36. Pascal Brutal by Riad Sattouf

June is Riad Sattouf month here at Olman's Fifty.  Since stumbling upon L'Arabe du Futur, I have pillaged the library for his previous work.  Pascal Brutal come out in the early 2000's in the earlier phase of his work, though he had already established himself, where he was less polished and way more edgy.  It was published regularily in Fluide Glacial, which I need to learn more about, and then released in 3 albums (and later a fourth), which are what I read (thanks again to the awesome bande-desinnée collection at the Montreal library system).

These are fucking hilarious.  I don't think they could be translated into english, unfortunately, and it took me a lot of looking things up on the internet to understand some of the jargon.  Much of the cultural in-jokes about the French, the Bretons, the underclass and Arab/north african French I could only surmise or missed entirely.  Though reading Pascal Brutal itself is an education in these subjects and I felt that I better understood that part of the material as I advanced in the volumes.

The parts that do come through to any reader, and especially of my generation, are the anarchic energy and amplifying of extreme virility.  Pascal Brutal pokes at that hilarious intersection where the straightest, machoest toughest guy is so manly that he may as well be gay.  There are several scenarios where this indeed happens. His animal dominance of all other males and sexual irresistability to all females is also a big theme and super funny.  

The setting is also quite a funny take on the neoliberal direction France and the world was heading in the early 2000s.  France is now a depressed near third world country of concrete apartment blocks and discount supermarkets (the Toutattiprix "all at a cheap price" chain is a running joke).  We get glimpses of the rest of the world as well.  Belgium is a fascist gynocracy, Russia a savage post-nuclear wilderness and the Arab states a super progressive and united utopia.  It's very fun but also a painful reminder that sometimes the only way to not lose it altogether in the shit hole we have allowed our planet and society to become is via humour.

Pascal Brutal is in a similar tradition to Red Ketchup and the less well-known Terror Assaulter (O.M.W.O.T).  It's a counter-culture parody and examination of manliness and violence from the perspective of nerdy comics creators who love the genre but aren't of it.  I wish there were more!

The first three volumes are rougher in drawing and the stories more straightforward.  The fourth volume, which came quite a few years after the first three, has a more polished style, richer colours and takes the concept of Pascal Brutal to a more meta-level, with hilarious movie concepts and him leading the French soccer team in the world cup.  

"I'm going to make love to all of you!"

This one where he is training his dog and
gets set up on by some old enemies is my favourite

52. Red Ketchup Integrale vol 3 (books 7-9)

7 Echec au King
This time Red Ketchup gets a new boss as his old is demoted after not being able to contain Red Ketchup.  The new boss is supposed to be one of the best, but it becomes clear quite quickly that he is too ambitious as he uses Red to get dirt on his superiors to gain more power.  He also is desperately in love with a fat trailer park woman and will do anything for her.  This is a theme we have seen a few times in Red Ketchup, the powerful man with the weakness for a woman far down on the social status.  Her thing is reading Amazing Facts, basically a News of the World tabloid and she uses her FBI boss lover to investigate the things she reads about (bigfoot, giant moles and eventually Elvis coming back from the dead).  He in turn sends Red to investigate who does so much damage that these fake stories start seeming real.  It all traces back to an alcoholic writer in the Florida Keys who is behind all the stories.  In some ways, this book is more his story and Red Ketchup is really just the catalyst, although there is also the grad student who comes down to interview the writer and the gallant next-door neighbour of the fat trailer park lady who seems vaguely familiar...

A lot goes on here.  This book reminded me a bit of one of the Parker stories where Parker is a vehicle for other character's narratives.  Come to think of it, you probably could do an interesting Parker/Red Ketchup comparison.  Echec au King doesn't capture the manic chaos of Red Ketchup at his best but it is still an entertaining story and another fun poke at American excess.

8 Red Ketchup en Enfer

(read May 12, 2020 during pandemic) This one was awesome, getting back to Red Ketchup stirring all kinds of shit up, this time literally in hell.  Red Ketchup dies saving some kids from a crazed cult leader in the bayou.  He takes an atomic bomb and runs with it on his back where it explodes.  He wakes up in hell, welcomed by the devil and all his demons.  Satan is so pleased to have Red Ketchup with him, he makes him the head of security for hell, where his extreme mania for order drives demons back to earth.  Meanwhile, Red's sister is sure he is calling to her and her search leads her to Dr. Beaudelaire Hyacinth, a Haitian professor of anthropology at the University of Montreal.   Dr. Hyacinth, it turns out, used to be a power voudou shaman but renounced his use of magic to study science.  Together the two of them head back to Haiti to try and find Red Ketchup and send the demons back to hell.  Even though we get classic Red Ketchup extremism, this is also just a really good story, well-structured and fun.  Dr. Hyacinth is an excellent side character, great NPC for anybody's modern occult campaign.

