Dear Web site,

Here comes a new part in the “they’re-really-going-to-enjoy-printing-that-stuff-at-Gallimard’s”series: bits for the cover of Klezmer 4. I took the first picture when it was unfinished, and the other afterwards. It’s gouache, spread out with bad brushes. Then it’s inked with a quill, without waiting for the gouache to dry. I also send you two or three bits from Klezmer 5. How are you doing? I’ve never done so many paintings, water colours, gouache, felt and colour pencil drawings since I got a Cintiq ! No, really, I do respect that thing, it’s a great device, but a little like blow-up dolls that become extremely sophisticated and very expensive, they empty and lubricate themselves automatically, and I’m very happy for the people who get pleasure that way. But me, I prefer to get paint and stuff all over my fingers. Otherwise, and that’s official, I’ve read all the existing books about script, novel and song-writing. And I most officially authorise you to do without them. Those books will be joining the heap of guitar methods in my attic. So you noticed, it’s November, and I must draw! Off to work!

Dear Website,

Talking about Sith, I insist, but you should pounce on the just-released 3^rd season of Clone Wars. I’ll get my head kicked if I declare that I find the animated series even more aesthetically pleasing than the real Star Wars movies but hey, I’d still say that. A little. The coloured harmonies are very strong and darkened, and the compositions belong to a Fritz Lang movie. As if lots of Ralph Mc Quarries had drawn the whole lot, the way they “brush up” their 3D characters with relief colours. I had never felt such visual satisfaction in science fiction. Well, maybe – when the Incredibles came out. I love it when 3D helps laying out a formal idea: instead of trying to get as many pixels as possible, they choose to simplify their characters. All that is in the narrative, the editing. Stories for little kids, told with grown-up skill. To go a little further, it seems that what we see in 3D movies turns out to be much, much less inventive and stimulating than the Clone Wars series. They’re just unique – like the Thunderbirds. They are not normalised. They use “live” narrative techniques, with extremely simple characters. It’s refreshing for the eyes – and the brain. There. That was my one-minute ad for helping independent filmmakers.

Otherwise I’m working, as usual, on a book nobody is asking for. I finished Klezmer 4, it will be out in the first days of January and then I should do the next Lumières. Or finish L’Ancien Temps 2. Anyway. I’m not doing that now, I’m working on Klezmer 5. I can’t help it, that’s what’s coming out. I’m sending you a few pictures – you’ll tell me what you think. Maybe I’m going to stop in a few pages, and move on to books that are really expected. But there it is, it’s started, I’m sending you seven pictures of Klezmer 5 – the title will be “Kishinev des fous” (Kishinev of madness) or maybe I’ll write “Kishinev” with an “f’”. Otherwise, what am I doing these days? I’m looking for actors for my next movie, Les Lumières de la France. I’m reading books by William Goldman. And chiefly, I’m finishing my two novels. I can’t work on just one thing only. If I tell myself “just focus on that thing”, all inspiration will dry up and nothing comes out. I need to go to a café and read pages of Klezmer and both novels, and I’m working on everything at the same time. I’ve always done that. If I change, something’s gonna be broken. I was in Scotland again, I’ll find myself another place for next week. I’d like the novels to be finished at the same time. L’Ancien Temps for Gallimard Youth and Le Pays des Fantômes (Land of the Ghosts) for Albin Michel. Both titles haven’t been decided yet. I can’t write one story without telling the other at the same time. L’Ancien Temps is a monstrous yet childish world, with mirrors, wolves, queens and fairy tale stuff, there are monsters in the forest but it’s still a shelter. Le Pays des Fantômes is about vampirism, it’s not for children, it’s about various generations furiously fighting in the snow. There’s a vampire, but he’s not nice and cute like in “Le Bestiaire amoureux” (The amorous bestiary). Let’s talk about “why I like horror”, really. It’s for grown-ups who still believe in monsters. Are there still people like that?

