprise a fun but frustrating, exciting but chaotic cocktail of marginally plausible art thievery.

Stealing giant paintings from famous French galleries is all fun and games until your inexhaustibly simpleminded partner forgets her cue. Plundering the wealthy under the guise of party shenanigans is a daring enterprise until the French Special Forces raid the dang place. Plotting a massive, three-part heist of the Petit Palais makes for good exercise until you remember (a) one of your partners is nine months pregnant and (b) a mafia assassin is sleeping on your couch, just in case things go sideways.

The duology makes for a quick, enjoyable read. And although one might readily roll their eyes at the prospect of three bickering women being capable of pulling off such feats, the books' primary delights rest in the artful framing of each heist rather than their sloppy execution.

The books' occasionally spectacular environmental design come very close to convincing readers that each book's character development isn't as terrible as it really is.

The side-room to a flourishing European disco is flush with green lighting and floral ambiance. The glass ceiling of an art museum shatters, scattering thousands of shrapnel over twisted and expressionless marble statues. The background art is delightful. But it's a distraction.

In between detailed, wide-angle shots of grand museum architecture, one finds characters who stumble, repeatedly, and complicate an otherwise feasible narrative. Some characters are solid. Sam is tough but insecure, and despite regularly being labeled the crew's getaway driver, offers plenty of skill and support in the way of strength and flexibility. But on the other end of the spectrum, Alex is a waste of space.

The sad truth is that Alex is profoundly incompetent. Typically, the creative team weds her naïve and spontaneous disposition to the story's blunt humor (e.g., faking attraction to an assassin to get his guard down), but more often than not it sidetracks the narrative in excruciatingly cancerous ways. For example, Alex derails a plan to break into the Louvre by flying to western Mexico to save a gun runner she doesn't know but insists she's in love with, or, in the titles' opening scene, ignoring Carole's call for help because she's busy fighting with a non-boyfriend over a text message.

One finds it hard to trust the character dynamics when one-third of the equation routinely sabotages the remaining two-thirds.

To wit, Carole is the star: She gets the blueprints, she calls the weapons dealers, she negotiates with black-market brokers, and she's adaptable when her partners invariably screw things up. Where Alex privileges recklessness (e.g., alcohol, drugs, astonishing feats of clumsiness), Carole exerts impulse control. And where Sam goes wide-eyed with uncertainty (e.g., fretting over splintering the crew's goal), Carole reminds the women that levelheadedness typically wins the day.

If either The Grand Odalisque or Olympia narrowed their point of view to focus exclusively on Carole, then the narrative would've gained far more than it would have lost. The graphic novels conjure clever criminal activities beneath a colorful tapestry native to whatever French museum happens to be within the sights of these three ladies. Also, the comic books offer brief but kinetic action, as well as a few cool chase scenes, albeit relegated to each tome's Third Act. In the end, after arduously side-stepping Alex's rife stupidity, which tangles much of the narrative, one finds the books are quite entertaining.

❯ ❯ Comics Reviews

[smillingcartoonist]

The Extraordinary Vol.3 Melek's Head

[montetrebol]

Bastien Vivès, Jerome Mulot y Florent Ruppert

[fantomcomics]

What’s Out This Week? 2/8

Why do we live somewhere where the air hurts our faces??

A Condition Called Love GN Vol 1 -  Megumi Morino

A sweet new shojo romance manga from the creator of Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty! Hotaru is a 16-year-old high school first year who has always been ambivalent about love, preferring instead to have a lively life with her family and friends. So when she sees her schoolmate, Hananoi-kun, sitting in the snow after a messy, public breakup, she thinks nothing of offering to share her umbrella. But when he asks her out in the middle of her classroom the next day, she can't help but feel that her life is about to change in a big way!

A Home Without GN -  Don Gaddis

Growing up in the Bible Belt of the 1980s as a creative, colorful, and sensitive young boy is hard enough, but it's especially hard for River. His hot-tempered father, Mitch Garrison, fights constantly with his wife Rosemary and resents his son's softer side. As River and his sisters come of age, they'll have no choice but to help their mother (and each other) survive a chaotic household. Searing autobiographical fiction drawn heavily from the childhood of Southern artist and writer Don Gaddis.