 

9 Élixir X

(read August 31, 2020, end of the pandemic summer) This final chapter (at least for now) in the Red Ketchup saga is an enjoyable story with some nice character development. However, it feels restrained and never achieves the chaos it sets up.  The main story centers on the insane Nazi doctor Otto Kunst who develops an elixir of life, which gets released into the public by his young model wife (who looks exactly like his true love the inflatable sex toy).  It makes people young, but also violently aggressive and addicted.  We really had the potential for some Red Ketchup mayhem but the storyline emphasizes Red Ketchup's attempt to find the assassins trying to kill his sister.  There are lots of nice touches and a pretty interesting development with the possibility of his sister becoming a second red ketchup.  A good read, but a bit mellow for Red Ketchup.

40. Red Ketchup l'Intégrale Volume 1

I enjoyed volume 2 of Red Ketchup (books 4-6) so much and in doing so realized that it had been quite a long time since I had read the previous volumes.  Furthermore, I wasn't even sure that I had read them all.  Fortunately, the local library had the first intégrale and so I took it out and spent the weekend reading it, to my renewed pleasure.

For reference's sake, the first 3 books here are not actually the first appearance of Red Ketchup.  There is a summary of his origin story but it's only four pages.  He first shows up in the pages of Michel Risque when it was serialized in Croc magazine (kind of a Mad magazine from Quebec, though I am probably not doing it justice).  He is a secondary character whose side story takes over a bit from the main Michel Risque storyline (these Michel Risque's are also really good and you should hunt them down as well).  I guess Red Ketchup was so popular that he had to be killed off and then given his own books.  There is a nice summary to be found here.

In the first story, La Vie en Rouge, Red Ketchup gets brought into the ancient society of Templars, who are working behind the scenes to get their conservative populist leader elected.  According to their mythology, Ketchup is the modern incarnation of the knight templar who saved their society from siege (in the tapestry and legend, he has the same white skin, red hair and eyes as our hero).  There is also an internal power struggle and Ketchup with his trademark manic destructiveness is the catalyst that makes everything exploded.  The underlying satire of American politics and conspiracy is strong and funny here.

Because he has caused so much damage, his FBI boss this time sends Red Ketchup to Antarctica to guard a research base there in the second book Kamarade Ultra.  Here he becomes obsessed with what he believes to be a penguin spy (and massacres an entire penguin colony with a machine gun) which leads him to the Soviet base, which he of course attacks.  Two great recurring characters are introduced here for the first time:  Olga Dynamo, Soviet super spy and Docteur Künt, Nazi mad doctor.  This latter is really my favourite, one of the better humourous portrayals of the evil Nazi doctor in hiding.  He lives with his wife Natasha and there is always a hilarious introductory scene with him returning to whatever domestic situation he is and talking to her before the reveal that she is a blow-up sex doll.  Just the movement of his hands cracks me up as well.  I shouldn't sleep on Olga either whose sexual "tension" with Ketchup is just dying for consummation.  Will we ever get it?

He shows up as the main antagonist in the third book Red Ketchup contre Red Ketchup where he creates a clone army of Red Ketchups.  His plan, financed by a bunch of other Nazis in hiding is to use them to sow chaos and then move in to the anarchic aftermath as super troops to establish the Fourth Reich.  It's all really good stuff.

Dr. Künt at home

36. Red Ketchup Intégrale Volume 2

This is a collection of books 4, 5 and 6 of the Red Ketchup series.  The first three books are some of my all-time favourite comics, a beautiful combination of Hergè-like art and Wonder Warthog style anarchy and chaos.  Red Ketchup is an unkillable psychotic FBI agent, existing solely on handfuls of pharmaceuticals, driven by an 80's American distilled Rambo fascism.  He is also not bright at all and ends up achieving his mission through sheer destruction and the wild coincidences and machinations of the characters swirling around him. His boss at the FBI is constantly trying to take him out of circulation which leads to him causing greater destruction.  It's all a hilarious critique of American exceptionalism and the fantasy of violent victory over bad guys that dominates American comics.  Réal Godbout and Pierre Fournier are highly recognized in the BD field for this and their other great series Michel Risque (where Red Ketchup first appeared as a side character).  The books are also physically beautiful published by La Pasteque, such that I made an exception to my usually going to the library and actually started buying them.  They are translated into english and you should get them.

