Broken Frontier

The Fab Four go kind of comic booky in an exhaustively illustrated biography by Frenchman Hervé Bourhis.

Escaping from the Beatles is no easy task. In a culturally drenched landscape, one cannot help but absorb some knowledge of the Fab Four. References abound in a variety of mediums ranging from literature to art to movies to cartoons to comic books. There is no refuge for the disinterested and now they have invaded the realm of the ninth art full blown … sort of.

Frenchman Hervé Bourhis is an illustrator and comic book artist/writer who has worked in a variety of styles for publishers like Dupuis, Futuropolis, Dargaud and Delcourt; the big boys so to speak. He has taken it upon himself to further add to the already quite large Beatles paraphernalia with his Little Book of Beatles. It is not a graphic novel with sequential storytelling but rather a large (156 pages!) collection of facts and figures, reviews, anecdotes, recommendations and various tidbits about John, Paul, Ringo and George and ephemeral musical and cultural figures. Each page contains at least 3 items, each with an original illustration and distinct in design from its neighbouring item. Built up chronologically, splash pages divide up important chapters in the lives of our heroes. 

Leafing through the LBoB it surely looks like a challenging book to start reading, but is it worth its salt? The answer would be yes … and no. Herve Bourhis is obviously a big fan but he did not cast aside his critical eye. The Little Book of Beatles is definitely a Bourhis book, drenched in his commentary on period work, solo albums and critical reviews of the released singles and albums. On the one hand it is an exhaustive chronicle of the life and times of the Fabs, on the other hand it is a fascinating document of both history and commentary.

Hourvis succeeds in lifting up a culturally pervasive and already extraneously documented pillar of the cultural landscape by intercutting it with personally opinionated reviews of their singles, albums and personalities. It keeps the book from becoming too burdensome with facts and figures. And manages to spotlight the four Beatles’ diverse characters and musical frameworks with a special spotlight on the differences between pop junkie McCartney and the experimental Lennon, succeeding in singling out the influences of the dominant characters that formed the core of the Beatles.

Hourvis certainly didn’t make it easy for himself, forcing each item into a unique little design piece with its own font, illustration and content. At times it seems that he adheres to this self-imposed structure a bit too hard. As a graphic designer myself, I recognized quite a few freeware and standard PC fonts, ever the sign of a tiring designer. His artwork was already on the cartoony side of the spectrum and this lends itself quite easily to cartoon stereotypes of the Beatles but it is also a trap that Hourvis falls into, the Fab Four not showing much in the way of character of facial emotions throughout the book’s drawings. He keeps the illustrations at a too iconic looking level. 

Let the light of Truth shine upon this reviewer: as is obvious from the introduction, I am not a big Beatles fan. I don’t dislike their music but Hourvis did manage to have me open the book and start reading; so I’m guessing he did something right.

The Little Book of the Beatles by Herve Bourhis is a 168 page black and white book. It is published in Dutch by Oog & Blik and retails for €24,90.