En diagonale

En diagonale – Listening only to their courage, the duo composed of the illustrator Simon Bournel-Bosson and the journalist Maxime Gueugneau went to the discovery of an exceptional humus: the “Diagonal of the Void”, a not very brilliant name to designate a quarter of the French territory. Indeed, this fictitious line – debatable and discussed – joins together areas with low population density on an almost continuous route from the Ardennes to the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. This earns him a disdain and a deep ignorance from the rest of France. The objective was twofold: to fight against the ignorance of these territories and obviously to have a maximum of fun. Simon and Maxime faced the winds and the tides, but above all the highway rest areas, the dubious bars, the student parties, the pickle sellers, the nuns’ corpses, the sandwich shops, the tex-mexes, the ghosts and the other sacred can stores to convince themselves that there was nothing “empty” in this diagonal. In four stages going from Saint-Dizier to Pau, on nearly 1000km, passing by Auxerre, Commentry, Vézelay, Montluçon, Bar-sur-Aube, Tulle, Uzerche, Tarbes or Lourdes, the two loulous lived quite a lot of adventures that they are pleased to tell us in texts and pictures. Originally published in Kiblindmagazine during the 2016-2017 season, the four stories that make up the book have been revised, edited and expanded with new text, juicy info and exclusive illustrations.