Recently released in Canada and expected for the fall in France, "Paul: interviews and comments" is a book that mixes unpublished drawings, interviews and analyzes by Michel Giguère, specialist in the 9th art.

"I thought that a book like that on my work would perhaps arrive after my death," cowardly laughed Michel Rabagliati during an interview with AFP in his city of Montreal.

"It's an unexpected overview of my work for 23 years!", adds the designer, messy hair, salt and pepper beard of a few days, without ceasing to play with his rectangular glasses with black frames.

The book indeed represents a dive into the work and life of Michel Rabagliati, which he told through nine albums of "Paul".

A moving series, funny but also a little melancholic.

And an openness to Quebec despite universal themes.

Paul, we see him as a child as well as a teenager, but also a father then a fifty-year-old separated and a little depressed.

And then we saw him fishing, in the subway, in the park...

This new 300-page book allows you to discover behind the scenes, the narrative techniques, the art of staging, the composition of the image of this series translated into ten languages ​​and the only Quebec comic strip that has been the subject of a film adaptation.

In 2010, "Paul à Québec" also received the Audience Award at the Angoulême Festival and last year, after the publication of "Paul à la maison", the 9th and final volume, Michel Rabagliati won the series.

"Therapy"

"People recognized themselves in Paul, he's a gentleman, it's easy to identify with this character" who has an "ordinary life and disappointments", says Michel Rabagliati again.

"The themes are universal, the couple, the children, the in-laws... that's why it works" in Quebec but also in France.

Michel Rabagliati, 51, is a latecomer to comics, "a third career after having been a graphic designer/typographer, then a magazine illustrator for years".

A fan of comics since childhood, the Montrealer started "when authored comics, autobiographical stories arrived".

Installed behind his desk in the premises of his longtime publisher La Pastèque, in the Mile-End, a trendy district of the French-speaking metropolis, he recognizes that today it is a form of "therapy".

"I have a character who is quite easy to handle because it's me, so I don't have to report to anyone. And then, I don't have so much modesty, in + Paul at home + we sees enough naked, enough + magané + (tired, exhausted, Ed) as we say here. He is in depression, I show him as is.

Bringing the Quebec language to life is the other aspect of Michel Rabagliati's work.

This precursor is proud to see today a greater enthusiasm for novels, essays and comics from the French-speaking province of Canada.

A few weeks ago, comic strip author Julie Doucet won the Grand Prix of the Angoulême Festival, the most prestigious award in comics.

She is the first consecrated Canadian and Quebecer.

"People are playful and ready to discover another French now, so much the better."

© 2022 AFP