With such a subtitle – the ultimate prophecy of the lost ice cream maker – what can Allan Barte's new book published by Delcourt at the end of May in the Tapas collection tell?
The world is boring, let's destroy it
Allan Barte is a law student who went wrong by becoming a corrosive comic book writer. However, it all started with a quote from the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu – necessarily incomprehensible. But, from the first pages, Barte resumes the habits of his blog – Small illustrated with big Hollywood cliché – by turning the strings of mainstream cinema.
The world in the future is white and very sanitized. Fortunately, punks are revolting for a just cause – having the freedom to wear colorful clothes. Clumsy, they trigger the apocalypse in this perfect world. Fifteen years later, the sand has invaded everything and the France looks like a Mad Max movie.
Let's explode the clichés
The very simple drawing is compensated by a big dose of humor. The title parodies blockbusters with racoleur titles and the comic compiles all the clichés to divert them. On the back cover, like any great film that should be, critics' phrases are repeated but with humor – "a soundtrack worthy of the greatest silent films". We just regret that JustFocus is not there.
The comic tells the story of a stranger's quest to look for the girl with the mat. To save the village from the circus the stranger must go in search of the last Italian ice cream maker in the world. This stranger has the chance to master the secret art of fighting against clowns who make the locals suffer with jokes. Barte never ceases on every page to ridicule his heroes. The fearsome desert cars look like go-karts. The fight to the death in the dreaded Dome of Death pits the stranger against the… a cymbal monkey.
These characters are convinced of their power but are totally ridiculous because they have forgotten everything and are therefore impressed by nothing. At the end of the book, there is a credits of the participants while everything is done by Allan Barte but he takes the opportunity to include hidden links to weird sites or kitsch music.
Lovers of good delirium, this book is for you. No headache but a good joke per page. Allan Barte takes you into a total delirium where the reader meets the mime Marceau, a mafia of Clowns…
