The holidays are coming and it's time to find the last gifts to give! In need of inspiration? Why not please your reading friends with a comic book? Winter is here and it's time to wrap up in a blanket and curl up in an armchair by the fire to devour page after page. In addition, some works take us to the four corners of the world, with stories and images that are conducive to disconnection and that do not fail to arouse desires for escapades. Discover 3 comics that will make you travel. No need to look any further, we have the perfect gift!
The Young Woman and the Sea, by Catherine Meurisse
In bookstores, you will find comics for all reader profiles. Those who are passionate about travel, especially in Asia, will love La Jeune Femme et la mer, published by Dargaud. This work was born after two trips to Japan made by the author Catherine Meurisse. The first one took place when she was in residence at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto. The second one when the terrible typhoon Hagibis devastated a part of the country. During these two periods spent in the country, the artist tried to paint the nature that surrounded her, this nature that transforms and always fascinates us.
This comic book is the graphic story of the artistic relationship between Europe and Japan, through the meeting of the author with various emblematic characters of the country of the Rising Sun. We allude to a tanuki, a kind of raccoon who introduces her to the art of Japanese calligraphy, then to a Japanese painter-poet, rather critical of Western artists. It is with the latter that the author meets a young woman, Miss Nami, the only survivor of the famous print The Wave, by Hokusai. Nami will create a kind of bridge between two ways of apprehending the world, and Catherine will gradually find her bearings within this astonishing and fascinating culture that is Japan.
The Arab of the Future, by Riad Sattouf
An autobiographical comic book series, The Arab of the Future, published by Allary Éditions, tells the story of the childhood, adolescence, and then part of the artistic life of the French-Syrian author and director Riad Sattouf in its six volumes. For those who are not familiar with the book, the first two volumes tell the story of Riad and his family's move to Libya and then to the small village of Ter Maaleh in Syria.
The subjects of the contrast between European and Oriental cultures, the image of the father and the living conditions of the little blond schoolboy, son of a Syrian father and a Breton mother, predominate. The reading of these two volumes gives very desire to discover the continuation. The third and fourth comics deal with religion and cultural differences between the West and the East, before taking us to Cap Fréhel, where the author spent his adolescence while his father retreated to Saudi Arabia.
The last two volumes focus one after the other on the questions that the teenager Riad asks himself. They revolve around the future and feelings of love and the tug of war of a family haunted by the painful kidnapping by the father of the youngest brother, Fadi. Then, the author enters adulthood with studies, cinema and the realization of his great dream: to become a comic book author. At the same time, Syria is bogged down in the terrible war that we know.
Indians ! A collective work
The comic book Indians! published by Grand Angle Editions, is a collective work. The work was born from the meeting of sixteen authors and a colorist around the scriptwriter Tiburce Oger. They all take up the delicate subject of the conquest of the West and the encounter between the Amerindian peoples and the white man. The comic book tells sixteen stories that take us on a journey through four centuries of colonization, from 1540 to 1889.
Like a drawn western, Indians! tells through the eyes of the Native Americans what European colonization meant for the native tribes. The reader is transported to the heart of Indian ceremonies, scenes of Iroquois warriors, weddings and agreements made between the colonists and the Amerindians. A story far from what the American dream represents. This devouring comic book is a sublime tribute to the oppressed native peoples, a focus on a genocide that has never been named as such, but which saw the extinction of 14 million Amerindians.
