What happens when you discover that you are an adopted child? The Franco-Korean artist Jung offers us his answer in Babybox.
An author's comic
Noctambule is an author's collection from Maison Soleil that seeks to make the link between comics and literature. Artists may propose adaptations or more personal works. That's what happens here with Jung controlling everything – the script, the drawing and the color. The choice of colors is very original – all the pages seem to be made in gray pastel except parts in red. His drawing mixes manga influences with a Franco-Belgian organization.
So far so good
Claire is a French-Korean adult woman who has been living in Paris for years. Living with a Frenchman, she wants a child. Her parents run a Korean restaurant, and she has a younger brother, Julien. All this happiness disappears when his mother dies in a car accident on his way home from church and his father falls into a coma. Jung describes very well this anti-heroine in full depression – by an empty page around Claire, alone. She struggles to accept grief – " I'm nothing without you." She survives only to take care of Julien.
An adopted child who doesn't know
While searching for official papers, Claire discovers that she has been adopted. This shock is subtly imaged by the off-screen – we only see the outside of the window and the voice-over text reveals the secret. The emptiness is later in the decor during new announcements. The chapter narrative marks Claire's search for her roots in France and Korea during her father's coma. The title comes from the box where a woman abandons her daughter in Seoul. Already the author of Couleur de peau: miel, Jung told head-on and gently about his adoption in France. We feel an author torn from his roots who seeks through his art to create another relationship to the world.
Being in or out?
Babyjung also raises the question of the integration of a person into France. Should we disown, support or integrate our community of origin when we live in France? Claire and her brother have distanced themselves greatly from the Korean community, both in Asia and France. They are " integrated " in order to assert their personalities – her 10-year-old brother thinks he is Braveheart and she wears red hair while her father is more traditionalist. The story will explain that this red is a memory of a moment spent with his mother in a field of poppies, but also of the blood of the cut. Color is related to the past and present. Unconsciously and even before the announcement, she had a problem with "her" community – she has always been more friends with adopted Koreans than with the Korean community. The two survivors have a complex relationship with Koreans living in France. Julien creates an Irish genealogy while Claire has lost hers. Visually very original, Babybox is a beautiful, dark tale about a personal crisis. Claire is looking for herself and Jung makes her a heroine who is gradually rebuilding herself. However, it is regrettable that the tone is sometimes very tearful.
