A WORLD IN FULL CHANGE

It is at the back of a bookstore specializing in comics that they meet and Patou, Rictus and Nour, three teenagers united by their love, meet again drawing and their desire to practice. There, Nabil, the bookseller, will let the three young people set up their small workshop (in the form of a table in the court) and even encourage them, sometimes giving them, like a teacher improvised, exercises to be carried out. Nabil is a bookseller with an atypical profile: Having become the manager of the bookstore somewhat by chance, he nevertheless has ideas and well-established principles about comics, such as not selling of Tintin… The landscape is that of a small anonymous town, during the summer 1994, when a more demanding movement was slowly but surely rising in the world of comics. As for teenagers, between the one who dreams of being professional, the enlightened dilettante and the gifted artist, we can already guess, in discussions, ambitions, but also confessions, destinies which are likely to be quite divergent. A world in full mutation is a discreet but sincere declaration of love to the comic strip, and more specifically to the diy and fanzine world; but it is also a novel ("graphic") learning where the content and the form mix in a way playful and enjoyable. Few authors can boast of having a bibliography as heterogeneous and extensive as Baladi; after no less than thirty years of activity, the author still manages (and always) to surprise us, and touch us.