STO to the finger and to the eye?

By: Jean-François Cadet Follow

L'Oeil du STO by Julien Frey and Nadar has just been published by Futuropolis. "The very first comic strip dedicated to the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO)" (Raphaël Spina, historian).

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On the cover of the comic strip, a young man, cap over his head, satchel over his shoulder, in the middle of a group of gray men loaded with luggage who are heading towards their destiny. He turned the other way, and his raised eyebrow made him look surprised, as if he were surprised and a little frightened by the fiery kiss of his lover. On the right of the page, a French policeman from the 1940s, doubtful pout and suspicious eye. And below, the title: "The eye of the STO". STO, like Service du Travail Obligatoire, three letters of sinister memory which plunges us back into the Second World War and the France of collaboration. And when we close the album, we understand that this title is at least triple sense: because there is the eye of the main character, Justin, that he deliberately damaged himself in an attempt to escape his fate ; there is the eye of guilt, the eye of Cain in a way; and then there is the eye of the others, the gaze that at the time and still today Justin's contemporaries, whatever their generation, relate to his destiny and the choice he made . But did he have a choice? This is the whole question posed by this sober and dark story in black and white. In the Nadar drawing, in the Julien Frey script It is published by Futuropolis.

With: the comic strip author Julien Frey and the historian Raphaël Spina , author of the book Histoire du STO published by Éditions Perrin and who signs the afterword of the comic strip today.

What if we fell back into childhood? Remember, you may have read it when you were 7-8 years old, it's a classic of children's literature: Sacred Witches by Roal Dahl now appears in comics, at Gallimard BD. And it is the author of Les Culottées , Pénélope Bagieu who, almost 40 years later, revisits the novel in her own way. Report by Fanny Bleichner .

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