Graphic novels are popular (a third of comic books purchased in 2022 are graphic novels!) and this is such good news that it allows us to (re)discover this short novel from 2010, by Joseph Incardona. It therefore reappears, thirteen years later, haloed by the success of La Soustraction despossibles (Finitude, 2020) and illustrated as an etching but, thanks to the soft and waxed technique of the scratch map of the Swiss designer Thomas Ott . The United States, a sexy nurse, a retired cop and a silent grandmother for fifty years, Betty, who will not pass her centenary without revealing the terrible secret of the disappearance of children when she was a teacher… And Incardona, incandescent in this fluid and sarcastic mix that characterizes his novels, continues the construction of a vintage and pulp universe where everyone is fondling, flirting and getting fucked at the first opportunity. The plot is resolved in a few strokes of the shovel and a revelation. The surprise is total, excellent. Success guaranteed.
Lonely Betty, by Joseph Incardona, illustrated by Thomas Ott (Finitude, 96 p., €15.50).
Killer Quote: It was a Sunday, Christmas Eve. In less than twelve hours, the plow had already passed the stretch of Route 9 through Durham six times. The driver of the truck, a certain Mike Dougladis, later told local radio station WZON that he had never seen so much dirt powder falling in the town since his parents had left Patras (Greece) to settled in Maine (USA) when he was five years old. In reality, what interests us here is not so much these persistent snowfalls and the chain accidents caused by them, as the other major event – suddenly relegated to page five of the local gazette The Post – supposed to mobilize Robert Kawzcinsky, Democratic Mayor of County Durham on this afternoon of December 24, 1999. Indeed, unless you read between the lines or do not believe in the coincidence, which amounts to the same thing, superstitious minds cannot help but see a correlation between the birthday of the first centenarian citizen in all of County Durham’s history and snowfall reaching its all-time high. he that Mr. Mayor, overwhelmed by the vagaries of the weather and their disastrous consequences on an inconsistent local population (who did not give a damn about the historic peak and thought only of biturer as it should be to celebrate the advent of Jesus- Christ-Notre-Sauveur) had to send his assistant, Sarah Marcupanni – 38 years old, blonde, 1.75 meters tall, whom Mr. Robert Kawzcinsky secretly dreamed of lying on his desk between two working sessions on urban planning – to the reception organized by the Hospice of Durham (nicknamed, by gossip, “Home of the feet ahead”). This in honor of Miss Betty Holmes who would celebrate, at the same time as the birth of Jesus-Christ-Our-Saviour, her 100th birthday, a hell of a trot if you think that at that time the telephone did not exist and that, since then, we have had the pleasure of photographing the planet Mars and cloning a goat. Sarah Marcupanni thought aloud after putting the handset back on its cradle. The mayor, this false derche, had just announced the news to her and the prospect of having to show up in this hospice reeking of old age and desolation had put her in firecracker. And all the more so since she had planned to take her afternoon to prepare Christmas dinner with her fiancée, Savannah Simpson, 95 kg of muscles and fat, head guard of the Augusta prison, with whom she had a secret and lesbian relationship. Barring a miracle or cutting them off, Bob Kawzcinsky would never fuck his assistant. Between ourselves, be it said, he will ignore its homosexual inclinations until his death, which will occur six months later during a fly fishing party between friends which will turn into a tragedy, a brown bear (female) inviting himself to their traditional weekend drinking spree as they camped by the river and sang Let it be at the top of their voices.
Consult our file: Le coin du polar
