Hanté

With the Journal d’un album, it had become obvious that the two-headed beast with four hands of the “Dupuy-Berberian” duet was in fact the confrontation of two individualities, of two styles that had been seen so far only in a combined form. In those solo pages, the reader could see two different sensibilities emerge, with “Berberian-the-show-off” with his bouts of teenage excitment, and “Dupuy-the-sensitive” with his fear of death.
Now this difference has become all the more obvious, as both authors have recently released a solo book. If with Playlist, Charles Berberian remains light and anecdotal (but in music), Hanté (“Haunted”) sees Philippe Dupuy exploring his anxieties, his worries and his pains. With a line that is more angular and raw than usual, he takes the reader through a series of strange short stories, often dreamlike, sometimes morbid, always intimate.

This is in this aspect that maybe lie the limitations of this otherwise superbe book. If this (supposed) project of a “comic book therapy” represents a whole for its author, it will take a few readings to try and decypher the book, in search of keys and hints to piece things together and give a meaning to it all. Philippe Dupuy does not deny this, as he even goes as far as writing : “As a child, I used to spend my time calling through my drawings. But my words have been lost. Only beautiful drawings remained.” Before adding himself, “These are not just beautiful drawings !”
Thus, recurring figures will appear here and there, figures that seem to be (supposedly ?) of importance — eyeless faces, hands that are torn off, being swallowed in entrails (of the Earth or of the author). But if it is easy to understand that these are the things that haunt Philippe Dupuy, even if the reader follows him in his quest to find a meaning to his life in his “Run Movies”, some sequences remain undecypherable, like this long story titled “The Friends of the Forest”, which place in the whole is a mystery.

To this running confession, in the unveiling of his anxieties, Philippe Dupuy brings a non-conclusion — simply stating that “(he) could run like this for a long time … there’s a point where you have to know when to stop”. And finishes on a picture of relative interior peace, in company of his demons.
More intimate adventure than autobiographical project, prefereing emotion to explanations, Hanté is a raw offering and a touching unveiling — a unique voyage in the psyche of a generous author.