I sat on this Intégrale for quite a while because I wanted to savour it.  Ironically, when I did finally start reading this one, I got bogged down and abandoned it.  Book 4 Red Ketchup s'est échappé!  (Red Ketchup Got Away!) is actually very talky and starts out with tons of dialogue.  Ketchup who has been sent up to space by his bosses decides he has finally had enough.  He returns to earth (ignoring the burning up as he goes through the atmosphere), resigns in a huff and moves to LA to open up his own private detective agency.  This one really lacks the chaos of the preceding three volumes and I found myself worried that Godbout and Fournier had lost their way as perhaps there is only so much you can do with the concept.  Particularly frustrating is that Ketchup is constantly constrained throughout the book while surrounded by the kind of sleazeballs whom he usually destroys.  Likewise, while much of this takes place in the Hollywood film milieu, the satire is applied rather lightly.  There are the characteristically funny touches along the way, especially in the advertising for American products you can see in the background.

The second volume, Le couteau aztèque (The Aztec Knife), gets interesting again, though this time it is a trippy time travel adventure.  Red Ketchup's sister and brujo Juan Two-Tree chase Red through history (and he chases himself through his own abusive past) as he inserts himself into various conqueror's and completely rewrites the past.

LOL!

The third book, L'oiseau aux sept surfaces (The Seven-Surfaced Bird) brings Red Ketchup fully back to form.  I burst out loud laughing several times so much that my daughter kept asking me what was so funny.  The story here is an hommage to manga and kaiju, as Red Ketchup is sent by his bosses on a false investigation of the disappearing turkey population ("if the turkey disappears, what will happen to democracy!?") to get him out of the way.  After a hilarious investigation in supermarkets, Turkey farms, processing plants and finally a country fair where he slaps a turkey (this is what cracked me up first), Ketchup goes to Japan where it turns out his old enemy Docteur Künt is developing a gigantism gene. Chaos ensues.  This one was fucking awesome.

Now I have 3 more volumes left. The intégrale hasn't come out yet and I am debating whether to get them individually or just wait.  Either way, I am going to savour again.

I mean look at that.

62. Dans la peau de Bernard by Guy Lavigne with illustrations by Réal Godbout

Well this an abrupt change of pace.  I went from near-constant reading and completion of books to an almost total cessation of any reading at all!  This young adult book from Québec really is the only book I've completed since I got back from my trip to California.  I came back to a beautiful Montreal summer and a ton of responsibilities at home and at work.  On top of it, I'm just not feeling really able to concentrate on a book when I do have a few moments before bed to read.  So there it is, good thing I already made my 50 books this year.  I did have a trip to Toronto and during the train ride there managed to finish Dans la peau de Bernard (the french only capitalize the first word in titles).

A co-worker of my wife's lent it to her and she was slowly working on it to try and improve her french.  It's all about a boy who moves to Montreal and spends all his time wandering around the alleys of Montreal.  That is also a pastime I enjoy.  Furthermore, it has illustrations by Réal Godbout, who is a seminal cartoonist in Quebec for his work in Croc magazine (sort of like Mad Magazine) and his character Michel Risque and Red Ketchup (check out this english summary of one of the Red Ketchups to see his anarchic style, it's such great stuff).  I love his thick-lines, energy and counter-culture attitude.  Here, the frenetic energy of his characters is brought into a more realistic mode (for the most part) and he does a wonderful job of capturing Montreal in the summer.  For some reason, the entire book is scanned into Google Books, so you can scroll through it and see the illustrations if you'd like.

The story is about Bernard, a young boy whose parents move from a big house in the suburbs to an apartment in the Plateau.  Both parents had lost their jobs and the uncle got the dad one working at a Depanneur (corner store)  I guess it takes place in the 70s or early 80s, a time when this neighbourhood was much more working class and such a move seen as a big step downward economically.  Today, affluent, urban couples are bidding top dollar for such an apartment.  Both parents are profoundly (and selfishly) depressed.  At home, they fight and then the mother goes to her room to cry and the father passes out on the easy chair after downing several big beers.  Bernard is neglected and spends his days exploring the alleys of the Plateau.  It's pretty sad and seems kind of realistic.  His time outside of the home is quite rich.  He is a child open to the beauty of his environment (in contrast again to his broken and inward-looking parents).  He gets involved in some scrapes in an attempt to get up on roofs to get a better view.  Things start to get really interesting when he meets an eccentric old lady whom he spied on making her way down an alley going through garbage cans.  I really can't say much more beyond that this book totally surprised me, going in a direction I had not expected at all.  It sticks with its theme of parental neglect, but in a pretty crazy way.  Great book.  I wish it would be translated into english, because it is kind of a classic.  If you are francophone or have kids in french immersion, pick this one up.