Alright, it's about time someone aside from Jamie Salomon spoke about the new
Pinocchio book, which by the way, won the Best Comic Book Prize at this year's
Angouleme Festival. I flipped it open yesterday and happily fell deep into the rabbit hole for the rest of the night. Winshluss's linework has a disney cartoon quality, which makes this corrupted children's tale that much more disturbing and fun to look at. Winshluss is endlessly inventive in both content and form- he tells many different stories at once and changes medium almost at random, but maintains a coherent narrative arc so that you're never bored.

His occasional full-page watercolour and pastel drawings are nothing short of beautiful. In a strange way, they give the story a sense of realism. I suppose the change of format acts the way documentary photos would.

Being a French cartoonist, Winshluss is obsessed with sex, death, viscera, scat, and exposing the dark side of humanity. But this album is also a political parable, and contains a strange sense of moral justice. I don't think it would be fair to call the guy 'immoral'. Does that even matter? I don't know.

When we finally got this album in the store, Jamie Salomon was so excited, he took it home and read the nearly 200 pages cover to cover twice over-- same day! Off hand, I remember Jamie also loving '
Monster Men Bureiko' and '
Panier de Singe'.. both of which are also in the store. Come by and check em all out!