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3"
This is a detective mystery.
It lasts only 3 seconds.
Which is enough time for a particle of light to travel 900,000 kilometres.
And as you follow it on its journey - through scenes of deadly drama and seeming innocence, as far as deep space and back - look into the blind spots and corners. There are clues there: connections between the characters, motives, intrigues, crimes and plots.
You are the detective.
Find the solution.
It lasts only 3 seconds.
Which is enough time for a particle of light to travel 900,000 kilometres.
And as you follow it on its journey - through scenes of deadly drama and seeming innocence, as far as deep space and back - look into the blind spots and corners. There are clues there: connections between the characters, motives, intrigues, crimes and plots.
You are the detective.
Find the solution.
Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
313 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
May 28, 2014
I intend to read the entire Marc-Antoine Mathieu canon to see whether the guy is at all capable of putting a foot wrong.
May 29, 2023
You will need a well lit room with a large mirror to hold this book up to so you can read newspaper articles for clues.
The only word said is "!" by a fly with bad luck.
There's a lot to infer about the science of light based on how far and wide it travels in 3 SECONDS= the entirety (plot) of the book!
Another of his books intrigues me simply because of how fun the character's name is: Julius Corentin Acquefacques, Prisonnier Des Rêves
The only word said is "!" by a fly with bad luck.
There's a lot to infer about the science of light based on how far and wide it travels in 3 SECONDS= the entirety (plot) of the book!
Another of his books intrigues me simply because of how fun the character's name is: Julius Corentin Acquefacques, Prisonnier Des Rêves
February 19, 2016
Points for originality. This reflective book, which takes place over the span of three seconds, covers all the angles to show you the power of multi-tiered perspective, while your eyes and mind somehow follow the deceptively complex story - nearly text free - to impressive dimensions of cause and effectual reality. It's amazing what can happen in so little time, and 3" and it's linked and/or non-linked events may give your life a brief pause while you figure it all out and picture your reality in a new light. Art.
I debated 3 or 4 stars, 3 or 4 stars, but yes, I think I'm going with 4.
I debated 3 or 4 stars, 3 or 4 stars, but yes, I think I'm going with 4.
March 12, 2021
Muy recomendado. Una forma muy original de contar un thriller. Mientras lo leía y me fijaba en todos los detalles no he podido dejar de pensar en el trabajazo que tuvo que ser hacer este cómic de esta manera. A mí, al menos, me parece algo brutal.
Lo que es leérmelo me lo he leído. Dos veces. O tres. No lo sé, 😆 después de llegar al final me puse a leerlo de nuevo pero yendo de una página a otra comprobando cosas, buscando información, pistas... Creo que lo he averiguado todo de la historia pero aún le daré alguna vuelta más, aunque voy a dejar ya la reseña.
Yo pensaba que sería un cómic del estilo de los de Quino: cosas que suceden en 3 segundos pero distintas unas de otras, que cada página fuera una historia separada. PERO NO, en este cómic toda la historia ocurre en 3 segundos. Pero no te la cuenta tal cual, tú tienes que unir las piezas.
Lo que es leérmelo me lo he leído. Dos veces. O tres. No lo sé, 😆 después de llegar al final me puse a leerlo de nuevo pero yendo de una página a otra comprobando cosas, buscando información, pistas... Creo que lo he averiguado todo de la historia pero aún le daré alguna vuelta más, aunque voy a dejar ya la reseña.
Yo pensaba que sería un cómic del estilo de los de Quino: cosas que suceden en 3 segundos pero distintas unas de otras, que cada página fuera una historia separada. PERO NO, en este cómic toda la historia ocurre en 3 segundos. Pero no te la cuenta tal cual, tú tienes que unir las piezas.
February 23, 2018
Una propuesta muy original: el cómic se construye a través de un rayo de luz reflejado en 33 espejos con una duración de tres segundos. Hay un breve interludio a un satélite para poder hacer una bree pausa. En esos fotogramas se cuenta una historia de corrupción periodística.
