Baru
posted:
Long before moving to Cambridge I used to come up here from New York to visit The Million Year Picnic: A very small comic book shop in the heart of Harvard Square that in its best days (before the Euro got so strong) used to import an insane amount of gorgeous books from Europe. It was there where I discovered my favorite comic book of all times and simultaneously one of my favorite comic book artists. The book, a manga size, black and white chunky brick, contains the most amazing storytelling and pacing I've ever seen. It's called L'Autoroute Du Soleil by Baru. It forced me to take french classes to be able to read it and understand all the slang and I guess now I've read it about twenty times. L'Autoroute won for best album at the prestigious Angoulême festival in 1996 and best foreign album at Lucca in 2001.
Baru's amazing drawing skills and composition which you can find in all of his books are simply majestic and have influence my illustration and comic work a great deal. If you are a bit curious about Baru, you should check out Road to America, which was published in english by Drawn and Quarterly.
