3 Lewis Trondheim volumes

a page from A.L.I.E.E.E.N.

Nouvelle Pornographie; L’Association.

A.L.I.E.E.E.N.; First Second.

Little Nothings: The Curse of the Umbrella; NBM.

Three books from the versatile Lewis Trondheim.
 
Nouvelle Pornographie is the oldest work here, and also shows Trondheim at his most experimental. Produced during his days working for the L’Association collective, it’s a glorified A6 mini-zine, but with an ISBN attached. A wordless series of black and white abstract images are replicated in small panels throughout the course of the comic. At first these images don’t mean anything, but gradually as the narrative progresses they form a pattern, and you realise that what you’re watching is life in extreme close-up (I’m trying not to give too much away here). There’s no storyline, no sense of drama: it’s a formal experiment and, taken on those terms, a wholly successful one. Amazon have started importing French language books, so this can be ordered from their website from time to time, and presumably can also be ordered elsewhere. Also, although it’s a French publication there’s no text so the language barrier’s not an issue.
 
A.L.I.E.E.E.N.  is also wordless. It’s marketed as a children’s book, and has the look of a children’s book, but it reminded me in places of Chester Brown’s ‘Ed the Happy Clown’. It’s amusing (it has the best bum joke I’ve seen anywhere) but also quite disturbing in places. Maybe children find these things less upsetting than adults do or something. Set on an unnamed planet, it’s a series of loosely interlinked stories featuring amorphous, brightly-coloured aliens who find themselves in a strange and hostile environment. Alien eats alien. They impale themselves on trees. One group of aliens bash another group of aliens over the head for no apparent reason and then leave them in a pool of blood. They produce huge, never-ending trails of poo. It’s violent and scatological and, as befits an alien environment, their motives seem unfathomable. It’s also very funny (one of Trondheim’s great gifts is his apparently effortless humour) and comes unreservedly recommended.
 
The Curse of the Umbrella is a collection of autobiographical one-page strips that Trondheim first produced for his blog page. Trondheim neurotically worries about being bitten by disease-carrying mosquitoes while on holiday. He visits a comics convention and wins the grand prix at Angoulême. He succumbs to the temptation of buying a cat, which proceeds to terrorise the entire household. It’s not so much slice-of-life as thin observational slivers that are rather slight affairs when read individually. Collected in graphics novel format though, they gain in power and establish their own rhythms and themes. It’s not essential Trondeim, but it shows another facet to the work that he produces  seemingly so effortlessly. A pleasant and oddly compelling diversion.