Akim Aliu Dreamer GN -  Greg Anderson Elysee & Karen De la Vega

Akim Aliu - also known as "Dreamer" - is a Ukrainian-Nigerian-Canadian professional hockey player whose career took him all around the world and who experienced systemic racism at every turn. Dreamer tells Akim's incredible story, from being the only Black child in his Ukrainian community, to his family struggling to make ends meet while living in Toronto, to confronting the racist violence he often experienced both on and off the ice. This is a gut-wrenching and riveting graphic novel memoir that reminds us to never stop dreaming, and is sure to inspire young readers everywhere.

Clock Striker GN Vol 1 -  Issaka Galadima

Cast dreams of being a SMITH, but no one in her small town ever realizes their dreams. Besides, these legendary warrior engineers haven't been seen in years and were never known for having female members. Fortunately, Cast meets one surviving member named Ms. Philomena Clock, who agrees to take her on as her apprentice, or striker.

The Extraordinary Part Book 1 HC -  Jerome Mulot & Florent Ruppert

Renowned for their great conceptual and graphic originality, acclaimed French cartoonists Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot have masterfully contributed an instant comics classic to the annals of science fiction.

This first book in a two-volume graphic novel series is set in a near-dystopian present, where mysterious creatures called "whols" coexist with humans since their sudden appearance a few years earlier. At first, they aroused curiosity and wonder, then their seemingly harmless presence became commonplace. Nineteen-year-old Orsay leads an uneventful life in the French countryside, until the day he gains extraordinary powers in his hands after an atypically aggressive encounter with a whol. On a trip to Paris in search of a cure, he meets and falls for Basma, a passionate activist for whols' rights. But Orsay isn't convinced that whols should be granted the same status as humans. Especially once Melek, another human with similar powers, embarks on a murderous rampage to avenge those she sees as her kin.

Harrower #1 (of 4) - Justin Jordan & Brahm Revel

There's nothing to fear in the quaint town of Harrow, New York-except, that is, for the Harrower. The children wish this boogeyman was just an urban legend, but this purveyor of puritanical vengeance against the unrighteous is very real, and there's no escape, because the Harrower seems unkillable, and spans generations, always returning... What secrets will Alice Young, a teenage girl obsessed with the Harrower, uncover, and will she be able to escape the pull of her morbid fixation? This deconstruction of the slasher genre is the fresh and terrifyingly grounded take is perfect for fans of Bone Orchard and The Closet!

Marry Me A Little GN -  Robert Kirby

Marriage doesn't define a relationship. Unless you want it to. In Marry Me a Little, Rob Kirby recounts his experience of marrying his longtime partner, John, just after gay marriage was legalized in Minnesota in 2013, and two years before the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges made gay marriage the law of the land. This is a personal story-about Rob's ambivalence (if not antipathy) toward the institution of marriage, his loving relationship with John, and the life that they share together-set against the historical and political backdrop of shifting attitudes toward gay rights and the institution of marriage. With humor and candor, Rob relates how he and John navigated this changing landscape, how they planned and celebrated their wedding, and how they and others in the gay community are now facing the very real possibility of setbacks to marriage equality.

Monarch #1 -  Rodney Barnes & Alex Lins A new tale of terror and high-stakes science fiction hits close to home! Growing up in the city of Compton is tough enough as it is, but as Travon has learned all too well, growing up as an orphan in the city of Compton with gang members hunting you down every day is even tougher. But all of that is about to change, because today is the day that aliens make first contact with Earth-and it only spells doom for life as we know it! Death, devastation, and mayhem-can a single teenage boy rise to the challenge and protect his surrogate family and friends...or will he die trying? From RODNEY BARNES, the star comics writer behind the Eisner-nominated series KILLADELPHIA and the writer/executive producer of HBO's Winning Time, and up-and-coming Marvel artist ALEX LINS comes a new tale of love, triumph, disaster, and defeat!

My Special One GN Vol 1 -  Momoko Koda

After a mortifying rejection, Sahoko Wakaume has sworn off beautiful boys. But a chance meeting at her family's restaurant puts her in the sights of gorgeous J-pop star Kouta Kirigaya of the group Like Legend. Sahoko will need all her cynicism to defend herself against Kouta's tenderhearted and affectionate efforts to win her heart!

