Sébastien Bordenave / Photo credits: Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP 9:41 a.m., January 30, 2024

Despite a 30-year career and more than 150 albums, comic strip author Joann Sfar continues to have the desire to write and draw. This is notably one of the many themes evoked in his latest autobiographical album, published on January 26 in bookstores, entitled “Les Idolâtres”. 

This January 26, Joann Sfar's new album called "Les Idolâtres" was released. This comic book offers 200 pages of graphic grace. If his last comic strip, "The Synagogue", gave pride of place to his father, his relationship to Judaism and his omnipresent virility, Sfar wonders here about his mother who died at the age of 26. The little boy is not four years old and his family will explain to him that his mother is traveling.

>> READ ALSO - 

INFO EUROPE 1 - The comic book market has stalled in 2023

Fascinating anecdotes and reflections 

The album “Les Idolâtres” attempts to explain his taste for images. Perhaps because he always had a photo of his mother with him, her eyebrows furrowed, as if she disapproved of his slightest life choice. A rabbi explains to Johann Sfar, a young adult

“Every time you ask him a question, the photo will tell you no. That’s why they are banned on Jewish tombs so as not to freeze memories. It’s idolatry.” 

And the drawing in all this? Sfar finds there a way to control everything. “No one dies without my permission,” he explains. There are 1,000 encounters, as many anecdotes and fascinating reflections on this subject. Plenty of material to draw a sequel. In any case, one thing is certain, we can only savor this album.