Comix

Many, many years ago, when Sylvain was visiting relatives in Indianapolis, one of his cousins gave him a copy of a Mad Magazine publication^* that he was too young to understand. He was old enough to read the comic, however, and found great hilarity from details like exploding pineapples. In one panel, the artist had omitted the sound effect of an explosion, instead placing the text “readers’ note: write in your own terrifying sound effect here”.

Young Sylvain spent a lot of time pondering what was the appropriate sound effect to inscribe here, but he doesn’t recall ever arriving at a suitably terrifying sound.

Anyway, given this formative memory, you’ll understand why this reading area in the graphic novel area in La Grande Bibliothèque resonates.

^*It takes only few minutes of searching online to determine this was likely the 1974 reprint of Don Martin’s The Mad Adventures of Captain Klutz. The key search term was “succulent, toothsome pineapples,” a phrase that has rattled around in Sylvain’s head for half a century doubtless to the exclusion of useful information.