LOUD!

by Maria Llovet

The LOUD nightclub. A latecomer stripper, a pissed waitress, a hitmen couple, a suspension bondage performer, a pregnant teenager, a clan of vampires, a pedophile, a lesbian junkie, a divorcing middle-aged woman, a sadistic dominatrix, and many other souls in search of love, drugs, and blood converge at the hottest club in town on a night that none will ever forget. If they survive.

LOUD is like THE HUNGER if directed by Tarantino -- a stylish, tripped-out bloodbath of beautiful and vicious decadence.

You’ll feel the beat throbbing in your skull, smell the sweat, taste the blood, and lose yourself in the wicked underworld masterfully wrought by MARIA LLOVET.

The smash hit that instantly sold out of both its hardcover and softcover printings, now back in print.

"Emotional, chaotic, propulsive, LOUD is a beauty; a book not to be read, but to be felt." -Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets, Wonder Woman)

"Maria Llovet is one of my favorite emerging cartoonists, and her new book LOUD is exactly as it sounds--brash, colorful, sexy, and just a little sleazy--highly recommended!" -Paul Pope (Battling Boy, Batman Year 100)

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction

96 pages, Paperback

Published February 9, 2021

About the author

Maria Llovet is a graphic novel author and illustrator from Barcelona.
Her work explores themes of desire, intensity, and aesthetics, blending emotional depth with striking visual storytelling.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eine denkwürdige Nacht im angesagten Club "Loud": Ein Pädophiler auf der Suche nach einem kleinen Mädchen, eine Stripperin, ein Killer-Pärchen, Drogendealer, ein schwangeres Mädchen, ein anderes mit einer Überdosis, alle Spielarten der Liebe, vor allem aber der wummernde Lärm der Musik, der nur nonverbale Kommunikation zulässt: Blicke, Gesten, Körpersprache.
LOUD zeigt, was graphisches Erzählen leisten kann. Llovet schickt den Leser durch eine Nacht voller Sex und Gewalt. Nach einiger Zeit kommen dem Leser schon einige der Nachtclubbesucher bekannt vor, sie sind Menschen mit Hoffnungen und Problemen. Viele von ihnen werden diese Nacht, die den wildesten Träumen Tarantinos entsprungen sein könnte, nicht überleben.
Llovets Zeichnungen sind genial, gerade in ihrer Reduktion. Auf den sauberen Strich, den sie beherrscht, hat sie hier verzichtet, so trifft die Stimmung im Club perfekt. Die Bilder sprechen für sich, es gibt in der gesamten GN nur ganz wenige Sprechblasen. Trotzdem ergibt sich eine zusammensetzbares Puzzle, eine menschliche Komödie der Lust, Hoffnungen und Enttäuschungen.

Graphisches Erzählen vom Feinsten.
Auf ihrer Website kann man sich reichlich Artwork von Maria Llovet anschauen:
http://www.mariallovet.com/

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I happen to have read two graphic novels in a row that are both about music and are wordless. At a glance, they couldn’t seem more different; one is Bix, by Scott Chandler about a Davenport, Iowa pianist, cornetist and composer, one of the most influential musicians of the 1920’s. Bix didn’t talk much but communicated largely through his music. Loud, by Maria Llovet, takes place in a strip club with punk/rock music; it’s too loud to talk, one presumes; again, most of what you “hear” is music.

So both books are what I would call “art” comics (where formal, compositional elements seem to be foregrounded more than anything else), even “poetry” comics (where as with lyrical poetry, the comics foreground the juxtaposition of images as it is constructed--no, composed is the word at least as it pertains to these music books). Bix is a narrative, a biography of a quiet musician, but it proceeds as Loud does through images, the totality of which are. . . musical. But the effect is cool, dark, jazz, elegant. Impressive cartooning.

Loud has a narrative, and something dramatic at the end happens, but the narrative is not really the point, I think. The book is a series of images, that add up to. . .. music, but not jazz, but rather loud punk music roaring through the bar. In Loud we meet strippers, a pedophile looking for a young girl, a sadistic dominatrix, a divorcing middle-aged woman, two hitmen, but they swirl around in the drug and alcohol and music and nude dancing. “What’s going on” is more a sum of images than a story, though all the drama does lead to a conclusion, one that maybe fits the Tarantino-esque violence of punk more than jazz, but both feature deaths.

Llovet’s artwork is formally impressive; look closely at the formal progression of panel to panel, which is how comics speak, and you can see that it teaches a lot about how comics work to create a vision. Comics usually wed words and images. Both use words sparingly--Bix through one scene where his wife tries to get him to talk about his family; in Loud Llovet uses words for sounds, like bow, bum--those drums and bass throbbing-wob, crash, and a couple word bubbles throughout, but neither need words to help us understand what is going on. Impressive cartooning.

