A small, quiet seaside town is devastated by a string of brutal murders. A mysterious serial killer strikes at night with a baseball bat. The victims are girls and boys from the local high school. Pola has seen something too much, her friends Daniel and Ralf want to help her, and all three become targets themselves.
The impressive debut of a new talent in French comics. Antoine Maillard cites the films “slasher horror”And the American film noir of the fifties, creates atmospheres between reality and nightmare David Lynch, subverts gender codes. To arrive at the story of the discomfort and wounds of a young age. A sophisticated thriller about the anxieties and hidden impulses of adolescence. Winner of the Polar award for best crime comic at the 2022 Angoulême Festival.
A seaside town, with tidy houses and deserted streets. Two high school girls are brutally murdered. It is only the beginning of a series of heinous crimes, the work of a mysterious killer who massacres his victims with a baseball bat. Fear spreads among teenagers. Pola, who has seen too much, already has her own problems from an alcoholic mother. Only Ralf and shy Daniel are close to her: he too, behind the veil of apparent normality, is struggling with a suffocating and oppressive mother. But now everyone must guard against Evil which, as in the best thrillers, hides in the most unlikely place.
Antoine Maillard, in this debut with a long gestation, plays with the codes of genre demonstrating a great graphic and narrative mastery. The result is a book full of quotations, which winks at “slasher horror” films for teenagers where a homicidal maniac hunts down very young victims, but also evokes atmospheres worthy of the great classics of the fifties and sixties noir cinema, from Hitchcock to John Huston, where suspense springs from a sophisticated interweaving and refined staging. Because it is not the crimes, the motive and the personality of the murderer that thrill the author, but the reactions and changes they cause in the protagonists.
“It all started with a reflection on the links between cinema and comics, between the works of Daniel Clowes and those of David Lynch. I tried to put the atmospheres of my favorite films on paper, especially those aimed at young people. Adolescent unease, with its daily doubts and moods, fascinates me much more than violence “. Antoine Maillard
“Maillard denotes an astounding maturity… It is in the shades of gray that the secret of this book hides: in its refusal to offer a precise framework around which to circumscribe the story. Fendente digs into the unspoken, plays with clichés, to attract readers to something else “. Release
“Armed with his pencil, the author sculpted the light to create a heavy and unreal atmosphere, nurtured by his memories as a teenager of the VHS generation… A horror in the shadow of David Lynch and John Carpenter”. Le Figaro
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Comics Coconino Press-Fandango
Antoine Maillard
Slash
Coconino Cult
Number of pages: 152, black and white, format 21.5 x 29 cm
Price: 20 euros
Release: May 2022
ISBN: 9788876186127
THE AUTHOR
Antoine Maillard graduated in decorative arts from Strasbourg. He made his debut as an illustrator in the New York Times. His drawings are published in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Fendente is his first comic book.
