It took me a while but I finally finished the large French comics volume Epileptic. It received a lot of critical acclaim after it was named best comic by Time in 2002. It's not that easy to find in its native French but the US reprint should make it more accessible. I'm not saying that Epileptic is easy to get into, in fact it is quite the opposite

David B., born Pierre-François Beauchard deals with his experience growing up with an epileptic brother in France in a recent time when the disease is still largely misunderstood. The epilepsy here represented as a beast will torment his brother and his family and never let up. The parents are this progressive couple who seek many specialists, spiritual and esoteric to try to cure their son's illness. In their search, they attend meetings, join communes, convert to diets but all in vain. Still they do not falter for years in the face of failure

The work is largely autobiographical. I found the extended descriptions for the new gurus, their theories, origins and practices a bit tedious. I wonder how the author kept track of all of them and actually there are some panels of the present day where he asks exactly those questions to his mother

The appearance of the characters of the book is not at all straight forward. A lot of the gurus and spiritual leaders have animal heads on human bodies, maybe a sign that they were no more than charlatans who lost their human qualities. Other characters obviously change with age (David himself, his family) but sometimes they take on a different form when they are awash with overpowering emotions (David's own depiction changes to a dark man when he is consumed by anger over his brother). David reveals that he misrepresented his brother's appearance up to the end because he didn't want to face the reality that his brother had given up and accepted his illness

David submerges himself in drawings to combat the growing influence of his brother's illness but it will eventually take over his life, affecting him him through adulthood. One can imagine that working on Eplieptic might have been the best way for him to deal with the situation

There's a definite artistic merit to the book, the line drawings are very clean and there's a great use of inks, contrasts between white and large areas in black

The book had obvious appeal to me since it was from a Frenchman but it was pretty hard to get into. Some parts in particular the descriptions of new school of thought really lost me.

The way David B. exorcises his demons reminded me of Blankets which was no less a massive work (pagecount) but a bit more emotional and straightforward. David B. can be said to be brutally honest, even thought he drew a lot about his dreams and there's a large focus on fantasy, it's not sugar coated or held back (like when his sister and him wished his brother would die so they could lead a normal life)

It all makes for very interesting work visually.


Epileptic was originally published in 3 volumes. Black & White, 368 pages