Did I already say I don’t like people who make fun of fairy tales or horror movies? You know the ones? The ones who go to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and pretend it’s a good movie – but it’s just a snobbish happening, not a horror movie. Same for the fairy tales. When people watch it with grown-ups’, hipsters’ or professors’ eyes, I feel like punching them with my brass knuckles. A real horror movie is scary for real. A real fairy tale… is, too! If people could stop watching Roger Corman with a sneer, just like “it’s for fun” – well, I don’t find “The Mask of the Red Death” fun at all. If people could stop brandishing Bettelheim and psychoanalysis as soon as someone mentions witches or Little Red Riding Hood, maybe we could remember this: there might be a wolf under the bed. If you want to read something on fairy tales, go and read Pierre Péju’s “La petite fille dans la forêt des contes” (The little girl in the forest of fairy tales). I’m so fed up with people who watch “Plan 9 from Outer space” as if it was a horror movie. “Plan 9” is a sad thing, and Bela Lugosi died afterwards. Go and watch Ti West’s “House of the Devil” then tell me if it’s fun!

I find shelter there – a fairy tale on one side, a horror novel on the other. I don’t know which one I’m the most afraid of, but if it doesn’t hit you as hard as Haneke’s White Ribbon, I’m not interested at all. It has to devour its own children.

By the way, I say hello to Halloween, the only celebration when we don’t get our balls broken by priests, rabbis or imams. A celebration without monsters, so to say.

Oh, and read some E.C. Comics again. No kidding. Get rid of that incredulous, seen-it-all grown-up attitude. It’s time to switch off all the lights, walk in the dark house, fumble for your bed and realise that there’s a cold, dank body where you usually sleep.

PS – Please notice there is no such thing as religious fanatics of Halloween. No zombies protesting in front of theatres when Satan is offended!

Jojo

Dear Web site,

I’m sending two pictures, one sketch for Klezmer 4 cover. The album is called Flying Trapeze, probably in praise of the work the photoengravers at Gallimard will do to deal with that experimental mixture of gouache, water colours, tempera, ink, colour pencils and felt-tip pens. I’m also sending a drawing about my novel L’Ancien Temps. Will the drawing be in the novel? Well no, because I don’t think it will be an illustrated book. On the cover then? Well no, because I kinda feel like not illustrating the cover. Well, we’ll see. But I need to scribble some characters, those ones, we even started 3D modeling, trying to photograph actresses wearing gowns from the Middle Age, you never know. Well finally, here comes the scribble (also done on a computer) and I have the pleasure of introducing the Reflet (Reflection), Mistouflet the one-eyed cat, as well as Violette the orc and her fighting pig. Yes, it takes place in the same world as the comics but the characters are not exactly the same, you’ll see. Otherwise – and I’m not saying this because he’s from France – are you aware that the greatest contemporary novelist is probably a comics author and he’s called Bruno Heitz? What do you mean “cut the crap, old man”? Take a look at his last albums and tell me if there’s not everything inside, everything you’ve been missing since Marcel Aymé, Léautaud or Simenon died. Well, I never see Bruno Heitz, we hardly know each other, but knowing that Thierry Laroche, Nicolas Leroy and I are his publishers, that makes us proud like islamic fundamentalists burning the house of a laic TV boss – pure joy, man.

Dear Web site,

You won’t believe it, but I did the drawings again – on paper. After hours and hours of scribbling, when I was finally done, I was told my Saint-Exupéry looked like a girl. So I drew him again. On paper, too. I like the computer a lot for sketches or retouching. But there’s this glass between the drawing and me. Well, it’s still a drawing behind a glass surface. And I need to batter the paper fibre. It’s not just nostalgia, or being mean to trees. Beware…after three days of computers, it took me 20 minutes to draw again with the usual precision. I’m not advocating this or that. I’m going to hammer away at this tablet. Given its price, I don’t feel like telling people around me I’d rather use a sketchbook and a drawing nib that cost 10 euros. I’m not prejudiced against computers, I think it’s great for painting, because the glassy approximation is akin to a painted abstraction. But for drawing, I’m not mastering it yet. We’ll see!! Thanks to the people who looked at the drawings from last time on my blog and told me they liked the pencil sketch better because it was done on real paper – but they both were done on a computer. Today it’s on paper, and that’s what I’m sending.

