By Bruno Savill De Jong — “Don’t be afraid”, a hulking semi-demonic sailor tells a tied-up woman, “We just want to look”. Mitchum is full of such sickly voyeurism, an erratic sketchbook of stories bound together with acts of artists observing and illustrating female models. This collection from French cartoonist Christian Hincker, also known as ‘Blutch’, depicts this feverish and often sexually-charged relationship between artist and image, obsessively attempting to pin down primal urges which quickly slip away. Blutch previously chronicled his obsession with the cinematic moving-image in 2011’s So Long, Silver Screen, but Mitchum’s explorations of “looking” are wider and more opaque, the initial story ranging back to Pilgrim settlers spying upon Native Americans. Indeed, beyond simply replicating images, Mitchum’s frenzied style deconstructs the very static images it depicts. One sequence shows a group of dancers dissolving into their essential brushstrokes, becoming the basic contours that hold their rhythm.

Evidently, Mitchum is unconcerned with straightforward narratives, instead treating its short stories like laboratory experiments. Indeed, the backmatter’s “unfinished and unpublished” section shows pages of a more ‘traditional’ narrative (albeit one that is a semi-pornographic western parody), which in the actual issue were stripped of their dialogue and had a full-page dancing ballerina imposed on top. The other stories are similarly strange, Mitchum’s title emerging from a surreal murder investigation, which seems haunted by actor Robert Mitchum, and has a decrepit Jimmy Stewart emerge from a detective’s trenchcoat. These tales are Lynchian, placing familiar iconography in unsettling situations, evoking the atmosphere of dreams and nightmares. The most normal narrative follows some Parisian neighbors (including are an artist and a model), but this still contains digressions into Jean Renoir and Henri Matisse, and is more about the character’s desires than their actions. Mitchum is uninterested in having its meaning emerge from the story, rather evoking the subconscious feelings from what it puts on display, and how it is presented.

Blutch’s craftsmanship is very impressive, ranging from neat professional cartoons of everyday life, to raw instances of rough storytelling which convey an unfiltered stream-of-consciousness. Often the panels are borderless, each drawing bleeding into one another, keeping the drawings loose and vibrant. Blutch’s heavy blotchy inks creates a notably weighted atmosphere, but despite dips into surreal imagery, the actual drawings remain clear and well-rendered. The minimal dialogue initially makes it seem strange that Mitchum has only recently been translated into English by Matt Madden (the series being released in France from 1996-1999). However, the words are often integrated within Mitchum’s sketchy hand-drawn art-style, with Dean Sudarsky doing an impressive job in replicating the lettering.

Mitchum is difficult to describe and hard to recommend. As an experimental work it does not fit into typical criteria, and it is uncompromising to most potential readers. Similarly, it is ambiguous whether it has anything to say about the brutal gender-dynamics within it, or if it is simply showing them. Whatever greater meaning may lurk within Mitchum’s harsh inks is unclear, or maybe beyond articulation. It is an interesting enough book to read for the images alone, but those wishing to grasp the cohesive whole of Mitchum will have to fully submerge themselves into the conceptual subconscious the book operates within, and be unafraid to look.

Mitchum by Christian ‘Butch’ Hincker

MITCHUM
Writer/Artist/Colorist: Christian ‘Blutch’ Hincker
Letterer: Dean Surdarsky
Publisher: New York Review Comic
Price: $24.95
Blutch is one of the most inventive storytellers in comics, and nothing reveals it like Mitchum. Serialized and collected in the mid-1990s and never before available in English, this is Blutch at his most wide-ranging. From Puritan fever dreams to an encounter with a shape-shifting Robert Mitchum, Blutch builds stories out of his dreams, visions of America, and anything else he can get his hands on.
Drawn in his unmistakable line that veers in a moment from crude to elegant, blotchy to crisp, horrific to serene, these comics show Blutch searching for new artistic frontiers. What he finds is sometimes surprising, occasionally unsettling, and endlessly fascinating.
Release Date: June 3, 2020

Read more great comic book reviews here!

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.