The Red Poster

Laurent Galandon has built himself a reputation as a writer of the oppressed. In just five years, this author produced numerous comics of which the common point seems to be a desire to open the public's eyes to the fate of certain populations or individuals. From the deported children featured in "L'Envolée sauvage" (which was awarded several prizes, including the Angouleme Collegians Prize in 2008), to the gypsies of "Quand souffle le vent," to the kids of agricultural prison colonies in "Innocents coupables" or the Jews who fought in the French resistance during WWII in "Vivre à en Mourir" (2016 Europe Comics "Dying of Living"), Galandon likes telling the stories of the damned. This is rather a risky task which he always seems to handle with the utmost sensitivity in his multiple collaborations on one-shots and diptychs. His minimalist dialogues and the space left for silence and emotion have truly won over his readers.

Given their shared interests, Jeanne Puchol was bound to one day cross paths with Laurent Galandon. Puchol, a comics illustrator and author for the last thirty years, has published something in the region of thirty books with various themes in common, such as offering an alternative vision of a woman in the notoriously masculine world of the ninth art. She's also covered the life of a modern-day singleton in collaboration with Anne Baraou ("Judette Camion"), the story of a female butcher during the Spanish inquisition ("La Bouchère"), and then, with Valérie Mangin, she created her version of the Maid of Orléans, otherwise known as Joan of Arc, the most famous of "witches" ("Moi, Jeanne d'Arc"). Following "Charonne-Bou Kadir," a tale about an emblematic time and place for which she was awarded the Artémisia prize in 2013, it seemed natural for Jeanne Puchol to pursue her work on non-fictional memoires with "Vivre à en Mourir" (2014 Le Lombard, "Dying of Living" 2016 Europe Comics).