By Bruno Savill De Jong — To quote Fleabag: Love is awful. It’s painful. It’s frightening. It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself. It makes you selfish, it makes you creepy. It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there. So, no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own. Bastien Vivès’ elliptical comic The Butchery throws readers into the paradox of relationships; a minefield people charge into anyway. One page directly compares love to a “combat jump,” wherein people leap into the “butchery” below. Although The Butchery is not as heightened or intense as this makes it sound. Rather it documents the easy-going contentment of love, which can quickly curdle into distance and anxiety. It tenderly observes the lulls of relationships; both the positive, intimate moments of lying in bed together doing nothing, and the awkward silences are people drift apart in the same room.

The Butchery poetically depicts a relationship between a young unnamed man and woman, drifting between snapshots of them laughing together or them brushing their teeth. It intentionally ignores the common “steps” to focus on the equally important everyday events. Such intimacy is perfectly preserved with Vivès’ soft, sketchbook art-style, rendering the frequently embracing couple with delicate thin lines. His soft cosy coloring also adds a lovely texture to The Butchery, gently illuminating the hazy panels, making them appear like candlelit spots amidst the blank white background. It imbues The Butchery with an appropriately tender and minimalist feeling.

However, The Butchery does risk being so fragmentary that its relationship becomes hard to grab onto. Without knowing anything about these people or their attachment, you are left with a fairly over-sentimental and opaque couple. At one point, the woman begins crying in bed over what the man “said on the phone when you hung up,” but without further exploration of this event, readers are left struggling to connect with the fracture. Perhaps Vivés felt less context would make the couple more emblematic and relatable. Yet I’ve always found, ironically, the more specific and well-rounded you make your characters (i.e., in When Harry Met Sally), the more universally appealing they become. Because The Butchery could “happen to anyone”, it feels like it happens to no-one. It doesn’t help The Butchery that what insights we do get feel fairly one-sided, leaning towards the man’s perspective. The overwhelming affection and (seemingly) spontaneous dissolution of the relationship is mostly seen through his eyes and frustration.

Additionally, the intimate scenes between him and the woman are broken up by explicit “metaphorical” ones, like the “combat jump” or the two ordering their break-up from a restaurant menu. These blunt scenes clash with the other poetic and abstract ones, pulling The Butchery between mercurial observations and sweeping statements. The cartoon-sketches are somewhat funny (if slightly on-the-nose), but their inclusion distracts from The Butchery’s purpose and tone.

Which is a shame, because The Butchery hits its stride when luxuriating within those gentle evocative scenes of relationships minutiae. These critiques of the narrative shouldn’t downplay the rather beautiful presentation of domestic bliss. Even startingly everyday events, like closing the bathroom door, are given a sense of care and weight within the context of The Butchery. Like the relationship it depicts, The Butchery somewhat disappointingly does not lead to something substantial. But those sweet pieces of nothing that it renders were still lovely in their own right.

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: The Butchery

The Butchery
Creator: Bastien Vivèst
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Price: $19.99
A young man and woman fall for each other and all is sweetness and light. But when their relationship crumbles, they each must endure the ensuing emotional fallout. Starting from this ostensibly simple premise, Bastien Vives crafts an affecting narrative about the mercurial and tempestuous nature of romance and why we pursue it anyway.
The Butchery is composed of the little moments that make and break a relationship: lively dancing, silent strolls hand in hand, stilted phone calls, tearful pillow talk. Rendered with delicate colored pencils and an elegant use of white space, this story achieves an emotional clarity through its skillful brevity. At turns tender, agonizing, and darkly humorous, The Butchery is painfully relatable to anyone who has loved and lost
Release Date: August 2021

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Bruno Savill De Jong is a recent undergraduate of English and freelance writer on films and comics, living in London. His infrequent comics-blog is Panels are Windows and semi-frequent Twitter is BrunoSavillDeJo.