comics in the forest

The Book Club honors two comic strips that question our relationship with nature, our ability to adapt when we come face to face with the elements and our place in a society that is increasingly remote from living things. Jeremiah Moreau et Xavier Mussat put into images two stories of escapes in the middle of nature, two stories where the characters have decided to live on the fringes of Western life.

Jeremiah Moreau is an author and cartoonist. After the success of Max Winston (2014), The Saga of Grimr (Prix du Fauve d’Or at the Angoulême Festival in 2018) and Penss and the folds of the world (2019), Jérémie Moreau posted The Pizzlys (Delcourt, 2022). Nathan, an Uber driver in Paris, raises his brother and sister alone, and is suffocating in his daily life. An unfortunate car accident allows him to meet Annie, a Native American who wants to return home to Alaska, and invites Nathan and his family to follow her… The Pizzlys tell the story of reconnecting with nature, adapting to a new environment hit by global warming, like pizzly bears, these hybrid animals, half polar bears, half grizzly.

Xavier Mussat is an author and cartoonist. He has also worked as a cartoonist for advertising and animated films. After two first autobiographical albums, Holy family in 2001 and Carnation in 2014, he published The invisible tracks at Albin Michel. Inspired by the figure of Christopher Knight, an American hermit who lived in seclusion and without human contact for 27 years, Xavier Mussat tells the story of a man who decides to disappear into the forest, to live there without leaving any trace. We follow his introspective and sensory journey, in the heart of the forest in which he blends.

Sound clips

– Voice note from our reader Isabelle (@zaza_goncourt) about the Pizzlys
– Voice note from our reader Vincent, from the bookstore (@bdfuguecafeannecy) about the Invisible tracks

Recommendations from the Book Club community

Reading which comic book did you feel like you were in communion with nature? Listeners and readers from the #bookclubculture community responded on Instagram…

• The song of the plover (2009), de Tamara McKinley

• A spring in Chernobyl (2012), by Emmanuel Lepage

• Series The genius of the pasturesthe F’murr

• The manga series Otogi Matsuride Junya Inoue

• The manga series Gonde Masashi Tanaka

• Toxic tropics: the chlorinedecone scandal (2020), by Jessica Forgotten

• The great outdoors (2018) et The young woman and the sea (2021), by Catherine Meurisse

• Underground (2021), by Mathieu Burniat

• Series Looking for Peter Panby Régis Loisel

• Series The wind in the willowsMichel Plessix

• In the shadow of Mont Blanc (2021), d’Alice Chemama

• build a fire (2007), by Christophe Chabouté

• The Pizzlys (2022) et panther’s speech (2020), by Jérémie Moreau

• Filthy! (2022), d’Elizabeth Holleville

• Anent. News from the Jivaro Indians (2016), by Alessandro Pignocchi

• The travel stories of Emmanuel Lepage

• the last queen (2022), Ailefroide : altitude 3.954 (2018), The wolf (2019), by Jean-Marc Rochette

• In the forest (2017), de Jean Hegland

• Journey to the Isles of Desolation (2011), Antarctic (2015), by Emmanuel Lepage

• pay the land (2020), by Joe Sacco

• The law of the soil. diary of vertigo (2021), by Etienne Davodeau

• The forest (2022), by Claire Braud

Find us on Twitter using the hashtag

#bookclubculture and on Instagram at @bookclubculture_