Monday, October 11, 2010

Werewolves of Montpellier by Jason YP FIC JASON

Sven is an émigré in Paris living as a daring jewel thief, but mainly just hanging around with fellow expatriates and pining after his neighbor Audrey, but she already has a girlfriend. He travels the French rooftops dressed as a werewolf, because werewolves scare people even more than burglars, but when his picture gets taken after a crime the real werewolves try to hunt him down. Mainly he’s still just worried about Audrey though, in this totally unique, thoroughly weird comic about animal people trying to make sense of their lives.

This is a weird and wacky gem. It is filled with quirky humor and a quiet sadness. Jason uses a lot of very 2D and flat images that work well with the understated delivery the characters have. It reminds me a lot of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, because the animals spend most of their times dealing with coming to terms with the day to day challenges of life. It is sort of odd that everyone in the comic are animal people. It doesn’t seem to be a metaphor like in the brilliant Holocaust graphic novel Maus (Keep940.5318 SPIEGELM); it just seems like Jason likes cartooning with animals. This is like a quirky indie movie but in comic form. It is also my new favorite werewolf comic.

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