Anyone else read The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar? It's a French graphic novel (and should be available in good comic stores in US and UK) about an Algerian Rabbi in the 1930's who's cat starts to speak after it eats the family parrot.

It's one of the best graphic novels I've read in an age; beautiful, evocative art and a charming, funny, bitter sweet story. Part magic realism and part family saga, its one of those books I read and say 'damn, will I ever write/draw something that good?"

There's some nice theological discussions too, with the cat declaring it wants a Bar Mitzvah and the Rabbi and his Rabbi arguing over the bible's position on cats. Lovely stuff. And it really made me want to check out more european comics, it's not all Mobieus and Metal Hurlant.

no, i haven't read it, but i want to now...i might ask my library to get it for me.

My library got it. Worth the read. Probably worth a buy, too, but my money is in stronger demand for other things.

My library also had it! very cool for a random library in the middle of nowhere

But yeah it was cool, one of the better i have read recently, i can't say that i really enjoyed the art style, very quentin blake..ish

See now I loved the art. Not slick but really evocative. I could really feel the hot dusty streets of algeria and the cold, rainy dampness of Paris. I 'spose I've been getting a bit bored with typical comic art recently and it was a refreshing change.

I guess it's not everyone's cup of tea but Smaugy, go hit up your library for a copy.

quote:

Originally posted by Joe_3heads:
And it really made me want to check out more european comics, it's not all Mobieus and Metal Hurlant.

Does Heavy Metal count? I like Heavy Metal, though sometimes it seems like I'm the only reason some stores stock it here.

yeah i guess i just am not a fan of that style of art, that doesn't mean i like slick, but i just found it a bit busy at times, i liked the colour palette

And also i had trouble with some of the misquotes, in particular this quote made me snarl

"I tell him that's ridiculous and that with carbon-14 you can prove scientifically that the world has exisited for billions of years."

and i don't want to start with how wrong that is *growls*

but yeah in general i liked the story

Well he was only cat in the 1930s, maybe the full implications of C-14 weren't fully understood in algeria at th time.

You and my sister should watch a movie sometime. I've had so many lame-yet-enjoyable sci-fi films ruined by shouts of "Wrong! Haven't these people heard of the laws of thermodynamics?", its just not funny. Well, actually, it usually is quite funny, especially when she explains what would happen if they really built a spaceship that way.

The cat knows his Torah though, and it's quite interesting to see the kind of (seemingly pointless) arguments that take place between rabbinical scholars about the implications of certain snippets of text, and to see the affectionate antagonism that seems integral to their discourse.

And Zoneseek - Heavy Metal and Metal Hurlant are the same thing, translated into english for the international market, I was just putting on airs. They do have some great artists but too often the stories are just a bit lame, any excuse to have topless space vampires tearing cyber-knickers off each other.

Hmm, on that note, I must go and peruse my back issues....

hehe, i tend to wait till after the movie before i start ripping it to pieces, appart from my "those rocks aren't real" comments.

And i can usually suspend disbelief, but it bugs me when they try to "scientifically" explain things and then just make shit up and creat huge inconsistancies. Like Reign of Fire, dragons yeah sure thats fine, but then they went into how they mated, by laying eggs etc, thats comman knowlege, mythically correct, so you don't then have people kill a dragon and find a baby inside it! fuckwits, thats a whole different life cycle, and since when are dragons mammals?

And me and "The Core" okay that one i went at while the movie was playing!

hehe, i didn't even think about time and regional knowlege, or how a cat would know stuff, i just assumed that the author actually thinks that too, which is probably the case in this point

*does some desultory research* I thought Metal Hurlant went out of business and then later became Heavy Metal, but Joe's right.

A lot of HM stories are downright stoopid, but it offers a taste of other worlds, and it's surprisingly cheap.

Yeah, its good fun and has some amazing artists (writers not so much) but it's not especially cheap over here (what is) so I don't pick it up that often. I did watch the animated film they made which was rilly rilly stooopid.

I'd like to check out some Bilal stuff and Blacksad looks good (although I'd be worried people thought I was a furry) and I can heartily reccomend Jacques Tardi's The Bloody Streets of Paris, a noir detective story with fantastic black and white art. Metabarons has some great art if you fancy some OTT space opera stuff, written by Jodorowsky who did The Incal, featuring the master Mobieus.