A FEW THINGS I DRAW FOR MYSELF: AN INTERVIEW WITH BOULET If you’ve been around the comics internet at some point during the last few days, you’ve probably been shown the mind-blowingly good “Darkness,” a hilarious and romantic short piece about having a particular strange roommate that was conceived, plotted and drawn in 26 concurrent hours. Artists and critics alike alighted twitter and tumblr with words of praise and awe as the English translation of the French artist’s comic blew up, especially once Kate Beaton and the rest of Girls Formally Known as Pizza Island co-cosigned the post (more on that in a minute). The comic, which could sophomorically be described as a cartoonist who grew up on equal amounts of both Mobius and Tezuka attempt at a Peter Bagge joint, is a testament to the cartoonist’s incredible wit and artistic fortitude. The 37 year-old Paris-based artist, who goes by Boulet (real name Gilles Roussel) was born in Meaux, France, right next to Paris. Growing up next to Dijon, in Burgondy (the one with the wines and the mustard), he studied in the Fine Arts school of Dijon  and then in the National Decorative Arts School of Strasbourg. Surprisingly, with well over 30,000 (post-“Darkness” and at the time of writing, it now sits comfortably above 40,000) followers on twitter, Boulet doesn’t have any of his original work published in English (with the exception of a couple of Trondheim’s Dungeon volumes he did the art for), and, outside of a few volumes in Sweden and Russia, the same is true internationally. We got in contact with Boulet via e-mail and chatted both about “Darkness” and it’s success as well as the French-speaking comics internet in general. His responses, filled with humbling enthusiasm, contain a bunch of great insights from the culture and the fandom across the pond. He also got us interested in the French “webcomics” scene, which, as you’ll discover in the interview, is it’s own world of content and interaction. Look out for some good-old-fashioned American investigative coverage on that from NOVI at a later point. NOVI Magazine: You’re incredibly popular in French-speaking BD circles on the internet, and for good reason; your comics are colorful, expressive and very accessible. I’m very new to your material, as I am one of the growing number of people who were very impressed with your “Darkness” comic. How did you go about translating the comic into English? Who helped with the translation? I saw a subforum on reddit dedicated to translating your comics for your English site. When did that happen? Boulet: For this particular note [sic.] (“Darkness”), I was helped by one of my readers… I was turning crazy trying to translate it myself! I’ve tried different systems to translate my work. First I was asking my French readers if some of them spoke both laguages and could help me, but it was a lot of work to find people really skilled and willing to spend a lot of time on [a pro bono translation.] I tried to give drawings in exchange, but this added a lot work [onto] my schedule… So I thought it wouldn’t be so bad if there were a few translation inaccuracies and started to translate myself. When I post a new comic, I tell people they can help me if they spot a mistake by telling me in the comments. So with [this help] I [go back and] fix the most disturbing [errors]. About Reddit: I was following it I like this site very much, I discovered a lot of great things there. So I asked moderators if I could post my own comics or if it was too much “self-promoting” but they answered me very kindly that it was okay, so for me now it’s a way to inform a less all-french public when I publish in English! NOVI: I saw your twitter conversation with American cartoonist Dustin Harbin. Was he the person you are referring to that helped you translate? Boulet: No, he wasn’t. As you can see in the comic, [the translation] sounds a bit Gallic; the person who helped me for this one is french. I thanked him in the first comment [on the website]. Dustin and I were introduced by our common friend Domitille Collardey, a French artist [then] living in New York. She was part of the Pizza Island group of artists with Sarah Glidden, Lisa Hanawault, Julia Wertz and Kate Beaton. Dustin’s a great artist and we sometime [talk] and discuss [things] on Twitter. He helped me some time ago to translate an article on my facebook page, and offered to check translations if I needed to. NOVI: You’re a masterful cartoonist who has obviously been drawing for many years, but to newcomers to your art, such as myself,  your speed at drawing BD and cartoon art is incredible. I saw one of your many, many youtube timelapses of you drawing and painting three pages and was stunned. Can you speak on how you developed your incredibly fast style, which is perfect for the hustle-and-bustle of the webcomics scene? Boulet: Haha! I am far from being a master, but thanks! I have always been split between two influences: I love old-fashioned “nice drawings”, clean lines, clear reading, but I also love “Nouvelle BD”: Graphic Novels, improvisation and more instinctive ways of drawing. So I tried to have my “clean rendering”, the one I was already using in my comics but without sketching. I would like, if I live old enough, to be able to draw just like I was writting, without thinking about it. It was one of the reasons that pushed me to open my site, it was a structure which allowed me to try a lot of new things. So I started to draw like that and first my characters were very steady, I used always the same view angles but after some practicing, I started to dare a bit more, until finally it felt natural to draw this way. NOVI: “Nouvelle BD” is term unfamiliar to me. Is this what Americans would term “alt-“comics or “art-“comics? Can you give some examples of work in this genre that’s influenced you? Boulet: “Nouvelle BD” is a term which appeared during the 90’s in France, I guess you could say “alt-” AND “art-“… Some french artists wanted to invent a new way to make comics. They  made “L’Association” and started publishing alternative comics, with artists like Trondheim, David B, Jean-Christophe Menu, Killoffer… They all inspired me at some point because at this point I knew almost nothing about comics, for me it was “Franco-Belge” school (with artists like Peyo, Franquin, Goscinny and Herge) or “Fluide Glacial” (a sort of French equivalent of Mad Magazine). I learned then that being cartoonist didn’t mean “to draw clean on a drawing table, with preliminary sketches, and a ruler to make the panels,” that it was perfectly okay to make a comic in a sketchbook and that comics were not necessarily for children, that you could talk about society, about yourself… Basically, that everything was allowed! NOVI: I noticed that you go straight to ink when you are drawing comics and BD; what pen are you using? What are your