Pourquoi l'étrange Monsieur Zolock s'intéressait-il tant à la bande dessinée?

If you've ever seen this french, made-in-Canada movie, you know what I mean. Basically a documentary on Canadian and European comics and graphic novels authors, disguised as some thriller / comedy as Jean-Louis Milette plays a villain who wants to conquer the world, and by asking private eye Michel Rivard to investigate the comic art industry and its influence on the civilization, Mr. Zolock tries to compute the collected data and find a way to rule the world.

But this film IS a documentary. It runs for around 70 minutes, and I'd say 98% of the film is composed of interviews of European masters of the 70s and 80s. Some interviews are conducted in public areas, while many of them are right in the artist's studios, so we can enjoy seeing them at work.

The list of the visited artists is too long to be mentioned here in full, but these include Yves Got, Enki Bilal, Jean Giraud / Moebius, Jacques Tardi, Albert Uderzo, Hugo Pratt, Gotlib, Franquin, Philippe Druillet, Reiser, and J-C. Mezieres. It is very interesting to have the insight view of each of these folks about their own work. To know what they really think about the graphic novel market, some surprising numbers when talking about sales (as long as we put them back in context in 1983), and what they think about what makes an adult comic or a kid's comic.

Definitively worth watching, just for the enjoyment to see these masters in their creative environment. There is a number of comic-related movies made in the US, but as far as I know, this one is the only film dealing with European artists.

sv