Mitchum

By Blutch. Published by New York Review Comics. 

Softcover, 232 pages, B&W, 2020 (originally published in French in the 1990s)

Blutch is one of the most inventive storytellers in comics, and nothing reveals it like Mitchum. Serialized and collected in the mid-1990s and never before available in English, this is Blutch at his most wide-ranging. From Puritan fever dreams to an encounter with a shape-shifting Robert Mitchum, Blutch builds stories out of his dreams, visions of America, and anything else he can get his hands on.

Drawn in his unmistakable line that veers in a moment from crude to elegant, blotchy to crisp, horrific to serene, these comics show Blutch searching for new artistic frontiers. What he finds is sometimes surprising, occasionally unsettling, and endlessly fascinating.

This NYRC edition is a paperback and features new English hand-lettering.

[I]t’s the art which makes Blutch so enticing. His thick chalks and scratchy pens result in smoky environments and characters that, though captured on the page, display a great sense of movement. . . . Blutch may not be quintessentially French, but the vibrant, vibrating bodies of Mitchum are quintessentially Blutch.
—Nicholas Burman, The Quietus

One of our greatest artists.
—L’Express

[Blutch’s] work has tremendously inspired myself and an endless line of cartoonists, humbled by the virtuosity of [his] lush brushwork. It’s long overdue for [his] books to be translated into English.
—Craig Thompson

In the hands of the amazing Mr. Hincker (who uses the pseudonym Blutch), a simple pencil takes on the qualities of a magic wand.
—The New York Times

One of the greatest living cartoonists (and if you don’t think Blutch fits this bill you really, really need to read more Blutch).
—The Comics Reporter

One of the most important European cartoonists of the past 20 years.
—Robot 6