Page 45 Review by Stephen
Page 45 Comicbook of The Month February 2025
Riveting from start to finish, and thrust through with such varied visual splashes that this may be one of the most riotous Sundays you’ve never spent.
Whereas Thibault, our real-life protagonist, is going to achieve precisely nothing.
I doubt you’ve ever read a comic quite like this before, and what in lesser hands could have easily been a laborious, mechanical exercise stuffed with perfunctory filler becomes a witty, mischievous and inventive romp packed full of screamingly candid behavioural observation which – in the case of the recurring ear worm – is painfully familiar.
I’m never listening to James Brown again.
The events within are as faithful a reconstruction as possible of a single specific yet ordinary Sunday in the life of Schrauwen’s cousin Thibault, in strict chronological order from 8.15am to a little past midnight. And, although none of us are immune (hahahaha! – I’m thinking of myself), cousin Thibault here takes the art of procrastination to a professional level.
Fortunately for us, Thibault has a very rich inner life and his mates – also interviewed for the project – have rich actual lives. So while T dithers and dallies and takes a toke or two, his consistent, persistent failure to “Get on up” is wickedly, tellingly juxtaposed with the much more adventurous interactivity of his friends. Hilariously, much of their conversation revolves Thibault, and a plan to ambush him at midnight, but most sharply, deliciously ironic or all are T’s musings not just about what his actual girlfriend, travelling abroad, might be up to (answer: a lot!), but about what might, perhaps, have become of Nora, the proverbial Girl Who Got Away. She’s right outside, part of the ambush party with his very best and off-the-scale crazy friend.
Some photos I’ve taken to exemplify the humdrum, others to showcase Schrauwen’s visual virility; for the man can draw anything, with energy, whilst the colour treatments – from stained glass windows to floating translucency of a hashish haze – are so eye-wideningly wondrous that for all of these oh so many pages, my mouth did naught but twitch and switch from smiles of astonished admiration to big broad grins of glee.
The publisher writes:
"Internationally acclaimed graphic novelist Olivier Schrauwen returns with a masterfully funny and profound day in the life narrative.
Sunday follows, over the course of one day, the stream of consciousness of a fictionalized version of the author's cousin, Thibault. On the day of his girlfriend's return from an extended trip, Thibault wakes up, does nothing, gets James Brown stuck in his head, drinks and smokes, grows paranoid about his relationship, struggles to compose text messages, and watches The DaVinci Code, all the while avoiding anyone and everyone, descending deeper into his own thoughts and fears. Meanwhile, a former crush and another cousin of Thibault's plan a surprise birthday for him, sending the external and internal on a collision course.
Schrauwen's brilliant comic timing and formal mastery transcends the quotidian nature of the plot. Through use of color, flashback and the dissonance between text and image, the ways in which Schrauwen layers a depiction of human consciousness as lines on paper are infused heavily with slapstick and white-knuckle tension and make for an exhilarating read and breathtaking use of the comics medium."
