Grandville Mon Amour annotations - page 2
This is similar in concept to the Directors Cut of Heart of Empire that Bryan and myself created: it is an attempt to answer the eternal "where do you get your ideas from?" question, and a way to showcase the influences and images that went into the creation of Grandville.
Below are the annotations for the Grandville Mon Amour, pages 21 to 40.
We are publishing updates to this page every Sunday and we will cover the entire Grandville series. Also see the annotations to the first Grandville Graphic Novel.
Start reading the annotations below, or jump to page 21, page 22, page 23, page 24, page 27, page 28, page 29, page 31, page 33, page 34 and page 36.
Page 21
Panel 5
A thin red ribbon worn around the neck was highly fashionable for bourgeois ladies after the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution of 1789. Only women who had family members who had been guillotined had the right to wear one. Here, it’s symbolic of the fate awaiting Veronique.
Page 22
This cemetery is based on the famous one at Highgate, mentioned on the next page.
Mrs Erisson is Beatrix Potter’s Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. She must have remarried.
Page 23
Panel 2
Meles meles is the European badger genus.
Panel 4
The Angry Brigade: The real name of a left-wing terrorist group during the early 1970s who conducted a bombing campaign, mainly in London.
Page 24
It is true that the symptoms of arsenic and gastric poisoning are practically identical. This allowed Victorian serial-killer Mary Anne Cotton to kill up to 21 people over a period of many years.
Page 27
Pigalle: The Parisian district famous for its history of prostitution, sex shops and raunchy cabarets, such as the Moulin Rouge, birthplace of the can-can. It’s close to Montmartre, one of my favourite places in Paris.
Page 28
Panel 5
Riverhorse: Translation of the Greek word hippopotamus.
Page 29
Panel 1
Ugolin: The name of Daniel Auteuil’s character in Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources.
Page 31
Panel 6
Déesse: FR. “goddess” and the name (Editions Déese) of the oldest comic store in Paris (8, Rue Cochin, 75005).
Page 33
Panel 1
In the background, we can see the famous 1896 poster for a tour of the troup of performers of the Le Chat Noir cabaret by Théophile Steinlen.
Panel 3
The characters in the background are a reference to Edgar Degas’s The Absinthe Drinker (1876). Note that the tables in my version actually have legs!
Panel 6
To the far right of the panel, one of the girls is wearing a costume based on the French BD character created by André Franquin Marsupilami. The costume, or one like it, appears again in Grandville Bête Noire on page 65.
Page 34
One of the women is Miss Piggy.
Panel 1.
The pose in the foreground is a reference to Toulouse Lautrec’s In the Salon of the Rue des Moulins, itself a painting of a brothel interior.
Page 36
Panel 1
Coney: old English word for rabbit.
Now read the third batch of annotations for Grandville Mon Amour, covering pages 41 to 60.