daily tools you use for your work? Boulet: Oh I usually draw with architect pens, like “Rotring” or other brands which make the same sort of tubular-pen (feutre tubulaire in french, I don’t know if the translation is accurate). But for the blog I randomly use what I have, like pens, inkpens, brushes… Sometimes I directly use my wacom tablet! NOVI: You mentioned that you powered through the drawing of “Darkness” with a fistful of pens and “many red bulls.” Can you talk about wether or not you planned out the comic beforehand? The story is wonderfully structured. Was there anything that you were doing to prepare for this 24(+2)-hour drawing session? Can you tell me more about the Angouleme tradition of a 24 hour comic? Boulet: No, I hadn’t planned this story… Actually, I started [with] something else, lost two hours and then found my idea. But the main character (the dark one) is a character I was already thinking about for a comic. I just hadn’t done anything about him before that. The 24h comic Angoulême version [of a 24-Hour Comic], “Les 24h de la BD” started in 2007. The festival president was Lewis Trondheim and he was inspired by Scott McCloud for that. I love this event. We gather in “La maison des auteurs” (Author’s House) in Angoulême just before the big comic festival. The house has a very kind crew, and people help us by scanning the pages for us while we are drawing. Usually we are about 30 [in number that] participate directly in Angoulême, but dozens of people participate online. The first year I tried to come “prepared.” I had thought about dozen of stories to be ready, but the restrain (every year there’s one !) ruined my plans. Since then I don’t try to plan anything anymore. NOVI: Your website seems to update with completed stories every day. Have you gotten used to having so much content out there publicly? I know many artists work with sketchbooks where they develop their ideas- with the directness of which you produce your artwork—sometimes you skip pencils and just directly compose in ink— how much percentage-wise of your work would you say you make public? Boulet: I still have sketchbooks I don’t show, but I publish most of my comics… I used to draw a lot of these: comics about my life, about the festivals I was attending to, so when I learned about the blog format, I though it was a good idea to show these, since it was not good or coherent enough to make [into] a book. But quickly I got more people going on my page, so I stopped the “intimate” comics and aimed for something more “universal”, so now I show about everything I draw in “comic” format, and hide a few things I draw for myself. NOVI: It’s incredibly interesting to me that you call your website a “blog” and not a webcomic. At least with the French version of your website this is very true: the majority of the comics are not “autobiographical” in the same way that a blogger who talks about his life and experiences wouldn’t call their entries “autobiographical.” Can you talk about why you decided to take this approach to your work when you launched the site back in 2004?  Was it a response to the weblog boom, versus the slightly later webcomics boom, which was ignited by modern social media? Do you feel like how you post content to the blog has been changed because of the new cultures of stuff like facebook, twitter, etc? Boulet: It’s actually very simple: we don’t really have a term for “webcomic” here. Back in 2003-2004 they were very few webcomics in France, but it was the big blog boom (…”Big Blog Boom”… Try to say that ten times very fast) and some young cartoonists decided to try and make “Blogs BD.” After this phenomenon became more and more important, we’ve even had a “Festival des blogs BD & Webcomics” in Paris [for] the past few years. Most of these blogs were “autobiographical” and very often “funny”, it was quite strange. Every week we had a new blog about a guy/girl between his mid-20/mid-30, talking about cats/children/how he-she was such a geek/discounts/clothes. I was typically a representation of this model, I have to say! Recently it’s [(the “Blogs BD” craze)] begun to decrease and I really think it has to do with all the emergence of social networks like Facebook or Twitter. A lot of “BD-Bloggers” did that to fulfill a need for contact with other cartoonists and with an kind audience. With Facebook you can have that; you can have almost only kind comments and you don’t really have to work especially [hard] for it! In France we comment a LOT. For the same amount of visitors, I will have 40 comments on the English version, and 450 on the French one! So now we see new type of “BlogsBD” emerging… Mine became more like a “webcomic” (I actually prefer this term), but there’s no real word for that in French. We usually say “BD Numérique” but it can refer to all sort of comics, from blogs to interactive comics. Recently people making interactive comics grouped themselves under the appellation “Turbomédia.” I recommend you that if you have some time (It’s bilingual), check for artists like Balak or Malek! Anyway, just for [clarification:] Blog BD is more the French vernacular name for webcomics, it doesn’t really mean I see that as a blog. NOVI: You’ve said in another interview I found (with a French website) that you try and always grab the readers emotionally within the first three seconds of viewing a page. It certainly works—in “Darkness,” for instance, you use some tropes from Japanese manga to great effect, but still keep it within your personal style. Can you talk about how you try to build your opening images? Boulet: Haha! It sounds like a thing you say to make a nice answer [for] a journalist. I don’t remember [saying that] that at all! Er… I wouldn’t know, actually. I just try to picture in my head different ways to tell the story and I chose the most efficient one! Manga has been a great influence in my work, I love the work of people like Eiichiro Oda, Katsuhiro Otomo, Hiromu Arakawa or Akira Toriyama, so I think it shows a bit in my comics. NOVI: What are you working on now? What can we expect to see from you in the future? Would you like to give shout-outs to anyone? Boulet: I’m currently working on the 7th volume of my series “Notes”, which is the book-adaptation of my webcomic. For now I’m starting to work on a new project, an adventure story for young [readers.] You can see some picture of it in one of my last entries on the blog, untitled “just a few drawings.” I just published here a new book as scenarist, [with] the art by a young cartoonist called Pénélope Bagieu. It’s called “La page blange” (“the blank page” or “the white page,” I don’t know which sounds better in English). Maybe we can hope for translations soon! Boulet’s English website is http://english.bouletcorp.com/ where there’s two years’ worth of (hand re-lettered) translated comics available for browsing. 

