2011 The Comics Journal  Loustal

THIS WEEK IN COMICS! (7/20/11 – Blank Room Dispatch)
BY Joe McCulloch Jul 19, 2011

I’m traveling at the moment — no exciting comics finds in the field, save for the dawning realization that random volumes from the middle of manga series are now a used bookstore staple — so it seems appropriate to post some work from frequent collaborators Jacques de Loustal and Philippe Paringaux, who enjoyed a series of English-translated album releases years ago; everything up here is from New York/Miami, a collection of short stories from Catalan. Extensive use is made therein of separated text and pictures, as you can readily see, lending Loustal’s rectangular images a postcard-like quality. This isn’t just a matter of visual composition, however; there’s a dispassion to the artist’s contributions that allows Paringaux’s curt, noirish text to color them. Activity is not depicted; rather, the frozen nature of comics panels creates ambiguity as to what is, in fact, occurring, while narrating characters steadfastly allow for only partial disclosure, privy to sights obscured by Loustal’s pretty surfaces. It’s like seeing a place, and having it described to you, but not really understanding – a tourist’s POV, even in terms of human relationships.

Paringaux, a music journalist and editor, seems to enjoy such disconnection. The available collections of his work — always with Loustal, as we see it — are filled with one-sided homoerotic longing and misread signs; one story in New York/Miami gazes neutrally at a young girl hanging out in the mostly dull environments surrounding (as opposed to in front of) a rock show, as her running commentary vacillates between an imagined, life-changing hookup with a superstar and worries and despair over her futile, irresponsible behavior. Even the simplest, most sensational stories are distended in word-picture mix: as a vacationing (temporary, consuming, non-understanding, fitting, perfect) man picks up a pretty mystery woman for a sexy drive in his fine car, Loustal mostly studies their faces, broad and heartbreakingly desperate and revealing on the man’s end, and barely mobile and mysterious for the femme fatale. An omniscient narrator sparsely informs on the woman’s delight in driving, and then hitting animals with the car, and of course that can’t signal much care for human life either, but the man can only sense a very taboo thrill. In the end, he can’t say much about her, and, by careful design, neither can we.

http://www.tcj.com/this-week-in-comics-72011-blank-room-dispatch/