Broken Frontier

Big Foot is a strange trip downsouth with a hexed gunslinger who can’t kill, and a black shooter who never misses but can’t stop counting, as our resident guides into the weird wild west.

Loosely based upon the Richard Brautigan novel The Hawkline Monster: a Gothic Western, Big Foot is a haunting read. Two gunslingers estranged from society and normal common day folks and morals, travel the early 20th century landscape looking for a job and people to kill. They encounter voodoo witches, pretend squaws, science experiments, haunted houses and seemingly a bigfoot. However the strangeness is not in the showing but in the telling of the story.

French writer and artist Nicolas Dumontheuil present it all through the eyes of our protagonists. Ever since being cursed on Haiti by a voodoo crone, Ned just can’t find it in himself to kill anymore. His existential crisis not really being a plus, what with being a hitman and all, he finds a renewed confidence when adopting an old codger met at a failed lynching. Zeb on the other hand is a black man with a gun in a white country. Unscrupulous and a touch autistic, he is obsessed with counting everything in sight going from the horse's hair to the bends in a road. While Ned is off with his newly found surrogate father Zeb is drowning in liquor and cheap women, remiscing about old times.

Dumontheuil uses flashbacks throughout the whole book to get us up to speed regarding our dynamic duo’s history. When the two of them meet, weirdness ensues even further and they go on the road. By usage of text blocks covering their inner thoughts, Dumontheuil infuses their world view on the page, making the reader a witness of their skewed views on the world and people. 

The linework of Dumontheuil is reminscent of the scratchy cartoony style, pioneerd by Christophe Blain (Gus, Isaac the Pirate) and Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat, Donjon etc). He infuses it with a healthy dose of the French big nose style but keeps his characters further away from the cartoon element than for example Manu Larcenet (Ordinary Victories) does. His characters swerve over the page with energy and movement abound, delineating figures, back- and foreground with a delightful whimsical touch. A perfect fit for the misadventures of this existentially troubled duo.

Big Foot by Nicolas Dumontheuil is a Gros Nez (Big Nose) comic that is both parody and homage to the Western genre. His characters breath anxiety, agitation and wonder at the same time, reflecting their struggles with both the weirdness inside and outside themselves. The first in (who knows how many) volumes, Big Foot is off to an intriguing start and I’ll happily ride along to see where the sun sets.

Big Foot by Nicolas Dumontheuil is a full colour hardcover counting 72 pages. It is published in Dutch by Oog & Blik.