Broken Frontier

Part travelogue and part love story, Baudoin mixes fiction and autobiography in the Mexican town of Amatlan.

Sixty kilometres from Mexico City lies Amatlan, birthplace of Tezcatlipoca and the place of happening of Edmund Baudoin’s latest graphic novel bearing the name of this small town locale. Amatlan is a rural town, a place where you need to wear slippers indoor and sleep within the comfort of a mosquito net because of the ever imminent presence of scorpions. It is a place where Baudoin reunites with a past lover, a thirty year old younger girl named Neige. It comes as no surprise that the native home of the god of enmity, discord and beauty gives rise to a tumultuous relationship and a graphic novel about love, life and death.

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Switching back and forth between Amatlan and various locations in Mexico and France the GN represents Baudoin at its most exploratory. It is at the same time autobiographical, pure fiction, travelogue, storybook and sketchpad. Recounting not only his own fears, anxieties, needs and feelings of lust for mystery girl Neige, it simultaneously recounts tales within tales of love, friendship and damaged personalities. Written in a first person narrative with text pages intermingling with comic pages and full page sketches, it is a non literal poetic journey into  a writer’s fears and obsessions.

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Presented in a big hardcover square bound format, thick pages and matte paper stock, it is a showcase of Baudoin’s formidable artistic skills. His Mexican landscapes ooze a desolation that in capturing their untamed nature, instill awe into the readers mind without ever having visited these vistas. His line work is rough and mixes thin penmanship with intuitive and thick brushwork. The range of the art presented is quite remarkable going from sketches to detailed portraits to land- and cityscape. 

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Left to his own devices, Baudoin emerges as an impeccable poetic artist.. Writing and drawing his own work, Amatlan is a unique addition to the comics genre and is inimitable in its approach to storytelling. Highly recommended. 

Amatlan by Edmund Baudion is published by Sherpa. It is a squarebound hardcover counting 88 black and white pages.