Open Bar TP -  Eduardo Medeiros

Lenny and Beardo are two childhood friends with a lot of road behind them. When Beardo's deadbeat dad dies and leaves them his old bar, they make a go of it as business partners. Easy enough, right? Maybe not.   Running a business in a low-traffic area of town isn't all it's cracked up to be, but luckily for the boys, the one-two punch of viral media attention when their neighbor gets crushed by a 747 engine that falls from the sky and a sorta suspect (but very potent) beer recipe they stumble into catch the public's imagination at just the right time. Things get even more complicated when Lenny's ex-girlfriend Amanda shows up again, pregnant. Can our two heroes weather the ravages of success any better than they dealt with being losers? Can Lenny level up and be a good dad? Can Beardo forgive his dead, absentee father? Will the general public run them out of town when they find out what was actually in that beer?

The Secret History Of Black Punk TP -  Raeghan Buchanan

The Secret History of Black Punk is an illustrated roll-call for punk, post-punk, hardcore, no wave, and experimental bands from ground zero until now. A starting point for anyone curious, another reference for those who devour all genre-related things, or a cool artifact for them who already know.

Show-Ha Shoten! GN Vol 1 -  Akinari Asakura & Takeshi Obata

Ever since he failed to make his crush laugh, shy Azemichi Shijima has secretly been studying the art of comedy. Meanwhile, his classmate Taiyo Higashikata has big dreams of being funny but no follow-through. When the two team up, they just might be able to create a wave of laughter that reaches to the heavens and propels them to the top of the comedy world!

Space Job #1 (of 4) -  David Goodman & Alvaro Sarraseca

After five long years of soul-crushing servitude as a chef's assistant, Danny Sheridan is getting his dream job in space as First Officer aboard the SS George H.W. Bush. But on his first day he finds himself crashing back to reality. Nothing seems right, the crew is subpar . . . something's going on, and First Officer Danny Sheridan is going to get to the bottom of it or die trying.

Stranger Things: Tales From Hawkins #1 (of 4) -  Jody Houser, Caio Filipe & Marc Aspinall

On the surface, Hawkins seems like the kind of town where nothing bad could ever happen, but in the fall of '83 it is anything but safe. When two friends head out into the woods with their rifles and a six-pack, the would-be hunters find themselves the prey of a nightmarish beast who has claimed the wilderness around town and everything inside it, including them.

Where I’m Coming From GN -  Barbara Brandon-Croft

From diets to day care to debt to dreaded encounters with everyday racism, no issue is off-limits. This remarkable and unapologetically funny career retrospective holds a mirror up to the ways society has changed and all the ways it hasn't. The magic in Where I'm Coming From is its ability to present an honest image of Black life without sacrificing Black joy, bolstered by unexpected one-liners eliciting much-needed laughter.

Whatcha snagging this week, Fantom Fam? 

[lassociation]

Pour les adhérents à partir de 15h, mais ouvert au public à partir de 17h et jusqu’à 21h. Venez nous retrouver au JANE CAFÉ. 

[jeffstern]

Bastien Vives, Jerome Mulot, Florent Ruppert - The Grande Odalisque

A book club selection that we read in between a couple of "Paul" graphic novels by Michel Rabagliati (we got confused by titles, and ended up reading three of that series). The Grande Odalisque was a fun action adventure heist kind of story, with romantic subplots. I enjoyed it, but couldn't help thinking that the creators made this with selling the movie rights in mind (lots of spectacle - very grand indeed). But still a very fun read.

[arecomicsevengood]

2021

Made a list of comics that should be coming out next year I’m looking forward to. The overwhelming majority of these are being published by Fantagraphics, who are also putting out plenty of stuff I know nothing about that could be really good.

