One Coin Reads 3: POS by Pierre Paquet and Jesus Alonso

Piece Of Shit, by Pierre Packet and Jesus Alonso

2017

This was not technically one of my ¥500 books, but it was pretty close: ¥683, marked down from ¥2884. How could I not sample an oversized hardcover 250 page French book at that price?

If all the line work in the book was like those figures in red, I would have been a very happy reader

I know lots about American comics, but with French and European comics, I only know the broad strokes, generally the stuff published through Heavy Metal, Fantagraphics, or Drawn & Quarterly. I'm working on learning something about Humanoids.  Probably I should know about Pierre Paquet, publisher of Paquet Editions, but I don't. This is the first time I remember hearing of him. So I went into this cold. The cover is good. It doesn't exactly reflect the insides of the book, but it's a compelling image.

So, this autobiographical book is about Pierre and his falling outs with people over a decade or so of his life, roughly the lifetime of the dog on the cover, who is the one *person* he's able to maintain a healthy relationship with. He is a "piece of shit" in the story, a paquet de merde in the original translation (playing on his name), and the book is advertised as a mea culpa of sorts. But it's not. He burns some people on publishing by not being able to sell their comics, but this book shows he really tried and had things working against him. He is sued by an artist for not being paid, but the real truth was the artist was lying and abusing their relationship. Paquet as the big bad publisher ends up taking the heat. He has a falling out with an old friend and misses seeing them on their deathbed, but it was communication failure, not actually Paquet's fault. The stuff with women (the stuff on the cover), is late in the book, and he is wishy washy in a supposedly good relationship, so in that case, he is a piece of shit, but not really? Like, he lets the relationship trail off, he's not abusive or cheating. He's pretty human in his self-portrayal.

Paquet and Alonso aren't afraid to show a story visually

And so as I was reading, it was interesting to read, and it's well-told, but it's weird to see a book a guy wrote about his own life where he's taking blame in the title and concept of the book, but the book itself is him basically saying it wasn't really his fault, that he was doing his best but everything was working against him. Probably if the title and the description of the book was just about him being a screw up, it would have made more sense on the whole. 

I had a lot to think about and consider after though, which is more than I can say for a lot of books, so that's a positive thing. I'd rather it was interesting but frustrating, than competent but boring.

Alonso adjusts his palettes based on the lighting of the location. It's really subtle work

All of that before I even discuss the art! I didn't love the style overall, Jesus Alonso's art is a little looser than I care for. Especially for the main figures, I prefer tighter lines. I'm okay with impressionistic backgrounds. But it's still really good art. The color in it is near perfect. It has different color schemes on every page that look completely naturalistic, but aren't sampled from photographs. This is the kind of color work from the 50s and 60s in illustration that I marveled at as a kid. It's really a beautiful looking book. It's digitally drawn, and I don't love seeing digital brushstrokes compared to real brushes. I got over that pretty quickly though.

And the storytelling is great, panel to panel, scene to scene. His dog gets sick and has a bloated stomach, and Alonso is able to communicate that in a panel. He does a good job of animating the dog's facial expressions as well, without going into Disney territory. Alonso captures mood and expressions well, and each figure has their own distinct face and way of being drawn. I get this feeling there are hundreds of incredibly hardworking comic artists in Europe like Alonso, super competent in the fundamentals of comics, whose work rarely sees the light of day in English.

So I kind of liked this book? It was interesting, good looking, and easy to read. If it was just a fiction book, and not autobiography, I'd probably would have liked it more, but I can just pretend it's fiction on the re-read in a few years.