A FEW THINGS I DRAW FOR MYSELF: AN INTERVIEW WITH BOULET



If you’ve been around the comics internet at some point during the last few days, you’ve probably been shown the mind-blowingly good “Darkness,” a hilarious and romantic short piece about having a particular strange roommate that was conceived, plotted and drawn in 26 concurrent hours. Artists and critics alike alighted twitter and tumblr with words of praise and awe as the English translation of the French artist’s comic blew up, especially once Kate Beaton and the rest of Girls Formally Known as Pizza Island co-cosigned the post (more on that in a minute). The comic, which could sophomorically be described as a cartoonist who grew up on equal amounts of both Mobius and Tezuka attempt at a Peter Bagge joint, is a testament to the cartoonist’s incredible wit and artistic fortitude.

The 37 year-old Paris-based artist, who goes by Boulet (real name Gilles Roussel) was born in Meaux, France, right next to Paris. Growing up next to Dijon, in Burgondy (the one with the wines and the mustard), he studied in the Fine Arts school of Dijon  and then in the National Decorative Arts School of Strasbourg. Surprisingly, with well over 30,000 (post-“Darkness” and at the time of writing, it now sits comfortably above 40,000) followers on twitter, Boulet doesn’t have any of his original work published in English (with the exception of a couple of Trondheim’s Dungeon volumes he did the art for), and, outside of a few volumes in Sweden and Russia, the same is true internationally.

