Joann Sfar

The man draws faster than his shadow, just like cartoon cowboy Lucky Luke: almost 150 books in 16 years. When we meet in an antique-filled conference room at the offices of his publisher Gallimard, Joann Sfar is putting the last touches on his newest album, Chagall in Russia, set in the artist’s early years in the Yiddish community. “I’ve always been fascinated by his falsely naïve work,” says the 39-year-old cartoonist and writer, putting down his pencil. “Chagall knew how to depict a terrible reality in a very poetic way.” No wonder he likes the artist: Sfar’s own works—although bold, even insolent, and in a thoroughly modern genre—have also succeeded by combining artistic exuberance, romantic stories and theological questioning. “What bothers me is that I’ve recently stopped getting insulting letters,” he laughs. “That means I’ve definitely become too mainstream!”

Born in 1971 to a Sephardic father and an Ashkenazi mother, Joann Sfar grew up in Nice, as did his idol Romain Gary, another famous Jewish author. A fan of Roald Dahl’s novels and Quentin Blake’s cartoons, he soon began drawing his own stories. “If I’d been smart,” he says, “I would have known that playing the guitar was a better way to seduce girls! In France, people usually think that drawing is just a step toward writing. The attitude is very different in China or Japan, for example.” After earning a degree in philosophy, he completed studies at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, but had trouble getting his first stories published. “When I began, it was really difficult to come out with a book, but at least you were easily noticed,” he recalls. “Now things have changed: there are hundreds of graphic novels each month, but you have less chance to be acknowledged.”

In 1995 he joined L’Association, a band of young cartoonists determined to shake up the “ninth art” with their creative stories and ferociously independent spirit. With his friend Lewis Trondheim, Sfar created the Dungeon series, a brilliant parody of sword-and-sorcery epics involving clumsy heroes and bloodthirsty monsters. Its success was huge among hardcore BD fans, allowing Sfar to take on dozens of new projects, including a series for kids, Little Vampire, and the autobiographical Carnets. “I really can’t stop drawing, or else I get grouchy,” he says. “I need this medium between the world and me.” His major breakthrough was The Rabbi’s Cat, the hilarious story of a witty feline who one day eats the family parrot and gains the ability to speak. Selling more than 800,000 copies in France, the five-volume series amassed a huge readership for Sfar’s seemingly effortless and charming work, filled with magic and tenderness.

Always seeking new challenges, in 2008 he took on a monument of French literature: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince. Sfar’s melancholy adaptation was well received critically, and sales were massive. A few months later, this polyvalent touche-à-tout directed his first movie, a look at the infamous life of singersongwriter Serge Gainsbourg. Starring Eric Elmosnino, Laetitia Casta, Lucy Gordon and Anna Mouglalis, the film Gainsbourg (Vie Héroique) drew both praise and debate over its surrealistic tone (released in the US in August 2011 as Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life). “This was not a true biopic, as people expected, just my own vision of Gainsbourg. With him, and with Saint-Exupéry, I’ve been looking for popular French figures we can rally around. There’s talk about the country’s degraded social atmosphere, but we can’t leave everything to religion, we need to find something better than a prophet to unify us.” Isn’t he afraid to shock people with such iconoclastic remarks? “I’m always disturbed by the demand that we have to respect religions. Do they respect us, though, when religions tell us how to live, how we should treat our women?” asks Sfar, a huge admirer of fellow anarchist Georges Brassens. “Anytime I hear something is untouchable, I want to kick it as hard as I can.”

Not yet 40, Sfar already stands as an icon of bande dessinée’s new wave, and a tutelary figure for a whole generation of young cartoonists. Now an editor at Gallimard, he continues to take on numerous new projects, including an adaptation of The Rabbi’s Cat as an animated 3-D movie, planned for release in March. “It’s an overwhelming job,” he says of animation work, “especially for someone like me who hates redoing his drawings. But I’m quite confident about the outcome.”

Three years after the astonishing success of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s landmark graphic work, and successful animated film, Joann Sfar is proving once again the quality and staying power of French BD. website

 

With bandes dessinées riding a fresh new wave of recognition, here are three key figures for new fans to discover:

Lewis Trondheim

A founding member of the young cartoonists’ group L’Association, the prolific author has always shunned media exposure. Nonetheless he’s remained a major figure in French independent bande dessinée for the past 20 years, taking on a wide array of projects. Discovered with the Lapinot series (in English The Spiffy Adventures of McConey), an exhilarating mix of satire and nonsense humor, he’s also produced various autobiographical stories and conceptual comics. Trondheim, who won the Grand Prix at the Angoulême festival in 2006, usually depicts himself as a bird on his blog. website

Riad Sattouf

Of Syrian origin, born in Paris, this young cartoonist was spotted early on by Joann Sfar, who published his first two books (a guide for hitting on women and a hilarious story about his circumcision). Praised for his witty album No Sex in New York and his Pascal Brutal series, Sattouf is now known mainly for his strip in the French satirical weekly Charlie-Hebdo titled La Vie Secrète des Jeunes, a cruel but utterly realistic portrayal of French youth. Keeping his intense focus on the coming-of-age period, he recently branched out into film. His directorial debut film, Les Beaux Gosses (The French Kissers), won the Best First Film César in 2010. website

Manu Larcenet

A former punk singer, Larcenet began publishing his BD work in Fluide Glacial, a famous humor comic, and later befriended Lewis Trondheim. After creating various Dungeon albums and several experimental works, Larcenet had his first major breakthrough in 2002 with the publication of Le Retour à la Terre, which wryly recounts his move from Paris to the countryside. But his masterpiece remains Le Combat Ordinaire, a four-volume series centered on the parental and political issues of a young photographer named Marco. Widely acclaimed for its social accuracy as well as its poetic take on life, this admirable work is a mirror for a whole generation. website

 

Originally published in the October 2010 issue of France Today; updated in September 2011