Aquí puede verse en versión vídeo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00xwH...
Aquí puede verse en versión vídeo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00xwH...
June 11, 2021
Interesting.
March 28, 2023
Concept intéressant mais pas de fil conducteur .dommage
January 10, 2020
Very exciting zooming effects and an amazing puzzle.
November 13, 2015
This book is very intense.
It has absolutely no dialogues but the narrative is very absorbing. It is so full of detail, you can see the streets from a lot of angels and perspectives depending on which reflex it's shown to you.
Let me see if I can explain... There is a scene and the person has some sunglasses on and they focus closer and closer until you can see which reflex was on the sunglasses and then you jump to where it brings you and then in the other scene someone is drinking from a bottle and through the reflex of that bottle and that is shown to you closer and closer you can see another reflex that is going to drive you to another scene. It's brilliant. really.
It has absolutely no dialogues but the narrative is very absorbing. It is so full of detail, you can see the streets from a lot of angels and perspectives depending on which reflex it's shown to you.
Let me see if I can explain... There is a scene and the person has some sunglasses on and they focus closer and closer until you can see which reflex was on the sunglasses and then you jump to where it brings you and then in the other scene someone is drinking from a bottle and through the reflex of that bottle and that is shown to you closer and closer you can see another reflex that is going to drive you to another scene. It's brilliant. really.
January 4, 2023
A very original graphic novel and Mathieu's attention to detail is impressive. The story itself doesn't have much to it, but the novelty of this book may be sufficient for some to consider checking this out. I can see myself perusing this book every now and then and taking away something different each time.
May 30, 2024
A story that spans 3 seconds, told as one continuous zoom, from one reflective surface to another, slowly revealing the intrigue to the murderous plot at the center of it. It's vertiginous, both in its visuals as well as it's experimental scope. And it's executed to perfection.
January 3, 2018
I first found this book in the Belgian Comic Strip Center gift shop at the end of a European vacation and fell in love. That I didn't buy it was a huge mistake (made because already our bags were groaning under the weight of all the books we bought). A wordless crime story that takes place in the title's three seconds, it is shown in a series of interlocked reflections. It starts in darkness, then a tiny dot appears and as that dot gets larger, we realize we are getting closer, looking over the shoulder of two men in a dark room looking through a (door? window? things get clearer as we continue zooming in). Then we see we are looking into the eye of a man in a room across some distance and as we zoom into his eye we see the reflection of his phone as he is looking at it taking a selfie and we zoom further in to the small inset camera lens in the phone's front and in that lens we see that behind him stands a man pointing a gun at his head and behind the gunman is a mirror in which we see the room in which they both stand and zooming into the mirror we see a shiny trophy in whose reflection upon closer and closer and closer inspection we see the room from another angle and we see the woman in the room who sees the man taking the selfie about to be shot and closing in on her we see in her startled posture that she has dropped her compact mirror in whose reflection we see yet another angle of the men in tableau with a hanging light above them and reflected in the glass of the bulb in the hanging light and so on and so on moving us the viewer around this scene and the street outside and the windows and mirrors of cars and motorcycles and the lens of a satellite and the whole thing is gloriously bananas and absurd but fun as we zoom around through the whole story.
It's definitely a book that can be read very quickly or very slowly, savoring the angles and expressions and the slow, subtle shifting of all the action in the main parts of the story as we zoom around from one direction and reflection to another. It's wonderful in print yet both loses and gains something in electronic version. You move faster through the digital version because of the spread of images' presentation, but you can also zoom in to a level of detail that is harder to see in the static sized print images.
It's definitely a book that can be read very quickly or very slowly, savoring the angles and expressions and the slow, subtle shifting of all the action in the main parts of the story as we zoom around from one direction and reflection to another. It's wonderful in print yet both loses and gains something in electronic version. You move faster through the digital version because of the spread of images' presentation, but you can also zoom in to a level of detail that is harder to see in the static sized print images.