Otherwise, yesterday, 10.40 AM at the Pathé Wepler movie theatre: The Artist almost sold out. People applauding at the end, and that was well deserved. I came out feeling good again, thinking how lucky we were to have that freedom in our country. I smiled all day long, thanks to that beautiful movie. Long live Hazanavicius! Long live Dujardin and Bérénice Béjo! And long live Guillaume Schiffman, whose name is pronounced with “AFC” at the end, it’s the French Association of Directors and Photographs and it’s important for him. As if I said “Joann Sfar SNBD” (Société Nationale de Bandes Dessinées, National Company of Comics)

Dear Web site,

The advantage of becoming a mainstream author working for mainstream publishers is that when I behave, I can get a black & white edition of my books. So there will be a black & white Le Petit Prince, I don’t know when, but soon. So I had to do a cover that you will see some day. But hey, on the back cover I tried to do a great black & white picture, Hugo Pratt-style. Well, clumsy-fan-of-Hugo-Pratt style. Well actually I knew it was going to end up as a Sfar-style twisted scribble, I can’t help it, it’s the destiny of my people to turn all things beautiful and apollonian into degenerate art. Anyway, I have this computer stuff for painting, and I don’t really know how to handle it. So I told myself “what if I did the sketching on the computer?” (The sketching is attached to the article). And then I told myself “and what if I put lots of layers and splatter ink on it using the computer?” I know young people do that naturally, but for me, inking on a computer, it’s like drinking milk after the meat, smoking on a shabbat day or crossing the streams, it’s bad. Maybe, but it’s still very exciting. So, I send you the computer image. It’s not faster than inking on paper. Not at all. But it’s different. I’m being ridiculous, all my readers know  this Photoshop/layers world much better than I do, but hey, I’m discovering it. So what do I do? Leave this picture on the back cover of Petit Prince, or get it printed on paper and trace it on a light table with a good old pen and ink? I’m afraid I’ll be fascinated by this drawing tonight and then I’ll find it ultra lame three months later, when I know Photoshop a little more. Don’t you sneer at this, I’m perfectly aware I’m like a sixty-year old discovering skin parties and not knowing how to dress up – but hey, drawing also works with idiotic fascination, and these days, it’s about computers (so, the sketch is on the first page and the other is the one I can’t call finished because it was also made on a computer). I really drove everyone away because of that computer. Since I got it, I’ve been asking for advice, and all my computer-savvy friends (including authors) have totally disappeared. They changed their mobile phone number. They moved. People KNOW I’m a total pain when I’m having trouble with a computer. And computers KNOW I’m afraid of them so they take advantage of it. Just like dogs.

Dear Web site,

I don’t use titles for my messages, but this one could be called “good behaviour” or something like that. I’d like to get a diploma, some sort of official certificate from the Ministry of Labour, well something that shows I’m improving, as far as some of my mental conditions go.

For example, the never-ended series.

Well that’s changing.

For example, I’ve finished Klezmer 4. Finished, over and out. Tonight at 7. 25, I gave all the pages to Gallimard Publishing and Thierry Laroche, let his employer know that, hides little bottles of whisky in his office. He’ll claim it’s some sort of corporate gift, whatever, anyway, when you bring him the end of an album you started, well, 4 years ago, he’ll offer you a good drink. And then he’s off on his vespa, which is not safe at all. So how’s that good behaviour, will you ask? First of all, we upkeep, and God knows how forcefully, the tradition of alcoholism at work. And that’s VERY important. When I started on the job, authors, journalists and publishers were all, each and everyone of them, incredible drunkards. Since then, no more. And since then, comics festivals are boring like hell. I don’t go there anymore, actually. That’s how it is, I can’t help it, I liked it when Philippe Druillet gave me kisses on the mouth (with lipstick), I liked it when we lost Guillaume Sorel’s shoes on a beach at Saint Malo and he would sign his albums barefoot the morning after. I liked it when we were not allowed inside night clubs because we were too rowdy and when Olivier Marboeuf told the bouncer he was a racist, and I added he was anti-semitic to boost, and that after Léopold Senghor and Primo Lévi it would be impossible to bar any Jew, Black – or any white with them. Alas, those days are over, the authors come to the festivals with full baby carriages, they’re behind schedule and it’s impossible to sleep in the morning because of the noise they make with their shoes when they jog. I don’t give a damn, I’m not going there any more. No, the good behaviour is something else: at the end of Klezmer, I didn’t write “to be followed” in “the adventures of Teeny and Weeny at the Czar’s”. No sir. I wrote “end of the episode”. Ah! (Respectful silence). Now, that’s a good resolution I made good on, right?

Where’s my Official Road and Roadworks Medal?

Still not convinced? Fuck man, this is hard. Right. I’ve got better.

