‘Dry Cleaning’, An Intrigue Comic With A Hitchcock Feel And An Atmospheric Drawing | Entertainment | The USA Print – THE USA PRINT

If this graphic novel were a movie, it could be either a low-budget European film with an air of new wave like a thriller directed by some follower of Alfred Hitchcock. The comparison with the world of cinema is not gratuitous because the author of dry cleaning, the Belgian cartoonist Joris Mertens, has worked on it for a long time. This is his first comic published in our country and it is more than a pleasant surprise; It’s quite a discovery. A comic that mixes the intrigue of the crime series with that melancholic tone characteristic of French cinema from the sixties or seventies.

Its protagonist is François, a gray guy, who drives the van with deliveries for a dry cleaning company. His monotonous life moves between his house, work, the friendly Maryvonne’s kiosk and a café that serves as a meeting point with the people of the neighborhood. Another thing that does not change is his unwavering faith in winning, very soon, a big lottery prize and leaving behind this dull life that is eating away at him.

The story of this comic starts with a slow pace that only prepares us for what is to come. That calm is a warning. A warning that soon everything will change. And so it is. Suddenly, the story takes a turn and a change occurs in François’s life. The story accelerates like the protagonist’s heart. Starts the thriller and the best thing that can be said – without revealing the plot – is that Mertens knows how to manage expectations well until a round ending.

One of the main attractions of dry cleaning It is his drawing, and more specifically the portrait he makes of the city, an urban landscape with a rainy and nocturnal atmosphere. This scenario ends up becoming the other main protagonist of these pages. Streets, buildings, commercial signs… The sets are drawn in a very personal way, making detail and precision compatible with the nervous line that we normally associate with the sketch. It is a drawing that enchants us, enhanced by a vibrant color, with flashes of yellow and red, which stand out vigorously like sparks in the middle of the urban grayness.

This color is not a free resource either, as it is used to convey emotions. We find here a good example of what in cinema is called color grading (color grading), that is, when the color ranges of a film are adjusted – during post-production – to convey a certain mood in the scene. Thus, we see cold streets in bluish tones that contrast with cafe interiors portrayed in warm tones. Above all, the atmospheric effect caused by the rain and the neon lights stands out. There is something from Tardi and in Mertens’ ability to portray atmospheres.

Many of the vignettes use dramatic framing and some are spectacular because they are presented on a double page, thus contributing to the reader having an even more immersive experience in this graphic novel. For its part, the city that it portrays is not a real population, it is a sum of cities, a patchwork, which however make this non-existent space something incredibly real and close. As if we knew its streets. As if we had walked there. This is another of the charms that reading dry cleaning.

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Joris Mertens, a return with a prize

The Belgian Joris Mertens (1968) has worked on film and television projects as an art director or set designer, a career that can be seen in his comic books. His first work as a cartoonist was an album without text titled Beatrice, where the city already had a very prominent role. Three years later he published this dry cleaning (Bleekwater in its original Flemish edition). In France, dry cleaning has received the Fnac Comic Award 2023.