The Seeds by Ann Nocenti and David Aja

Cinema Purgatorio collection by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill

Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith

Generous Bosom 4 by Conor Stechschulte

Dog Biscuits collection by Alex Graham

Rain Like Hammers by Brandon Graham

Psychodrama Illustrated by Gilbert Hernandez

Peepers by Patrick Keck

Heaven No Hell by Michael Deforge

The Grande Odalisque by Florent Ruppert, Jerome Mulot, and Bastien Vives

City Of Belgium by Brecht Evens

Crashpad by Gary Panter

North Star by Tom Herpich

Young Shadow by Ben Sears

Geis 3 by Alexis Deacon

Poison Flowers And Pandemonium by Richard Sala

Red Flowers by Yoshiharu Tsuge

No. 5 by Taiyo Matsumoto

Providence collection by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows

Monster Fan Club by Jason T Miles and Shaky Kane

Richter’s Game by Dunja Jankovic

Smoky Places by Anya Davidson

Discipline by Dash Shaw

Sunset Park by Ron Wimberly

Prism Stalker 2 by Sloane Leong

[julhelenaportfolio]

Cover project for Making Comics 2. First one is inspired on the cover for "The Grande Odalisque" by Ruppert, Bastien Vives and Mulot Jerome, and the second one is an original for an imagined anthology of my work. All in pentel brush pen. 

[cohetecomics]

Irene y los clochards de Ruppert & Mulot

ISBN: 978–958–59429–5–0 Número de páginas: 124 Precio: $ 44.000

Irene y los clochards es uno de los títulos clave de la dupla creativa francesa Ruppert y Mulot, y del proceso renovador del cómic francés conocido como la nouvelle BD. Como es costumbre en las obras de estos autores, el dibujo y a la narrativa gráfica rompen con la tradición pues se opta por representar la cara de los personajes con una línea arbitraria para así darle más importancia expresiva a los movimientos corporales e para involucrar al lector de una manera distinta. En esto caso, sin embargo, la relación de la protagonista con los sin techo de París y la manera en que ella enfrenta el cáncer y las enfermedades mentales, hacen que esta sea una obra ambiciosa que experimenta con la forma sin perder la dimensión emocional del relato.

En 2010 en uno de los ya legendarios números de la revista Larva, Álvaro Pons lamentaba que ninguna editorial iberoamericana hubiera publicado los libros de Ruppert & Mulot. Si bien en la actualidad Diábolo ha sacado dos de sus títulos que aparecieron con Dupuis, la edición colombiana de Irene y los clochards marca la primera edición en nuestro idioma del catálogo de estos autores con la L’Association, una editorial definitiva en el panorama del cómic de autor contemporáneo.

Sobre los autores:

Florent Ruppert y Jerome Mulot conforman una dupla de historietistas franceses nacidos en 1979 y 1981, respectivamente. A diferencia de la mayoría de equipos creativos del cómic, es imposible diferenciar con exactitud qué papel cumple cada uno. Buena parte de su bibliografìa apareció con L’Association. Se destacan los títulos Safari Monseigneur (2006), Panier de singe (2006, Ganador del premio revelación del Festival de Angulema 2007), Gogo club (2007), Le tricheur (2008), Irene et les clochards (2009) y Famille royale (2015). En la colección Aire Libre de Dupuis han publicado La grande Odalisque (2012) y Olympia (2015), junto al también historietista Bastien Vives, y La technique du périnée (2014) y un compilado de la tira vertical Les week-ends (2016).

En su trabajo se ponen a prueba los límites de la narrativa secuencial pues se basa en un diálogo constante entre las técnicas del cómic y otras formas de expresión como la danza, el video y la animación.

[lutramatrica]

Florent Ruppert, Jerome Mulot:  La tecnica del perineo

JH és Sarah online ismerkednek egymás testével, majd végre ráveszik magukat, hogy személyesen is találkozzanak, de a lány úgy dönt, hogy inkább mégsem, vagyis hát, mégis, de csak akkor, ha a fiúnak négy hónapig sikerül visszatartania a magömlést. LOL 

[smillingcartoonist]

The Extraordinary Vol.3 Melek's Head

[archivovivo]

La poubelle de la place vendôme

Ruppert & Mulot

L'Association, 2006.

[smillingcartoonist]

The Extraordinary Vol.3 Melek's Head

"You want to kill and cut off the heads of CEO's and place on stakes !!

Based !!"

[smillingcartoonist]

The Extraordinary Vol.3 Melek's Head

[smillingcartoonist]

The Extraordinary Vol.3 Melek's Head

[smillingcartoonist]

The Extraordinary Part 2 : Juliette’s Eyes