Total Jazz

Book excerpt: Blutch riffs on two quintessentially American art forms in this collection of jazz-themed comics. In this freewheeling collection of short stories and vignettes, the famed French cartoonist examines not only the music, but the nature of the jazz sub-culture. The grumpy festival goer, the curmudgeonly collector, and many other fan “types” are the targets of his unerring gimlet eye. Drawn in a range of styles as improvisational as Coltrane and Mingus ― everything from loose linework to tight pen and ink to gestural pencils ― Blutch captures the excitement of live performance, the lovelorn, and the Great Jazz Detective, who is out but not down.