We got in contact with Boulet via e-mail and chatted both about “Darkness” and it’s success as well as the French-speaking comics internet in general. His responses, filled with humbling enthusiasm, contain a bunch of great insights from the culture and the fandom across the pond. He also got us interested in the French “webcomics” scene, which, as you’ll discover in the interview, is it’s own world of content and interaction. Look out for some good-old-fashioned American investigative coverage on that from NOVI at a later point.





NOVI Magazine: You’re incredibly popular in French-speaking BD circles on the internet, and for good reason; your comics are colorful, expressive and very accessible. I’m very new to your material, as I am one of the growing number of people who were very impressed with your “Darkness” comic. How did you go about translating the comic into English? Who helped with the translation? I saw a subforum on reddit dedicated to translating your comics for your English site. When did that happen?

Boulet: For this particular note [sic.] (“Darkness”), I was helped by one of my readers… I was turning crazy trying to translate it myself!

I’ve tried different systems to translate my work. First I was asking my French readers if some of them spoke both laguages and could help me, but it was a lot of work to find people really skilled and willing to spend a lot of time on [a pro bono translation.] I tried to give drawings in exchange, but this added a lot work [onto] my schedule… So I thought it wouldn’t be so bad if there were a few translation inaccuracies and started to translate myself. When I post a new comic, I tell people they can help me if they spot a mistake by telling me in the comments. So with [this help] I [go back and] fix the most disturbing [errors].

About Reddit: I was following it I like this site very much, I discovered a lot of great things there. So I asked moderators if I could post my own comics or if it was too much “self-promoting” but they answered me very kindly that it was okay, so for me now it’s a way to inform a less all-french public when I publish in English!

NOVI: I saw your twitter conversation with American cartoonist Dustin Harbin. Was he the person you are referring to that helped you translate?

Boulet: No, he wasn’t. As you can see in the comic, [the translation] sounds a bit Gallic; the person who helped me for this one is french. I thanked him in the first comment [on the website].

Dustin and I were introduced by our common friend Domitille Collardey, a French artist [then] living in New York. She was part of the Pizza Island group of artists with Sarah Glidden, Lisa Hanawault, Julia Wertz and Kate Beaton. Dustin’s a great artist and we sometime [talk] and discuss [things] on Twitter. He helped me some time ago to translate an article on my facebook page, and offered to check translations if I needed to.





NOVI: You’re a masterful cartoonist who has obviously been drawing for many years, but to newcomers to your art, such as myself,  your speed at drawing BD and cartoon art is incredible. I saw one of your many, many youtube timelapses of you drawing and painting three pages and was stunned. Can you speak on how you developed your incredibly fast style, which is perfect for the hustle-and-bustle of the webcomics scene?

Boulet: Haha! I am far from being a master, but thanks!

I have always been split between two influences: I love old-fashioned “nice drawings”, clean lines, clear reading, but I also love “Nouvelle BD”: Graphic Novels, improvisation and more instinctive ways of drawing. So I tried to have my “clean rendering”, the one I was already using in my comics but without sketching. I would like, if I live old enough, to be able to draw just like I was writting, without thinking about it.

It was one of the reasons that pushed me to open my site, it was a structure which allowed me to try a lot of new things. So I started to draw like that and first my characters were very steady, I used always the same view angles but after some practicing, I started to dare a bit more, until finally it felt natural to draw this way.

NOVI: “Nouvelle BD” is term unfamiliar to me. Is this what Americans would term “alt-“comics or “art-“comics? Can you give some examples of work in this genre that’s influenced you?

Boulet: “Nouvelle BD” is a term which appeared during the 90’s in France, I guess you could say “alt-” AND “art-“… Some french artists wanted to invent a new way to make comics. They  made “L’Association” and started publishing alternative comics, with artists like Trondheim, David B, Jean-Christophe Menu, Killoffer…

They all inspired me at some point because at this point I knew almost nothing about comics, for me it was “Franco-Belge” school (with artists like Peyo, Franquin, Goscinny and Herge) or “Fluide Glacial” (a sort of French equivalent of Mad Magazine). I learned then that being cartoonist didn’t mean “to draw clean on a drawing table, with preliminary sketches, and a ruler to make the panels,” that it was perfectly okay to make a comic in a sketchbook and that comics were not necessarily for children, that you could talk about society, about yourself… Basically, that everything was allowed!





