« Luckily, there are ideas. Ideas. When too many things go astray, stop or turn against you, the mind engenders favorable phantasms, worlds made to order, happy endings, golden images of yourself, utopias and holy readers (one is enough) capable of forgiving any affront and of remaining loyal beyond the limits of the reasonable. Ideas. Useful to keep going. » — Silvestre

Several years ago, during a visit to a favourite bédé store, I picked up, at random, an intriguing book, whose appeal largely lay in that it didn’t seem to be vying for my attention at all. If you’ve a certain bent of mind, the understated article will often exert a stronger pull than all the hard sell screamers in the world.

I read and enjoyed it, then the book faded deep into the collection, only to bob to the surface after our recent move.

For a long time, I couldn’t find out more about it, and I still know precious little. It didn’t make much of a ripple in the pond, and its wake seems to have dimmed even further in the intervening years.

There’s little sense in my translating the dialogue (with one exception), but here’s the setup: our protagonist, Silvestre, sits in a corner and has exchanges with his demons and other monsters of the id. But they’re eloquent and visually arresting apparitions.

I love that, while seeming identical at a casual glance, each Silvestre figure is individual. The artist may have employed a stencil or a rubber stamp… at least that’s what I would have done.

Incidentally, Silvestre is a pseudonym of Spanish cartoonist-graphic designer-poet (et cetera) Federico Del Barrio (1957 –), which he reserved for his more explorative work.

-RG