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Dec 18,2005 - Dec 25,2005 |
Paul is back with new Job
Canadian Michel Rabagliati and the New Graphic Novel
By Chris Twomey
Originally Published: 2003-03-30
The new graphic literature for adults is the focus of the first annual Toronto Comic Arts Festival being held this Saturday, March 29th at Trinity St. Pauls. Among the guest artists and publishers exhibiting their work will be a rising star from Quebec, Michel Rabagliati, who will be launching his new book influenced by the best of European funnies.
Rabagliati's Paul Has A Summer Job is the sequel to his award-winning debut, Paul In The Country, which won him Best New Talent of 2000 from the prestigious American comics industry prize, the Harvey Award (named for important cartoonist and Mad magazine founder Harvey Kurtzman). However Rabagliati's economically drawn stories about the coming-of-age of a Quebec teenager in the 1970's, owe more to the "bandes dessinees" adventures of Tintin and Asterix he read as a kid than to American style comics.
"Well, here in Montreal, we read only comic albums from France and Belgium, like Tintin, Gaston, Spirou and all that. I didn't even know that the superheroes existed except for Batman on the television. I must say I was really into Tintin from my early years and I'm still reading it. I'm finding it still pretty pertinent. It's like a free school - all you have to do is read Tintin and you almost know how to do comics."
The clean style of European comics popularized by the Belgian artist who created Tintin, Herge (Georges Remi, 1907-83), was called the "clear line" school, distinguished by an essential black line shaping characters rather than the more classical figures of 19th century illustration. Rabagliati's retro work has been compared to the simpler style (like Tintin, Paul has dots for eyes!) but has more of the sketched quality of the art of Madeline creator Ludwig Bemelmans (an Austrian who emigrated to the US - 1898-1962). A graphic artist since 1981, Rabagliati found he had a Tintin-instilled instinct for storytelling when he began cartooning seriously in the 1990's.
"In the storytelling language I am not bad, because I had that in my head from all the masters' work I read by Herge and Franquin and all those guys. In 1993 I started illustrating but with the computer. So that is the reason I don't have a really adult style for the moment. Actually I've been drawing (by hand) for five years only. So for me I'm a beginner in comics! Usually I make illustrations for magazines and logos for advertising and they are pretty different from my comics. People don't recognize my style in those projects - they don't have any black lines."
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