Harold

by Antoine Cossé

As packs of wild dogs roam through a quiet city, a mysterious man and his hulking driver Harold wait outside a luxury hotel. When their car is surrounded by paparazzi looking for a princess staying at the hotel, Harold begins to tell the tale of the rebellion against the princess's father. Mysteries of the past slowly unfold against the strangeness of their present.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

56 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2014

About the author

Antoine Cossé is a French illustrator and cartoonist. Cossé was born in Paris in 1981. He studied Illustration at Camberwell College of Arts in London, where he still lives.
His comics have been published by Breakdown Press, Retrofit comics, Fantagraphics Books, most notably Mutiny Bay (2014), Showtime (2017) and Metax (2022).
His illustration works have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wetransfer, The Guardian, Les Inrockuptibles, Libération, Le Monde Diplomatique and others.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harold is a 60-page comic by French artist Antoine Cosse, my first exposure to his work. His inspirations seem to be as wide and varied as Herge, Chris Ware and Olivier Schrauwen. He says he is interested in architecture (such as Tillie Walden and Ware) and dreams. It begins with several wordless panels, a single dog running, then more, a pack, until we meet a famous movie star J.1137, and his bodyguard, Harold, outside a luxury hotel. As their car is besieged by paparazzi looking for a princess, Harold tells of the resistance against the princess's father. Some of the characters are animals.

The feel of Harold is both alt-comics and art comics, with a touch of poetry, mystery and surrealism. It appears to capture our time of manic interest in celebrity, clashing with some dystopian class elements bleeding into nightmare. If you are interested in narrative, look elsewhere; this is about mood and tone and mystery. I'll say 3.5, for this one, rounded down initially because I had no idea what was going on, then rounded up because I realized that didn't matter and that I should look at it for its effects.

None of this appears to be from Harold, specifically, but this gives you an idea of his painterly and atmospheric style:

https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/...

[Dimitris Papastergiou · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ah.. why I bought this? It was on sale.. I think?! Oh well, just don't.

Art is messy as FUCK. And I mean it. It's a complete mess son.

I'm talking text over artwork mess. I'm talking crappy lettering mess.

BUT, the thing is that it kept me going until the end cuz it had a glimpse of a story to see what happens.. and guess what? NOTHING HAPPENED.

There's no pay off in this one. You'll get nothing.

Some dogs running for 100 pages just to run through the pages, maybe so we can call this a graphic novel? Who knows. No point in half of them panels even existing in this.

No explanation for some shitty stuff happening though not even interesting enough for you to care about them either way.

Meh.. meh.. meh.. Why am I doing this to myself?

[Nate D]

The minimal flow of images and associations here, rendered in slightly watery ink layers, might make this seem to be a bit of a stream-on-conscious semi-abstract narrative, but for Cossé's trick of making sure that each detail appears twice. In the resulting web of associated images, a kind of circuitous narrative lurks in almost-realization. Slight, but enjoyable.

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seems pretty pointless from a story point of view, but artistically it does create a nice sense of movement.

[Himi · Rating 2 out of 5]

The art is nice and if the panels on a few pages were redone, it could tell a different, wordless story–like something that might have aired on a mature version of Pinwheel–but as it is, the actual story is rather dull.

[Derek Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://comicsalternative.com/episode-...