March 15, 2024
Malle's third title (and third collaboration with agile literary translator Jensen), after the lauded This Is How I Disappear (2021), is an insightful before-and-after portrait of an artist as a young woman in (and out of) love, presented in two chapters and introduced with an intriguing prologue: "Ever since I disappeared, everything feels sweeter. Easier." In the before, cartoonist Cl�o lives in Montreal with partner Charles for about a year. Her spontaneous meeting with another artist at an industry conference escalates into the realization that Charles is not who she thought he was. Cracks in their relationship become irreparable fissures. Support from her friends eventually enables an independent reinvention elsewhere, inspiring a promising, contented after. Malle's full-color panels spotlight close-up expressions throughout, the intimacy underscored by speech balloons in a hand-written style. Malle's is a multilayered meta-narrative, featuring a comics artist creating a book about a cartoonist whose goal "is to write a real tear-jerker!! Stories that make people cry their eyes out!!" While tears might be unlikely here, a swell of emotional release is rewardingly inevitable.
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April 15, 2024
Malle’s latest (after This Is How I Disappear) stands out for its fresh dialogue, unique character design, and realistic exploration of sexual harassment in a tight-knit community of Montreal artists. Cléo, who has blonde hair with a center strip of dark roots that grows out over the course of the story, meets Farah, a “powerhouse” artist and editor, through mutual friends at a comics convention in France. Farah compliments Cléo’s art and offers to publish her. But when she learns that Cléo’s boyfriend is Charles, a more successful artist (and heavy drinker), Farah gets a strange look on her face. Cléo asks around and confirms the two knew each other in grad school, but from there stories diverge: Charles claims a crush ended when he began dating another woman, and Farah was a “crazy bitch.” Farah, on the other hand, remembers Charles stalking her and having to bring in school authorities to put an end to it. This is a story where women believe women, even when the revelation shakes Cléo to her core. The fallout with Charles spurs an adventure in getting to know herself, including a budding queer romance. With oversize hands and features that move around faces like subtle Picassos, Malle’s illustrations are as distinctive as the storytelling. It’s a savvy update on the classic notion that breaking up is hard to do.