November 12, 2019
This book is a ride, no joke. You follow a constantly moving beam of light, "bouncing" off reflective surfaces (the light goes straight, with the world reflecting around it) among people around a soccer scandal. It's like a film noir in comic book style.
This book was originally published in French, then was translated into English, German, Spanish, and many other languages. I mention this because I read the English version first, then the French, and the English has several glaring issues. First off, it takes a name that was originally an anagram and changes it, but doesn't change any of the other names... So the English version flat out renders one of the book's puzzles unsolvable. Secondly, it actually leaves a couple French panels in untranslated, which (to me anyway) isn't a big deal, but doesn't look good on Delcourt. Thirdly, a couple parts that were translated to English have spelling errors and even just repeat the same lines over several times.
To get the best experience from this book, I'd suggest the original French version. The French is much cleaner and smoother to read, and gives a better idea of the situation at hand. One of the features behind this book is the digital version. Every physical copy includes a password for the website to access the digital version but my English version's website didn't work... The dev console had a whole host of errors. I don't know about the French version's site but wouldn't be surprised if it was also broken. (Note: this is the actual site, not the password. I couldn't even load the site to input a password)
One issue I do have is the price of this book. I bought it secondhand but I saw many copies through booksellers selling at $40+. I rarely comment on the price of literary books (especially visual ones) but given the weak translation and broken website, I cannot recommend this book for that price. If you're interested, find it secondhand (got mine from a German seller ironically) or check out a salvaged digital version on YouTube to help you decide if you want it.
This book was originally published in French, then was translated into English, German, Spanish, and many other languages. I mention this because I read the English version first, then the French, and the English has several glaring issues. First off, it takes a name that was originally an anagram and changes it, but doesn't change any of the other names... So the English version flat out renders one of the book's puzzles unsolvable. Secondly, it actually leaves a couple French panels in untranslated, which (to me anyway) isn't a big deal, but doesn't look good on Delcourt. Thirdly, a couple parts that were translated to English have spelling errors and even just repeat the same lines over several times.
To get the best experience from this book, I'd suggest the original French version. The French is much cleaner and smoother to read, and gives a better idea of the situation at hand. One of the features behind this book is the digital version. Every physical copy includes a password for the website to access the digital version but my English version's website didn't work... The dev console had a whole host of errors. I don't know about the French version's site but wouldn't be surprised if it was also broken. (Note: this is the actual site, not the password. I couldn't even load the site to input a password)
One issue I do have is the price of this book. I bought it secondhand but I saw many copies through booksellers selling at $40+. I rarely comment on the price of literary books (especially visual ones) but given the weak translation and broken website, I cannot recommend this book for that price. If you're interested, find it secondhand (got mine from a German seller ironically) or check out a salvaged digital version on YouTube to help you decide if you want it.
July 6, 2019
Vous verrez passer plusieurs critiques des bédés de Marc-Antoine Mathieu, puisque c'est un artiste que (je ne sais pas pourquoi!) je viens tout juste de découvrir, et je suis déjà sous le charme. Connu principalement pour son jeu avec la forme littéraire, il est passé maître dans l'art de la bande-dessinée produite autour d'un seul et même concept.
Dans «3''», Mathieu nous propose de faire le voyage d'un rayon de lumière, parcourant réflexions et prenant ainsi tous les angles d'une seule et même pièce, dans un délai total de 3 secondes.
On nous invitera donc, au-travers de la bande dessinée, à découvrir par nous-même les infinies subtilités de ce qui se passe dans ce moment donné, dans ce lieu précis, au cours des 3 secondes que dureront l'intrigue. L'intérêt de la lecture est donc de parcourir plusieurs fois toutes les pages afin de bien comprendre l'étendue du récit, qui aurait pu aller plus loin, mais qui pousse tout de même le concept jusqu'à ses limites.
