The Little Nothings, Lewis Trondheim's blog is still charming in English

Little Nothings - The Curse of the Umbrella 
by Lewis Trondheim (2007)

Lewis Trondheim is one of the biggest comics artist in France over the last 20 years. He created the series Lapinot, wrote the script for the various series of Dungeon, drew a couple of autobiographical books, and much, much more... And he started blogging in 2006, a series of one page anecdotes gathered under the title "Little Nothings" : everyday events, small reflections, travel or festival anecdotes...

The style is based on a couple of simple ingredients. The characters are animal-headed, in the traditions of Disney comics like the Scrooge adventures drawn by Carl Barks - a common approach for many Trondheim comics, especially his autobiographical work. The drawing are colored with watercolor, without any delimited frame, giving a light touch to the page. The whole anecdotes are set in a realistic contexts, with some large detailed drawing for travel aspects. And the tone is the characteristic Trondheim tone, blend of paranoiac & hypochondriac reflections, dry & absurd humour, focus on details.

The whole blend is charming and fascinating to read, especially on a regular on-line basis.

But this US printed version is also fascinating for the French reader I am. I started reading the Little Nothings on-line, around the half of the first year, e.g. the half of this first volume. I can clearly remember reading some of the pages on the website - and obviously in French... This is quite surprising to see these anecdotes & comments translated, available to the English reader on the other side of the ocean; and have the confirmation that the material is still fresh and entertaining even translated despite a couple of purely French details. The good French cartoon writers can definitely compete with the most fascinating indie comics from the US, no doubt about this. Sure, countries do not mean so much any more in the globalized world, especially on an art level, but it is good to have such confirmations, that cultural globalization does not only mean "export from the US" ...

And reading the 3-year old blog pages also showed me that such a good everyday blog can age well. And even reveal surprising echoes with the most recent news: Trondheim had to face the new Chikungunya virus in the Reunion Island. A couple of people were suffering from the virus last week during the very last week...