Page 45 Review by Stephen
If you crave nature's raw beauty, wild bounty and epic, eons-old geology cloaked in cold weather yet cast in spectacular if often stormy lights...
If you deplore injustice: mankind's conscious cruelty, its lust for conquest through carnage... its ingratitide, unfettered avarice, and casual and quick, self-serving duplicity... Its limitless, instinctive lies... And its contempt for all Earth's creatures claimed as no less than its rightful, God-ordained dominion...
Then this one's for you hahaha!
It's powerful stuff. Full of physicality, too: big forms, bold strokes, with rough textures you'd reckon you could rub your fingers across.
The story spans the entire Anthropocene, yet focusses on one individual - face all but obliterated in battle - and the artist turned lover who reconstructed his ability to interact with a society that had abandoned him (yet again) as collateral D just as soon as its war was won.
And then, well...
If you relished Rochette's rock-climbing ALTITUDE (a former Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month), then you'll find this cresting above an even higher plateau, with a far broader appeal, for Rochette has harnessed both his passions and strengths to a work which, for me, has far more to say, and he does so with a fire which finds itself, undiluted, onto each page.
The publisher writes:
"Award-winning Snowpiercer cocreator Jean-Marc Rochette tells the story of a bear who inspires a French sculptor's greatest work in this graphic novel. Édouard Roux, a veteran of World War I, was left with a disfigured face from fighting in the trenches. Édouard takes refuge in the studio of animal sculptor Jeanne Sauvage, who gives him a new face in the form of a prosthetic mask.
The pair embark on an intense romantic relationship. She introduces him to the artistic community of Montmartre, Paris, and Édouard shows her the majestic mountains of his homeland, the Vercors Massif. He tells her the story of the last queen to live in the region, a bear he saw killed as a child. In the heart of the Cirque d'Archiane valley, he reveals to Jeanne an amazing piece of art, seen by few others, which inspires her to create the masterpiece that will make her famous… "
