Défense d’entrer ici

Défense d’entrer ici is a closed-door, experimental comic book that plays at disorienting our sense of reading. A vast apartment constantly mutates, the rules of the game change, a simple joke melts the walls in this dark jewel of strange humor, gentle anguish and formal inventiveness.

The character, at first a prisoner of tangible limits – his fear of cockroaches, an extremely fussy landlord, a neighbor a little too emotionally invested in their relationship – will quickly find himself alienated by irrational disturbances, then downright metafictional: confusions between dream and reality, the restive personality and bad jokes of the artificial intelligence Doorways 98… And the permanent facetiousness of its author, who modifies the parameters of its vital space and observes what happens.

The mental precariousness of his puppet, subjected to stakes that alienate and exceed him, is not without reminding what each of us could recently live, isolated in a modern habitat. His minimalist adventures will also speak to anyone who has been terrorized by a cockroach, or thought he was cursed by his computer…

Here, each adventure or joke is an experiment, the gags are cleverly constructed, each change of appearance, technique or mode of narration is significant. The drawing goes from clinical straight lines to more expressive brushstrokes, dictating a sometimes fluid, sometimes disconcerting reading.

The story borrows more from introspection or absurdity than from adventure or investigation, but all these elements are married with grace, humor and astuteness in a fluid, simple line. Patrick Kyle plays with what the eye interprets, he deceives and distorts our perceptions, opens doors to an innovative and joyful graphic literature.