Having nothing to hide would make us transparent and invisible beings. But with too much flesh to belong to the first state, only the second seems possible.
For scientists, invisibility would occur through projecting in front of oneself, on oneself, what one’s opaque body is hiding from the eyes of the ones watching. In a way, one would become a real-time screen for what one is hiding (screening), to wear what serves as backdrop and disappear in it like a chameleon. Not being able to, with another compromission, we practise a genre of daily invisibility that consists in putting on clothes and make up to try and reveal our strong points while hiding our weaknesses.
If most of the time we reflect the visibile light in this relative assurance, it suffices to be placed between the emitting light source and the watcher-receptor (backlighting) for the opacity of the self to appear, and for the silhouette to become this frail frontier between what is perceptible and what is not. It is not about cast shadows, but about shadows on and within oneself, which superposes and merges with the body, reminding/revealing to the watching eyes this invisible inside that can be guessed only through talk and action. [1]
In this world of moving lights, this situation remains fairly rare, especially since, without the necessary intermediary screen, [2] comes into play the phenomenon of diffraction (blurred contour) rendering myopic this kind of vision.

This “little theater of ombres chinoises”, an expression often used to describe some parts of Blanquet’s exquisite work, is not about cast shadows, but refers to the use of this specific observation: the possibility of an exact juxtaposition/superposition of the body with its shadow, and its consequences. Accepted as a fine art and considered in a relative autonomy, the shadow plays called “ombres chinoises” since the XVIIth century show contents that are revealed both through what contains them (shape/outline of the silhouette) and by the action and lines they say on the screen of a theater stage (narrative contentà.
These shadows are at a right angle to the light source, they have no shadow, they are shadow by essence. There they animate and often suggest the idea of an indirect look, hidden (with the interposed screen) and therefore a little voyeur for the spectator who easily takes them for cast shadows, [3] and those observed at night porjected on windows with drawn curtains lit from the inside. The “ombres chinoises” do have a potentially shadowy side (difformities; tracking, guessing what is hidden) that before Blanquet no one seemed to really suspect, linking too quickly this peculiar media with childhood and fairy tales.

In another light, those shadow plays served as a carrfour from which certain genres of comic books (Caran d’Ache) and movies (from the magic lantern to animation) took flight, inspiration, even some distant filiation. Blanquet, seeing there less parallels than crossroads, took them to build his own geography, taking the wandering path of his “monstruous” and talented personality. [4]
Regarding La Vénéneuse aux deux éperons, [5] the author weaves shadows in the shadow of comics.
The screen here is the white of the paper, layed horizontally, with no constraint of up or down or of projected light. Anything can move without the need of a background to frame the scene, and the window panes can be negative (i.e. black) without causing otherwise impossible layout problems.
The puppet aspect is here, but displaced, by having less to do with animation than with destiny.

These silhouettes among whiteness betray their lack of shadow and become darker, showing in negative, maybe, the demonic alliances that built other stories.
Blanquet realizes what in over a century no one dared trying: the “ombres chinoises” are the exact opposite of what are and what allowed X-rays. They opacify the bodeis where those render them transparent, they put white where those put black. Concluding all this with an irreverence, Blanquet imposes an X-rating where things should be for everyone. Associating this formal negative to the negative of the core (the fairy tales) [6] was, if not necessary, as least logical, especially in these far too tidy times, dedicated to transparency, appearances and all that they hide.

The author challenges us, shows us what lurks in the shadow of emotional heats. Being a pig is a shared dream, Live and think like pigs finally happens, but unfortunately in a different way, between the end-of-childhood with the discoveries of the pleasures of the body in what enters and what comes out, and the adults confusing it with those of power and death. This drive triggers the story by pervading its core structure, litterally exploding the narrative time to bend it to fit the pace of those intoxicating impulses and the psychological time of the characters.

With shadow, Blanquet reveals and shows the invisible. Bodys are bared, naked in the middle of a crawling and decaying life in the margins (forests, unbuilt lots, swamps, industrial areas, ruins). Becoming visible because the natural bodily opacity, some of those bodies turn back to their animal state, completed by wearing the obligatory animal masks. [7] Now de-humanized, they are encaged, freed, hunted, trapped, killed. Women are directing all this, and the mute storytelling obviously never says that the most Poisonous is also the youngest, the ideal little girl, who discovers her monstruous seductive power and the amazing potential for autonomy that, if well handled, can be found there, underground, underlying.

To conclude, not that if this graphic novel remains silent, the author uses this aspect with the same subtlety as the rest. There are stories within the story that are set apart in panels with rounded corners; but also inner discourses, thoughts more or less expressed that are the negative (white on black) of these shadow plays. As if seen from the inside, the reactive perceptions often serve as intermediate between different scenes. It could be the bell that announces breakfast, or the vision of a baby’s rattle. Perceptions, visions, impressions then provide transitions. The young girl can then imagine her servant, in the span of a moment, as being an obese and incontinent sow. The peculiar formal treatment (resorting to the line) is akin to writing, signifying this time the inner language, finds its validation later, in being drawn and realized in an intimate diary.
An additional subtlety that makes of La Vénéneuse an inexhaustible book. A simply suberb work, perfectly presented by a publisher atuned to his author.