l'âge dur

By Max de Radiguès
www.maxderadigues.com

This is a cute little set of five minicomic bound together with a paper band. The comics focus on small events from teenage life. The characters skateboard, ride bicycles, get into fights, lust after girls, and the like.

As a Belgian de Radiguès's art is clearly influenced by the clear line style popularized Hergé, but there are aspects of other creators in here too. His large eyed females remind me of somebody. The name is on the tip of my brain. I was going to say Hope Larson, but I just looked her up and while her characters do seem to have large eyes, the rest of the art style isn't the same. Dang, this is going to bug me for ages.

Uhm, so anyway, the way de Radiguès draws boys and girls in his comic, combined with the stories he tells, really separates them into two groups. The girls seem knowledgeable, worldly, and sophisticated, while the boys seem little more than children. Even those boys that do manage to achieve any kind of connection with the girls are seen as having skills and knowledge beyond the norm.

These comics have thus captured some of the awkwardness prevalent in being a teenager. Not knowing what to do, not knowing what you're doing right, and not knowing how to get what you want.

Though, I say that's prevalent in teenagers, but I'm pretty sure I still deal with all those problems on a daily basis.