Stum

By Yann Taillefer
Publisher: The Mansion Press
ISBN: 9782492646287

I knew nothing of Yann Taillefer’s work when I came across Stum in a marketing email from The Mansion Press. What immediately caught my eye was the extraordinary artwork, a glorious combination of rubber-hose dynamism and surreal characters in a grim, urban setting. But the real attention grabber was how it was drawn. All the colouring and linework is created in blue and red, with deft hatching providing shape and depth that brings every page alive. What’s more, the pages are wordless, so Taillefer leans into extreme expressions and exaggerated body language to get intentions and reactions across.

Stum contains several tales, loosely entwined to build a larger world. There’s an oversized fly battling to remain in his apartment, an office worker doomed to experience every indignity, the children of an impoverished mouse sold into experimentation, and the brief life of an anthropomorphic match, all rendered in wondrous detail.

It’s probably no coincidence that Dave Cooper’s recent return to comics is also through The Mansion Press as both creators share a visual aesthetic where the boundaries between organic and non-organic are blurred. But although they share some similarities, this is indeed a unique work displaying a disturbing, nightmarish, dystopian vision populated with cute, wide-eyed characters. Often gross, and definitely for adults, it is visual storytelling at its very best.

And if you liked that: Take a peek at the new Dave Cooper.