Just ten days ago, I finished the first photo-novel album. It’s called Tokyo and it’s gonna be available…hellno, not right now!!! It was decided I would release the 2^nd Lumières de la France FIRST, in order to show I was a new Joann. The one that finishes his series. So there will be Les Lumières number 2 FIRST, in March probably, and THEN, the first Tokyo. Well, that’s ultra-new for me. I’ve FINISHED a book and it’s being HELD BACK no to ANNOY READERS. It’s probably after a bout of excessive altruism of the same kind that a former European head of state decided to invade the Sudetes, but OK. When I’m tried at my own Nuremberg, this will go to my credit. I’M CHANGING. I’m becoming RELIABLE. Or pretending to. Anyway, I’m making efforts.

About the ultra-nice-towards-the-readership behaviour – let me point out the second part of the Rabbi’s Cat’s half-complete edition will be available soon. Let me explain: the complete edition of the 5 albums has been in bookstores for 6 months, so I’ll be able to buy a new Maseratti to attend events for the promotion of authors’ status, thank you. But before that, Dargaud Publishing had published a half-complete edition, including albums 1, 2 and 3. Why, you will ask? Frankly, I have no idea, there must be a good reason. Anyway, some readers have bought this half complete edition and have been wondering since (with anxiety, or while loading their shotguns) when the second half would be released. Well, just now. Just to show that Dargaud KEEP THEIR PROMISES. The day they’ll be inspected, they’ll get their medal too.

But I can’t show off by sending other pictures from Klezmer 4 because I gave everything to the publisher. So, please find two bits of pencil sketches for Lumières de France 2, just to show I’m working. Well, they don’t look like real drawings yet, so I put something else inside – “putting”…it’s almost like “putting” veal on a plate – so here’s the drawing of a character from l’Ancien Temps. The comics? No, the novel. But are we going to see that drawing in the novel? Er, no you won’t, it’s a novel. But I need to draw all the time, that’s why.

Dear Web site,

to feel in better spirits, I’m going back to Romain Gary. I’m in love with the man. I’ve always been. Because I went to the tennis club in the Parc Impérial, in Nice. Because he kicks the ass of the guys approaching Jean Seberg. Because during the shooting of “Paint Your Wagon” he challenged Clint Eastwood to a duel and Eastwood ran away. Gary’s both Bluebeard and the kid that says you shouldn’t try to see where sympathy comes from. “Enough about me, what did you think of my last book?” I don’t know if he’s the greatest writer, but I like nobody more than him, and unfortunately, I always tried to act like him. He’s the closest we have to Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. If there is a French picaresque, something from Rabelais to Kessel, he belongs there.

Sorry for the people from cinema festivals who are kind enough to invite me, but they’re the most depressing events on Earth. I’m surprised we don’t find more directors hanging from the ceiling fan in their hotel suite. That might explain why we only find ceiling fans in the tropics, maybe people think the sun will prevent people from getting away, once and for all, from inane talk. And there’s no way you can hang yourself with the AC device. Why, I shouldn’t say that? That’s “biting the hand that feeds you”? Some places seem to have been invented to generate infinite sadness. And you think “well, that’s the bottom of the pool”. Imagine a round table: a depressed German director who made a movie about pedophilia, a depressed Israeli director who made a movie about the privatization of kibbutzim, and an anxiety-ridden English director who made a movie about domestic violence. You have to speak sometimes in English, sometimes in German, sometimes in Spanish. I’ve got a headache. I must talk about my cat. I want to leave. It reminds me of school, when we were waiting for P.E., even though we didn’t like P.E. All right. As soon as I could, I ran to my room and read White Dog. I had never read it. Read it.

Gary told a lie. Among others, but this one makes me feel like hugging him, makes my crazy love for him even stronger. He talks about the American Blacks he mixes with. He says most activists he knows have white blood, and they never miss an opportunity – the men chiefly – to repeat “I had one white ancestRESS”. Gary explains it’s a way of saying “my grandmother was not raped by a white guy” or “a Black guy fucked a White woman, that’s something at least”. Gary sees that shame, the memory from a time when Blacks were always taking orders in America, when interracial relations always went the same way: a White male boss and a Black female employee. Gary talks a lot about his Black friends’ restraint, and makes fun of it. Yet Gary himself, in this book repeatedly, and almost all his other books, explains he’s “half Jewish”. He explains at length his mother is Jewish and his father is a Cossack, a Russian, whatever. Gary says his ancesters are “half pogromers, half pogromized”. He also kept repeating he had a Russian father, a famous actor, and with the same eyes, as we can see in some posters from that time. What’s nice about that story? It’s false. Gary’s dad was as Jewish as his mom. He came from the Vilna ghetto too. That childish lie makes me fall in love with the guy; when his Black friends tell lies to protect some strange male pride, he notices it right away. It’s all the easier for him – he does the same a few pages after. In the 60’s, it was “positive” for an American Black to say his grandmother was white, not his grandfather. Same for Romain Gary, to say his dad was a great Russian actor. And I don’t find it ridiculous. The only thing I find interesting in a man are his honour, panache, and the absurd way he thinks he can lose that. The whole literature is based on two abstract concepts: the name and the honour of the name. Right?

