Art For Art’s Sake #246: Get Out The French Dictionaries For The Marvellous Margaux Motin

by Richard Bruton

It’s that time again, more great art thrust before your eyes – yep, it’s Art For Art’s Sake and it’s all looking thoroughly gorgeous…

We’re going to end with the magnificent Margaux Motin, but first… these beauties…

Mike McKone – WW

And more Wonder Woman… by the brilliant Jose Luis Garcia Lopez

Tom Baker Dr Who – Warwick Johnson Caldwell

Will Eisner – The Escapist

… and more Will Eisner, this time The Spirit

Two Shadows from Tim Bradstreet, starting with unpublished cover art…

Sean Phillips doing a little bit of Vertigo…

And more Phillips for you now, this time from Gotham Central…

Paul Smith – a wonderful Marvel Age cover – X-Men & Alpha Flight

Paul Pope – from his series of Catwoman covers

Mike Mignola – the originals from a couple of X-Men Classics covers…

Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez – back cover to the AARGH charity anthology organised by Alan Moore back in the day

Kevin Nowlan Dr Strange…

Now let’s end with one of my favourite artists who I can rarely understand what she’s saying… Margaux Motin. My school-level French, coupled with Google Translate comes into use every time I see another of Motin’s exquisite and exquisitely funny pieces. And even then I miss so much of what she means, the little touches, the intricacies of language, the nuances. Why there isn’t more of her work in English is beyond me.

In fact, so far it’s just SelfMadeHero’s translation of But I Really Wanted To Be An Anthropologist in 2012 and Archaia’s version of Plate Tectonics in 2019 – and that’s it. A tragic loss to English-speaking comic readers!

But despite my terrible French, despite knowing it will lose so much of the wittiness and smarts in translation, still I try, because what she does is just so damn good.

Now some of them, just like this one, are pretty simple to understand, a universal visual gag that makes it simple to put your own words in. Margaux says this on FB:

“This is my space, this is your space. You are not invading my space… “We ain’t dirty dancing, mate.” We real life the mom life Where personal space is a concept that no one has ever heard of??. Ima try to pee ALONE.”

Or this one… of which Motin says:

“Every once in a while my brain doesn’t understand the concept of “it’s bedtime” and it gets into a jacket, worried about dealing with super hot files like Right Now. Me, I helplessly watch the hours go by and I start to freak out because I won’t get my sleep quota and when I don’t get my sleeping quota, life seems much harder (and I’m very, very annoying). Use to be hell now I glue my Quies balls Yes I know it sounds absurd considering the noise coming from inside, but go figure, my body knows there will be no noise and shuts my brain off. What a fantastic machinery the human body?”

Me: ‘Tired, ready to fall into a deep and delicious sleep’ My brain: ‘And if we made the shopping list’

Me: My brain: ‘the list of administrative stuff to manage’ – most likely something like, ‘a list of all the things you need to get done.’

And then how about these? I’ll leave you to practice your French here… but the joy of Motin’s work is you get the universal feel of it in the way she draws out a scene…