Pico Bogue v1: “Life and Me”

This is the second time I’ve written this review. This opening bit originally talked about how this would be a short review, and that while I like this book, I’m not terribly excited by it.

Then a funny thing happened. I started to read the second book, and I couldn’t put it down. I began to realize that the more I read of the series, the more I liked it. I acclimated to the humor and the tone of the book.

This is a similar arc to the one I followed with “Gomer Goof,” come to think of it.

I’m a bona fide fan of the series now, and now it’s time to explain why.

Precocious Credits

Writer: Dominique Roques
Artist: Alexis Dormal
Letterer: Calix Ltd.
Translator: Edward Gauvin
Published by: Dargaud/Europe Comics
Number of Pages: 48
Original Publication: 2005

The Set-Up

Pico is a young boy with a very busy and insightful mind.

He is, in many ways, your typical kid. He questions everything. But he does so in a highly logical fashion that emphasizes the “why”s. He’s unrelenting. No adult is going to get away with a half answer around him.

That could grow wearisome quickly, but it doesn’t with Pico because he’s not doing it to be mean. He’s trying to get what he wants, sure, but he’s also interested in consistency and clarity, in so much as it benefits him. It’s also where all the humor comes from in Dominique Roques’ scripts.

Follow any line of logic a long enough distance, and you’ll arrive at some interesting/surprising conclusions.

Now, to be sure, Pico’s analysis is often done to get results that benefit him. He follows these lines of thought because he wants more candy, or because he wants to sit around and watch TV, or because he doesn’t want to do his chores.

Even acknowledging the self-interested motivation, Pico’s got a way with logic, though. It’s super fun to watch him chase those arguments down and turn the tables on his parents. It doesn’t always make total sense, but it gets the job done. That’s the important thing.

Pico is wise in some ways, and a wiseass in others.

There are times I don’t know whether I want to shake his hand for his ingenious take on a random issue, or give him a hug to let him know it’ll be all right. I don’t really ever want to give him a Time Out or anything. Even when he accidentally breaks a glass, he immediately looks guilty. He’s not a troublemaker.

His behavior and attitude falls on the far more lovable side. He’s no Ducoboo, who is an obnoxious brat. He has moments of genuine warmth for his little sister and parents. But he’s still a kid who, left alone on his own, will talk his way out of any situation, sounding innocent while questioning an adult’s authority and belief system. Sometimes, he can talk logic into a circle to meet his own needs.

I like the kid. I want to read more about him, so I’ll definitely be continuing on with this series.

It’s a set-up that might bring up memories of “Calvin & Hobbes.” Bill Watterson’s creation is a little more cerebral than Roques’, but the technique of getting to the gag is similar.

I also like Roques’ story structures. I like the repeating gags, such as the teddy bear Pico wants in the toy story across three gags, which is immediately followed by the cookies he wants at the grocery store. That strip, on digital page 11, takes a hilarious, if slightly dark, turn. It’s so good, I have to share it:

The Art Style

As you can see, Dormal paints his art under some final dark pencil work. I don’t know if that’s watercolors or acrylics, to be honest. I like the looks of it, though. It blends together well with the line work.

The stories are told mostly in half pages with two tiers of panels. The full page gags vary a bit more. Sometimes, there’s only six panels across three tiers, but others can go to six tiers with three panels across.

As the series progresses, you’ll see an even greater variety of panel layouts. It feels like Roques and Dormal get comfortable with their process and with the feel of the series. That allows them to experiment with new storytelling rhythms, modified to best fit the joke.

Visually, Dormal gives the characters with standout traits. Pico has a distinctive mop of hair on top of his head, and his little sister has a similar yellow pile of hair. His parents are much more center of the road and bland, as you’d expect parents to be.

Those backgrounds!

I like the way Dormal handles the backgrounds. It’s very deceiving. They look busy and complicated at first, but when you look at them, you realize that he’s only drawing rough, unconnected lines.

The colors are doing all the work. The trees are a series of green colors overlapping, with the barest hints of a leaf outline surrounding them.

At other times, I can show you examples of areas with lots of lines that don’t necessarily draw all the technical details and finish off all the construction lines, but get swaths of colors behind them to sell the effect.

It’s a fascinating thing for me to dissect. I’m so used to marveling over the technical precision of a Francois Schuiten or the way Nob handles the colorful and technically correct on-model backgrounds in “Dad.” This book works in a different way.

The backgrounds are clear and set the scene, but they’re very much filled in with your own imagination. They form their own bokeh, of a sort. It’s not a hazy, out of focus background, but it is a less detailed one, from the perspective of the linework. The colors form splotches that set up all the background elements you need.

Dormal also goes with borderless panels, so often the “edges” of a panel are defined by where the paint comes to an abrupt or choppy end. It doesn’t look like he’s masking panels off and then removing the tape to reveal a straight line. He just paints to the edge of the area and whatever loose edges appear, work.

It gives the work a more organic look. It feels looser, even though you can tell everything is well planned and executed. There’s a bit of the feeling of the on-line French autobiographical cartoonists with this book, in a way. It’s not super glossy, but it is very attractive work.

Recommended?

Yes, it’s cute, funny, and I like the art. That’s all I ask for in these things. It has writing on par with the best parts of “Calvin and Hobbes,” with an art style that feels deceptively sloppy at first, but isn’t. It’s loose and energetic, with occasional moments of more technical execution.

These individual pages are the kinds of things you want to rip out and post on your fridge or on the wall of your cube at work.

A slight warning: This is a very family-friendly book that’s good for all ages, but there are two or three strips that reference things that, in America, would be more teenager-level humor, not 10 year old humor. In France, they love their precocious little sex-obsessed kids. (Hello, Titeuf!) In America, we’re not so into that. Just chalk it up to a cultural difference. The other 95% of the book is “safe.”

There are six books in the series in English all together. (I think there’s another three on top of that right now in French.) Like I said at the top, it grew on me fast. I didn’t realize how much I liked it until the second volume, which still leaves me four more books to look forward to.

Sign me up!

— 2019.006 —

Buy It Now