And what about duels? What do we do in a world with no more duels?

Dear Website,

I’m sending you five pictures from Klezmer, and a picture of the tiny creature that prevents me from working. She’s a three-months old, Egyptian Mau and she belongs to my little boy. I can hold her in my hand. She squeals like a mouse and loves the drawing table. So, to answer once and for all the questions about the cats in my ship and their racial origin: Imhotep the Rabbi’s Cat is a grey Oriental – which doesn’t mean he comes from North Africa like Blond-Blond, but from Thailand. We also have a kind of overweight Totoro named Violet, she’s a sort of British Shorthair, a witch cat so they say (she’s the mother of Lewis’s cats). There’s also one called Tigre, he’s a Turkish angora and carrot-colored Oriental mixture, and he comes from the animal society. And finally, the small one came three days ago and she’s jumping on my lap while I’m drawing. We called her Isis, like the cat from Dungeon. The Mau has a paunch and very strong back legs, so she can jump very high and make a mess everywhere. She likes water, I like wine, so we don’t steal each other’s bowl.

Klezmer, final run. I think I’ll be finished with the book in eight days. I’m drawing like mad, day and night. There are water colours like last time, but I also try gouache, color pencils, lots of things. I put a lot of sad things, my anger, I’m finding shelter here. Bits of crystal inside the belly shatter on the page, rusty nails as well. I’m very proud. I’m drawing so much I’m bleeding from one ear. Maybe it has nothing to do with it. Maybe it just comes from hearing so much bullshit and the ear went mad. But I like to think it’s drawing. Drawing never left me alone. Drawing takes care of me. Really. I feel like the little Mau in a big hand. The whole Klezmer 4 is sliding along smoothly. This morning in the café a gentleman was reading his own work softly. He had a sort of lisp, he was hissing all his “h”s. I felt like banging his nose against the table but one does not do that sort of thing. So: drawing. Then there were two young people with woollen caps talking about their “script”. They had to find a “B plot”, “improve the general cohesiveness”, they had to “blablabla the character”. As if they were trying to get their driver’s license. I ducked behind my work again, because you just don’t vomit on strangers. There was a very nervous gentleman who recognized me. It was embarassing for both of us. He sat down , he was writing a television script. Then someone phoned to scold him. He had to justify what he meant. His “characters’ motives”. His “former version”. I wanted to stand up, tell him we were brothers and take his phone to spread the only useful sentence for an author: “Leave me the hell alone”. I have four masters in writing : my four cats. They spend their day on my stories. The walk on my pages, they wipe their butt on them but it’s cleaner than some looks I get. They give me a D minus “for the ink” and that’s about all I’m asking for. They understand the Heideggerian necessity of the “Da-sein”, being with the word, the story, being lazy, then unexpectedly fast, the final twist, then the nap. The cats have a way of not caring the least for the unessential. That’s really a lesson. And the way they move…I have to draw that. You have to be very selfish, very joyful and deeply mean to really love cats. I’m learning. Kung fu is taught by monkeys, writing by cats. And thinking? You have to go back to dogs, so they say. And man? Let him do his “B plots” and choke on them. What are you listening to now? Me, it’s Madness.

