Boulet’s Notes Review

I don't recall precisely when I first heard of Gilles "Boulet" Roussel. Probably 2013-ish. Probably from a post on Tom Spurgeon's site. I began to read his webcomics sporadically, as he published them in French and the English translations came along at a more leisurely pace. I felt close to his self-deprecating style of humor, having spending much of my life practicing the same. And I liked that he let the art style he used serve the story. Goofy cartoons for more light-hearted comedy pieces, noir-ish works for heavily dramatic pieces (even if most of them were only ironically dramatic for a comedic reveal at the end), and so on.

When the world went into lockdown in early 2020, many cartoonists stopped posting. In 2021, I took stock of how much my comics feed had dwindled to virtually nothing. Boulet was one of them. Four comics in March 2020, then five for the entire rest of the year. Then one in 2021, and one in 2022. As far as I'm aware, none have been translated into English. All of which is to say that it's been a few years since I've read any of Boulet's comics and why I was eager to pick up Boulet's Notes from Oni Press recently.

The book ostensibly collects many of his webcomics from 2004-2007. I say "ostensibly" for two reasons. First, this book is actually a collection of Notes volumes 1-3 published in French by Delcourt. These were all prepped and collected for printing once before, though this obviously had the additional work of translating and re-lettering everything. The second reason is that Boulet includes several new (i.e. new to the French editions) comics that provide some additional context and transitions for the individual strips. As he himself points out in one of these sections, the book would otherwise be a complete Frankenstein of random stories that don't connect in any way. With these bridging pieces, he does offer some measure of continuity if only the metatextual considerations behind putting a book of webcomics together.

As I said, I don't think I came to Boulet's work until 2013-ish and, as the work presented here only covers up through 2007, none of the work here was familiar to me. If Oni is able to continue publishing these, I suspect the next volume would also be new-to-me material and it would only be the volume after that where I might start to see pieces I recognize. Regardless, though, Boulet's work is highly enjoyable and would be worth re-reading in this nice, printed format even if you had seen them online before.

The book came out in hardcover (with some very nice use of spot varnishes) last month and retails for $39.99 US. Which might sound a little on the pricey side, but it is a very handsome hardcover and comes in at just shy of 300 pages, so I feel is worth it. Especially for getting to read some of Boulet's earlier webcomics which, again, I don't believe were ever translated into Enlglish before.

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