The April 2025 Cab Post
A new comic project, good music and bad algorithms
Recap’
Hello everyone! I hope you're doing well! The month of April started out with a hearing at the housing tribunal, which I had dreaded for weeks. It's done now! The bike and the tulips are out and I crave adventures and urban exploration. Plus, it’s MCAF month. Hello vitamin D!
Thank you to everyone who came to the Loser Jamboree at Les Foufs. It was a success for me, with very good sales figures and wonderful meetings. I think it's the fair/sale event where people are the best dressed (by my standards, at least.)
In April, I drew the cover of Maude Alexandre's fourth novel in the series Enquête de Peur, published by Éditions Fides. I’ve always loved making covers and the “teen horror” tone of this series really speaks to me. I did grow up reading The Babysitter, Stephen King novels after all. I shared some of the sketches and research for the first volumes on Patreon. Here is one of the sketches for La Dame Blanche, which came out last year.
Between various contracts and obligations, I’m rushing the final layout of my artbook, The working title is Plumage, in reference to the amount of bird doodles it contains. It’s also a little nod to the dipping pen called “a plume”, synonym with “feather” in French, my favorite work tool. I just have a couple of things left to scan, a cover to do and a few other things. Go me!
Announcements
Over the past year, I've been working on a science fiction comic book and I leaked a few excerpts. Well now it’s official! I am pleased to announce that Gautier Langevin, Jeik Dion and I are working on a comic book called Pupilles, which will be released in 2026. It's a collaborative effort and I'm responsible for inking Jeik's awesome pencils, set to a sci-fi, cyberpunk story by Gautier. This book is a distillation of our common influences, our love for comics, manga, mechas, cluttered slums, sad teenagers and cable filled dystopian futures. We started an Instagram page on which we will post excerpts, entire pages and any other material in order to generate some hype for this very cool project. Check it out, follow us! For my part, I'm going to start posting panels and WIPs on Patreon and on my website. I'm super excited about this project and I really, really can't wait to show more.
I’ll be back at the Montreal Comics Arts Festival for the 2025 edition! This will be my TWELFTH appearance, can you believe it?! I will have books to sign, prints, a new artbook, stickers and lots of other cool stuff. You can find me under the big Front Froid/Nouvelle Address tent at booth E35, which should be located towards the north end of St-Denis. More info here! I CAN’T WAIT!!
I also want take this opportunity to mention that the Festival is seeking to fill several volunteer positions. We love the Festival volunteers, especially when they arrive at our booths with coffee and water. Without them, the Festival would not be possible. So if you were thinking of coming for a visit, why not give it a little time!
This newsletter is and will ALWAYS be free. If you like what I do, I suggest visiting my online shop or hunt down my books at your favorite bookstore or library. You can also support me on Patreon! Thanks a lot!
Cool stuff
I don't know if it's meant as a dig against the unbearable trend of AI Ghibli portraits but the famous Japanese animation studio posted a selection of high-resolution stills from ALL of their movies on their website. The images are free to use for the average human, to make, for example, very pretty wallpapers. On the Studio Ghibli website
Bdrmm offers us Microtonic, which I would define as cyber-shoegaze (lol). The guitar is there, it’s sad and brooding, but there’s a rave happening at the same time. It’s REALLY good.
I discovered the Montreal group Corridor via the video for the song Jump Cut (on the album Mimi) and I was immediately intrigued. It’s sophisticated and bubbly. The music video was directed/animated by Philippe Tardif and Winston Hacking, an animation/collage artist. I love it.
Tomorrow is Bandcamp Friday. The platform waives all of the revenues to the artists without taking their cut. Buy an album, or more!
-I finished reading Filterworld by Kyle Chayka. It wasn’t exactly eye-opening (I’ve been posting art online for 20 years, I’m well aware of the ongoing algorithmic-induced flattening of taste and culture) but it was still an amazing read. The book is well written, easy to understand (don’t forget, English isn’t my first language!) and very engaging. I like how he talks about taste as something that has to be cultivated and nurtured and not a vague concept reserved only for an elite few. Reading this book made me finally ditch my premium Spotify membership and I feel all the better for it.
Wisdom of the month:
“The world doesn’t need a bunch of enlightened people, it needs a bunch of helpful people.”
- Elle Griffin