Dear Web site

I wanted to tell you the story of the cover for les Lumières de la France (French Enlightenment). Or rather, the whole story. It comes from a painting – the painter being unknown I think. It shows a noblewoman from Bordeaux, with a black child on leash sitting on her lap. He has a shiny silver circle around his neck, with a silver chain ending in an elegant peacock tail. He’s like between a piece of furniture and a pet. The whole painting is as elegant as possible, to show how rich they are. So I wanted to write a story about that. And if it was a realistic or sad narrative, I would get it wrong because it wouldn’t show the awful feeling I had when I saw this picture. I thought we needed some carnival-style laughter, the way we laugh when the carnival king is brought down. So I had to do it twice. That’s what I find interesting, and what I wanted to say in this little message. I’m sending you the original painting, then my first cover, then the cover I decided to do again. In the first image, I realised I couldn’t draw a kid on leash, even to denounce it. I’m not worried about grown-up readers, they will understand I’m aiming at slavery, and not making fun of slaves. But my book is for sale everywhere, available to kids, so I was wondering about what a black child would feel if he wasn’t old enough to get the satirical approach. So I thought I would put a real dog, get rid of the leash, and show the lady puts the same knot on the dog’s and on the slave’s head. And show she’s quite self-satisfied, and the dog is jealous of the slave. We have to identify with the slave from the first glance, and wonder what the hell we are doing in this crazy situation. I drew the picture over a black background, I’m sending that too. And I told myself it had to be very explicitly funny – and it’s one of the most disturbing drawings I’ve ever done. So I did it again. I thought I really had to show the countess as a caricature, so people think she’s as smart as Sponge Bob and as self-satisfied as Claude Allègre [a French scientist-cum-politician who knows everything], and there you are: the final picture. Which still disturbs me. For the second volume, I want to work on the child on leash only. I’m still looking for the right approach, so that people understand what’s going on. It might be conveyed through some kind of panic, some scream like “please get me out of here, they’re insane!”. That’s it.

Joann

There’s a guy called Johann and he’s a jerk.

No, not me. My name doesn’t have an “h” in it. The jerk is called Johann Levy. The whole country’s probably aware of that already but it’s falling on my head just now. So that gentleman has just created a script enabling your mobile phone to make a list of Jewish people. Well, this guy is just a particular case, he’s just proved that my coreligionists are not necessarily smarter than the rest! Let’s not get mad at him. Let’s talk about a wider topic, Google referencing. In other words, let’s talk about what appears under my name when I google it. Inevitably, the first thing is “Joann Sfar Jew”. Yes, thank you, I know, bless you, I never tried to hide it. But that means that a majority of people googling my name do type “Jew” just after. Well, more surprisingly, the same happens with non-Jewish people. Actually, you can google any name on the Internet, you’ll find “Jew” or “Jew?” next to it. Can someone explain? Because it’s not an isolated phenomenon. What do people have in mind when they google “Mr. Smith, Jew”? Is it a Sephardic mom bent on marrying her youngest daughter and checking a would-be husband’s pedigree? No it’s not. That’s not enough for the name “Jew” to appear next to the most exciting names in the search engines. I’m really trying to find nice, benevolent reasons for doing that type of search, but still have old krav maga longings coming back to me. I’m often asked why there are so many Jews in my comics. Because they are the voices inside me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not religious. I’m not a communitarian, but my characters, who did grow up with that background, have Jewish voices. They’re not secret, and they’re not trying to rule the world! It’s an ironic, gourmand, fragile and sometimes sad outlook. If I was a webmaster, I would love those stories, I would put “Jew” next to my Website and I would get more visits. As a citizen, I don’t know what’s better, sticking my fingers down my throat to make myself vomit or kicking someone in the belly with Doc Martens on. Imagining those slimy guys sniffing you from behind their computers to know your race…it’s like a slap in the face. How are we supposed to react? I was raised with the idea of never hiding I was Jewish, because there would always be people to remind me I was. Jewishness is neither dirty nor secret nor to be hidden. The time when famous singers frenchified their names is mostly over. I never took “Jew” as an insult. But I hate being sniffed. My friend Nadine Labaki’s film is released today, it’s called “And where do we go now?” (Et maintenant où on va ?). That’s more or less what I have in mind. The side question is “Do we go there together?” Those disgusting suspicions about some racial or religious categories that would be less French than other citizens…it’s getting really tedious. There’s a sort of humiliating lottery going on, and one day it’s for Muslims then Freemasons then Jews too, who knows. Can’t we do like in Alan Moore’s Watchmen, and invent imaginary E.Ts we can hate, Klingons, Nyarlatotheps, whatever. But I would love it if there was a computer virus that would inflict dysentery at once upon the jerks who google “Joann Sfar Jew”. Like Candyman: you say his name three times in front of a mirror, and he empties your guts in the bathroom.

You google “Joann Sfar Jew”, and you get the runs. Right now!!