August 26, 2007

Monsieur Frankenstein



Marion Mousse is a prolific graphic novel artist who is very adept at period pieces, having successfully illustrated such celebrated swashbucklers as Moonfleet and Capitaine Fracasse. In June, Delcourt of France published the first tome of Mousse’s elaborate 3-volume adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Turning a massive novel into three 48-page graphic novels implies a great deal of compression, but Mousse’s adaptation is not only faithful, it is pitch perfect. Mousse is a confident artist whose art style is refreshingly loose and cartoony, yet loaded with accurate detail. Moody chiaroscuro abounds. The sober, subdued colors are the work of Marie Galopin.

You can see roughs and character sketches on Mousse’s blog, and five sample pages (click “extraits”) on the publisher’s site.

Hopefully, this will be available in English soon. If you can’t wait for a translation, this one is worth getting for the artwork alone. You can buy the book through Amazon.fr, Fichtre! in Montreal, or Librairie Pantoute in Québec City.  

By the way, when he's done with Frankenstein, Mousse plans to take on Gaston Leroux' The Phantom of the Opera.


4 comments:

rob! said...

ooooh, sweet cover!

rob! said...

i'd love to buy the book, even without the translation, but all the sites selling it are in french! any idea who might be selling it in the USA?

Pierre Fournier said...

Your best bet would be Amazon Canada. I checked, they have several of Mousse’s books, but not Frankenstein, yet. It only came out here recently, I got my copy last week in a local (Montreal) bookstore. I’ll keep an eye out on Amazon.ca and I’ll let you know when the book is listed.

rob! said...

thanks!! the artwork is so beautiful and i know the story so well i dont think i'd ever even need the english version...