HEAVEN NOT HELL

In all simplicityDressingHeaven not hellRole playTime for JudgmentA Love of an AstronautOne of my students is a murderer… but which one ?My new father-in-law is a disgusting insect and I hateAlbumOffspringAdventure TimeA familiar face. Likeou,se presents itself as a generous collection of short stories, a form in which Michael DeForge excels. Here each short story is a chiseled gem, with its own graphic universe, its own tone, its own writing, and its own stakes: in, role players have pushed the usurpation to the point of no return; in, everyone can do whatever they want for 24 hours – really; in, two isolated characters experience an exclusive, platonic, and deadly space crush; stage a falsely naive investigation in a school environment; in, the stepfather of the title is actually an insect; in it, a character leafs through an album of photos from the past, but also from the future; in, a couple explores a application that lets them discover what their future child will be like, in all the details… Despite the disparate nature of the subjects covered and the styles used, the sauce takes to form a coherent whole, thanks to character studies fine and detailed, an incisive vision of the world, and a biting humor, even downright mean, characteristic of DeForge. Each new book by Michael DeForge should be considered a gift of life, because it participates in its way to make the world a little more beautiful (or a little less ugly). So thank you Michael! Michael DeForge is a Canadian cartoonist, known among other things for his involvement in the design of—but above all he is one of the authors most inventive and prolific of the moment. Multi-award-winning artist in North America North, he received the Audacity Prize in Angoulême in 2022 for