Louis

Paul Gravett’s excellent new book is out now. We are pleased to say that 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die features Louis!

Gavin Lees has written a fantastic review of Louis – Night Salad in The Comics Journal. Here’s a short extract, from the beginning and from the end of the review:

In the hands of Franco-Scottish duo Metaphrog (aka John Chalmers and Sandra Marrs — reductively, he writes and she draws, but the collaboration is much tighter than that), the children’s adventure-strip becomes an altogether more adult experience. They sublimate Pynchonesque paranoia and hallucinatory symbolism into the bright, primary-colored world of Louis: a cute, blank-featured everyman…

That Louis’s concerns are universal and his adventures a reflection of modern world make his tales like contemporary fables. Metaphrog manage to bridge the gap between innocence and experience with real insight, making Night Salad something that can stand alongside Kafka’s short stories — deceptively simple tales that manage to pierce directly to the heart of the human condition.

You can read the full review here.

Louis – Night Salad is featured in The Skinny this month (December 2010 – Issue 63), with a review and mini-interview. Online version here.

Louis – Night salad is featured in ArtReview this month (issue 46 Dec 2010). Here’s an excerpt:

These days we’re bombarded with animations or graphic novels that claim to amuse kids while offering a meta narrative to please adults. But few actually fulfil these promises as effectively as this Scottish duo’s hand-painted book.

This week Louis – Night Salad has been reviewed in the Sunday Herald graphic novel round-up and in Metro!

Louis – Night Salad was reviewed in The Libary Journal in the US on October 29th:

A dream-quest theme persists throughout this colorful book [Louis – Night Salad], which brings to mind many classic, if somewhat less unsettling, adventures: Harold and the Purple Crayon and Where the Wild Things Are. Established fans will delight in this volume; like Louis, new readers will enter the story perplexed but exit with joy. — John Gehner, Library Journal

You can read the full review here.

And The Big Issue has chosen Louis – Night Salad as their Big Pick of the week in Books, giving it a full page, in their Scottish and Welsh editions on November 1st, and the English edition will feature it on November 8th!