Au final, «3''» n'est pas une intrigue à tout casser: on doit le parcourir comme une expérience unique, également disponible en vidéo en ligne (facilement trouvable sur Youtube), mais qui vaut tout de même le coup de l'avoir en format papier.
Dans «3''», Mathieu nous propose de faire le voyage d'un rayon de lumière, parcourant réflexions et prenant ainsi tous les angles d'une seule et même pièce, dans un délai total de 3 secondes.
On nous invitera donc, au-travers de la bande dessinée, à découvrir par nous-même les infinies subtilités de ce qui se passe dans ce moment donné, dans ce lieu précis, au cours des 3 secondes que dureront l'intrigue. L'intérêt de la lecture est donc de parcourir plusieurs fois toutes les pages afin de bien comprendre l'étendue du récit, qui aurait pu aller plus loin, mais qui pousse tout de même le concept jusqu'à ses limites.
Au final, «3''» n'est pas une intrigue à tout casser: on doit le parcourir comme une expérience unique, également disponible en vidéo en ligne (facilement trouvable sur Youtube), mais qui vaut tout de même le coup de l'avoir en format papier.
September 25, 2024
This comic takes place over the course of three seconds, following a ray of light as it travels 900,000 km, reflecting off various surfaces along the way. As such, it's first and foremost a formal experiment, and it provides a visceral, non-narrative reading experience in which the reader can just become viscerally immersed. This is certainly the level on which I primarily enjoyed it, letting it wash over me and marvelling at its formal ingenuity.
However, it’s also a sort of crime comic. In fact, it's more like a puzzle or game than a work of narrative fiction, as it's filled with clues from which the reader can try to solve a mystery – including by rotating pages around and reading certain panels through a mirror. I didn't manage to work everything out, but I still enjoyed the process of hunting for clues and making connections. Moreover, I think this mystery aspect was very effective at keeping me engaged, ensuring that I actually read the comic, rather than just looking at the pictures.
Overall, this is a very impressive comic that I'd say is a must-read for anyone interested in experimental comics and formalism. It's left me very curious to read more of Mathieu’s work.
However, it’s also a sort of crime comic. In fact, it's more like a puzzle or game than a work of narrative fiction, as it's filled with clues from which the reader can try to solve a mystery – including by rotating pages around and reading certain panels through a mirror. I didn't manage to work everything out, but I still enjoyed the process of hunting for clues and making connections. Moreover, I think this mystery aspect was very effective at keeping me engaged, ensuring that I actually read the comic, rather than just looking at the pictures.
Overall, this is a very impressive comic that I'd say is a must-read for anyone interested in experimental comics and formalism. It's left me very curious to read more of Mathieu’s work.
June 29, 2018
This is a wild, wordless maelstrom of slow zooms, reflections, and perspectives telling a series of stories locked together—either by proximity or collusion—that culminate in the three seconds of time that are the entirety of this book. Each panel appeared to be delightfully sharp and simple until the book progressed more and I realized the wide swing tremolo of the visual focus meant that Mathieu needed to have a complete understanding of the world he’d created. The end result is like a beam of light following its own reflection through the dark parts of a large city. 3” is essentially a mystery story diorama in comic form, and it’s unlike anything I’ve read before.
December 26, 2019
Le concept de cet BD est vraiment intéressant, l'idée de suivre le cheminement de la lumière est très original. Malheureusement, malgré le fait d'avoir lu ce BD 3 fois, il y a toujours des détails qui m’échappe et qui m’empêche de comprendre l'histoire complet. J'apprécie le fait que l’auteur ne te tient pas à la main pour comprendre, et que c'est à toi de découvrir tous les détailles. Mais pour moi, c'était un peu trop complexe. Ceci dit, le livre est très bien fait, le style est vraiment intéressant, et je peux le recommander pour tous ceux qui aime un challenge un peu hors normes.