[Laura Noizez_Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 stelle e mezzo, ma anche qualcosa di più.
Originale, punk e violento.
Una nottata al nightclub Loud e succede di tutto.
Molto Tarantiniano, mi ha ricordato "Dal Tramonto all'Alba".
Autrice da tenere d'occhio, consigliato!

[Daniel Vlasaty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really a fan of “silent” comics but Maria Llovet’s art is always great.

[Luis Diaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect ride of a crazy night.

[The Local Spooky Hermit · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was really fun fast read. Not much dialogue, Not needed though.

[Alex Sarll]

The blurb says this "is like The Hunger if directed by Tarantino", which isn't quite right, though I do appreciate that the cover design has left a female foot pointing right at 'Tarantino'. For myself, I'd say a more fevered, less comedic Forgetless - that same sense of the lives that collide in a nightclub*, one couple passionately getting it on in the loos while in the next cubicle a lone woman weeps over a pregnancy test. Also a less wordy Forgetless, because as the title suggests, this club is too loud for much chat - and the volume is nicely conveyed with single thumping syllables that almost become part of the background, though for the British reader it is slightly unfortunate that the most prevalent one is BUM. Still, giggles at that aside, Llovet's art displays her usual gift for capturing glances ripe with possibility, the passionate kisses that follow, and the betrayal and blood after those.

*Obviously this microgenre should also include The Singles Club, but I've been to too many provincial British indie nights to be able to ascribe the same chaotic glamour to provincial British indie nights, magic or no.

[Francesca Giardiello · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un piccolo fiasco purtroppo. Tanta carne al fuoco: una discoteca, dei vampiri, il casino, il sadismo, il sesso.. ma zero conclusioni. Il sesso come i corpi nudi non fanno più scalpore così come il porco di turno. Apprezzo molto l'idea di usare il caos della discoteca per dare un'impronta senza parlato, ma avrei preferito che questa idea venisse portata fino alla fine. Loud ha il sapore amaro di un esperimento in cui non si è creduto abbastanza, una storia nata con il botto ma finita immediatamente nel dimenticatoio al termine della lettura.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

"LOUD is like THE HUNGER if directed by Tarantino -- a stylish, tripped-out bloodbath of beautiful and vicious decadence"

Tarantino this is not. It is stylish, it's trippy bloody beautiful viscous and decadent... but that's all it is. Loud! utterly lacks substance. It's kind of fun to sink into it's rich colors (the art really is fantastic) and the booming music of the titular nightclub, but once anything starts to *happen* and the book attempts to tie it's various vignettes together, it instead all comes loose.

[StrictlySequential · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dumb and Tarantinoesque in the absurdity of the shootout and who catches the bullets and who somehow don't despite them all being aimed at those two who even make-out as they are being shot at. The last page is the stupidest part of the whole absurdity. And vampires? Come onnnnn....

Very confusing unless you keep going back over it to try to figure out who is who and why things are happening. It's still an incredibly fast read so everything about it is unsatisfying.

The art is decent yet too chaotic and imprecise where it matters and too many characters look too similar.

[mars · Rating 2 out of 5]

i love maria llovet's psychosexual subjects but my god can they be hard to follow. i get that was kinda the point, but i needed a little bit more something to ground me instead of not knowing what was happening the entire time

[Aries Aster · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's edgy just for the point and has no plot with senseless violence, but the art is phenomenal and it was enjoyable. Three stars, but not something I would recommend, unless you want to look at pretty pictures.

[Jenny Butor · Rating 3 out of 5]

CW/TW : Sexual abuse, child abuse, substance use, violence. This was hard to read. The art is the real star. The plot's convoluted, and with little to no dialogue, there is no hope for clarification.

[Nate Deprey · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were between three and five too many things happening at this strip club to allow for a coherent story. I would have ditched the vampires and pedophile story lines personally but to each their own. Cool concept but less would have been much, much more.

[kashiichan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very difficult to work out what's going on.

[Amanda Kaplowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that it takes something special to tell a story in so few words. 10/10

[Moni · Rating 4 out of 5]

La narrativa de esta historia sin apenas diálogo es de lo mejor que he visto! Brutal, me ha encantado.

[Bryan Hickok · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like sex so make a sex one!😡

[Javier Campos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sin muchas palabras y buenos gráficos sorprende esta mininovela de historias entrecortadas en un solo lugar muy bueno. Lo malo el final abrupto aunque irónico

[David Edmonds · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stylish and brash, yet it’s almost impossible to follow what’s going on.

[Ilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love it (sorry). An exercise in comics storytelling with almost no dialogue (I also can barely hear anyone talking in a nightclub). This does so much with character design and costume, and deploys a neat trick where background characters move into the foreground and back. Very sleazy, with an excellent blood-drenched climax.

[Glakhmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I might have rated this 4 stars, but I gave it an extra one for being so different. There us almost no dialog/narration. The story is told about 97% through the art. I fell in love with Maria's work on Faithless and really enjoyed her Heartbeat series. This book is a wonderful collection to her catalog, as well as your own collection.