La Forêt des araignées

For a few years now, we have been witnessing a rather interesting movement in comics (but also in literature and cinema) which sees authors abandoning realistic stories and self-fiction to reappropriate certain themes and genres which had been confiscated by big commercial “machines” or unimaginative and formatted works. Thus, Sascha Hommer, who after two openly autobiographical stories (Four Eyes and … in China, both published by Atrabile) comes back to us withLa Forêt des araignées, a book that openly bathes in fantasy and plays with the codes and clichés inherent to the genre.

It is soon time for the hunt for those who live on the rocks. The hunt will take them to the forest of spiders, in search of the Sylvestres, a species of large slimy slugs that shelter in their mucus the Punkis, the main food of the rock people. But the presence of the Eyes, giant and tyrannical demiurges, who have forbidden the little people access to this potential food reserve, makes the hunt dangerous. The only hope for a peaceful and fairer life would be, as the Prophecy predicts, the advent of the Messenger, who could free the people from the rocks and carry them beyond the Great Wall, and towards the Kingdom of the clouds…

A fantastic and whimsical universe, a round drawing, kawaii characters and a political subtext, La Forêt des araignéesis therefore a hybrid work, an author’s book but also an adventure story, a work that transports you elsewhere but that also refuses to premeditate everything and dares to trust the intelligence and imagination of the reader.