April 24, 2021
67 頁。每頁 9 格。 603 格。 3 秒。
這是一個很獨特的漫畫閱讀體驗。你以一束光線的視角，穿越各種反射面，進出不同場景。在場景中嘗試找出線索拼湊整個事件。而這 603 格描繪的只是 3 秒的過程，每一格資訊量很多，感覺很緊湊。一方面很想追下一格看看場景會有什麼轉變，另一方面又覺得必需仔細看每一格的內容，怕一不留神便錯過一個重要的細節。所以看似死版的 9 宮格頁面佈局在這作品變成是很重要的表現方式，頁面佈局太跳脫便會令讀者分心，作者這取捨很有心思。
找線索和拼出故事來龍去脈的部份固然是過癮，另外猜作者會選擇以什麼作為當前場景的反射面也很有趣，有些真的很刁鑽，當然有時候感覺有點故弄玄虛。
題外話，這作品讓我想起 Eames 的 Power of Ten，Power of Ten 玩的是事物的規模，3" 玩的是事情的串連。我們是這麼渺小，又這麼龐大。
這是一個很獨特的漫畫閱讀體驗。你以一束光線的視角，穿越各種反射面，進出不同場景。在場景中嘗試找出線索拼湊整個事件。而這 603 格描繪的只是 3 秒的過程，每一格資訊量很多，感覺很緊湊。一方面很想追下一格看看場景會有什麼轉變，另一方面又覺得必需仔細看每一格的內容，怕一不留神便錯過一個重要的細節。所以看似死版的 9 宮格頁面佈局在這作品變成是很重要的表現方式，頁面佈局太跳脫便會令讀者分心，作者這取捨很有心思。
找線索和拼出故事來龍去脈的部份固然是過癮，另外猜作者會選擇以什麼作為當前場景的反射面也很有趣，有些真的很刁鑽，當然有時候感覺有點故弄玄虛。
題外話，這作品讓我想起 Eames 的 Power of Ten，Power of Ten 玩的是事物的規模，3" 玩的是事情的串連。我們是這麼渺小，又這麼龐大。
February 10, 2023
Un manejo de la perspectiva basada en el viaje que realiza la luz, a través de objetos reflectantes. Podemos conocer la historia a través de cada reflejo. Una sorprendente técnica que merece ser conocida.
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January 1, 2025Una obra en físico que simula un zoom digital con una narración de negro a blanco y con una narrativa plagada de estímulos aparentemente inconexos. Completamente muda pero con mucho que contar. Bastante chulo.
June 23, 2025
Une idée de narration très originale qui débouche sur un récit policier.
Il faudra le lire plusieurs fois, voire s'aider de miroir pour comprendre toute l'intrigue, mais ça peut s'apprécier aussi de façon légère.
Il faudra le lire plusieurs fois, voire s'aider de miroir pour comprendre toute l'intrigue, mais ça peut s'apprécier aussi de façon légère.
October 20, 2025
Une bd hyper originale, sans texte qui capte un bout de vie qui dure 3 secondes et tout ça autour d’un même endroit ! Je trouve que c’est cool de voir des oeuvres qui sortent un peu de l’ordinaire comme celle là et qui arrivent à capter le lecteur qui n’a donc pas envie de décrocher du livre !
December 24, 2017
Extraordinary!
Traveling in light speed, or not?
Story is about 3 seconds, but not within 3 seconds.
Telling a story by just reflection of different angels of perspective is unique.
Worth reading.
Traveling in light speed, or not?
Story is about 3 seconds, but not within 3 seconds.
Telling a story by just reflection of different angels of perspective is unique.
Worth reading.
October 20, 2018
An almost masterpiece of perspective.
November 2, 2018
Une bd sans mots qui nous laissent sans mots :) Fascinante!
January 5, 2019
Great graphic novel! So much more to it as the novel builds!
March 31, 2019
Estupenda forma de narrar un thriller!
March 7, 2020
Super original, hipnótico
May 23, 2020
Mathieu au sommet de son art : maîtrise du trait, du temps, de l'espace et du fil narratif.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews