Broken Frontier

This columnist admits it, he is one of THEM. The Eco-activist, the green men. But that's okay, because so is Cyril Pedrosa.

Cyril Pedrosa, brush master extraordinaire and most famous for Three Shadows is back in this french language album where he comments sardonically on his life as an Eco-activist. Autobio is an in between project for Cyril Pedrosa but is obviously a labour of love. It depicts his and his family's struggle with living up to their ecological principles. This includes the types of food being eaten, modes of transportation, discourses with friends and neighbours etc. It often leads to funny situations often resulting in a split between his own inner thoughts on the subject and the actual action he is forced to play out due to either peer pressure or that's just not the way the world works. Or Pedrosa finds himself bowing before the might of his wife and children, all even more fanatic about the subject than Pedrosa himself.

Being of the 'green' stretch myself, a lot of things are very recognizable. One of the most funny and poignant drawings in the book is the inside cover drawing; the camera placed inside the closet, we see Pedrosa looking cross ways, reaching for a can of sausages, hidden between all the biological food products. It sums up the position very concise. As an ecological aware person, you tend to go to further extremes than others feeling that you 'have to do your part'. It is exactly this feeling that Pedrosa exploits, this awareness coupled with well ... not to be too cruel but coupled with human weakness, basically. I am a big fan of William McDonough and Michael Braungart's Cradle to Cradle: remaking the way we make things (see I just can't help myself inserting these kinds of links!). But it is not easy to couple that with an ecological way of life and to unlearn food habits that haunt you for the rest of your life. Oh sweet sugar, stop teasing me so! Oftentimes the gags just as well turn out to be bittersweet small stories instead of being really funny because of the aforementioned subconscious layer.

Pedrosa's line work is of course immaculate. He gives the drawings a perfect balance and every character that appears feels immediately real although not entirely free of french stereotyping. Pedrosa is the artist and the writer. In Autobio, he goes for an over the top personal approach that is not always a success though it is always sweet and entertaining to read. His combination of autobiographical tales are coupled with text blocks giving either exposition or delve a bit deeper into his insights. However it is this combination that makes the text sometimes too overpowering, providing too much information. Pedrosa wants to cram just too much personal information into the pages, opting for a layout that has text on top of - an often - borderless panel, not realising that having to read the captions presents a real break in the timing of the gag. Another aspect is that he also often explains away the gag by utilising a final text block to end a comic strip instead of letting the visuals and the situation handle the ending themselves organically. By adding an extra moral or lesson learned, he overly states the obvious and thereby underscores the gag itself.

On the drawing side, Pedrosa often forgoes on panel borders, searching for a rhythm between panels and free floating drawings. The colouring by Ruby then takes care of the delineation of the border, encapsulating the drawings in a semi-panel. Unfortunately, the colours are garish and seem to be picked at random from a colouring box. It underscores the premise of the gags: the rigid structure Pedrosa and his family attain to - biological and ecological way of life - is constantly ruptured by the chaos and temptations of daily life. By using all these different bright colours in a single page, the art itself becomes very chaotic while for the intent of the strip, it would be better to let the colour provide some peace of mind and anchoring the reader in the real world while the comic twists and turns to reaches its conclusion. For a humour comic, the colours should add punctuation where necessary to contribute to the gag, not detract from it by adding bright colours on every single panel, even alternating colours panel by panel. I wonder how much of a hand Pedrosa had in the colouring itself. Based on the strength of his black and white work in Three shadows, I would have liked it even better if Autobio was in black and white too because one can easily strip the colour without losing any of its meaning. I would even have made the strip easier on the eye and would have reinforced the personal aspect of the comic, enhancing it's 'sketchbook' effect.

All in all though, Pedrosa manages to make Autobio a very entertaining comic due to his natural storytelling flow covering up the sometimes stocky rhythm. It's obvious that Cyril Pedrosa had a lot of fun making this personal comic and I found myself laughing out loud at a few of them. But was I laughing at Pedrosa's ecological waifing or the situations mirroring my life? Hmmm ...

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Autobio is published in french by Fluide Glacial, counts 44 pages and retails for € 9.45