NOVI: I noticed that you go straight to ink when you are drawing comics and BD; what pen are you using? What are your daily tools you use for your work?

Boulet: Oh I usually draw with architect pens, like “Rotring” or other brands which make the same sort of tubular-pen (feutre tubulaire in french, I don’t know if the translation is accurate). But for the blog I randomly use what I have, like pens, inkpens, brushes… Sometimes I directly use my wacom tablet!

NOVI: You mentioned that you powered through the drawing of “Darkness” with a fistful of pens and “many red bulls.” Can you talk about wether or not you planned out the comic beforehand? The story is wonderfully structured. Was there anything that you were doing to prepare for this 24(+2)-hour drawing session? Can you tell me more about the Angouleme tradition of a 24 hour comic?

Boulet: No, I hadn’t planned this story… Actually, I started [with] something else, lost two hours and then found my idea. But the main character (the dark one) is a character I was already thinking about for a comic. I just hadn’t done anything about him before that.

The 24h comic Angoulême version [of a 24-Hour Comic], “Les 24h de la BD” started in 2007. The festival president was Lewis Trondheim and he was inspired by Scott McCloud for that.

I love this event. We gather in “La maison des auteurs” (Author’s House) in Angoulême just before the big comic festival. The house has a very kind crew, and people help us by scanning the pages for us while we are drawing. Usually we are about 30 [in number that] participate directly in Angoulême, but dozens of people participate online.

The first year I tried to come “prepared.” I had thought about dozen of stories to be ready, but the restrain (every year there’s one !) ruined my plans. Since then I don’t try to plan anything anymore.






NOVI: Your website seems to update with completed stories every day. Have you gotten used to having so much content out there publicly? I know many artists work with sketchbooks where they develop their ideas- with the directness of which you produce your artwork—sometimes you skip pencils and just directly compose in ink— how much percentage-wise of your work would you say you make public?

Boulet: I still have sketchbooks I don’t show, but I publish most of my comics… I used to draw a lot of these: comics about my life, about the festivals I was attending to, so when I learned about the blog format, I though it was a good idea to show these, since it was not good or coherent enough to make [into] a book.

But quickly I got more people going on my page, so I stopped the “intimate” comics and aimed for something more “universal”, so now I show about everything I draw in “comic” format, and hide a few things I draw for myself.





NOVI: It’s incredibly interesting to me that you call your website a “blog” and not a webcomic. At least with the French version of your website this is very true: the majority of the comics are not “autobiographical” in the same way that a blogger who talks about his life and experiences wouldn’t call their entries “autobiographical.” Can you talk about why you decided to take this approach to your work when you launched the site back in 2004?  Was it a response to the weblog boom, versus the slightly later webcomics boom, which was ignited by modern social media? Do you feel like how you post content to the blog has been changed because of the new cultures of stuff like facebook, twitter, etc?

Boulet: It’s actually very simple: we don’t really have a term for “webcomic” here. Back in 2003-2004 they were very few webcomics in France, but it was the big blog boom (…”Big Blog Boom”… Try to say that ten times very fast) and some young cartoonists decided to try and make “Blogs BD.” After this phenomenon became more and more important, we’ve even had a “Festival des blogs BD & Webcomics” in Paris [for] the past few years.

Most of these blogs were “autobiographical” and very often “funny”, it was quite strange. Every week we had a new blog about a guy/girl between his mid-20/mid-30, talking about cats/children/how he-she was such a geek/discounts/clothes. I was typically a representation of this model, I have to say!

Recently it’s [(the “Blogs BD” craze)] begun to decrease and I really think it has to do with all the emergence of social networks like Facebook or Twitter. A lot of “BD-Bloggers” did that to fulfill a need for contact with other cartoonists and with an kind audience.

With Facebook you can have that; you can have almost only kind comments and you don’t really have to work especially [hard] for it! In France we comment a LOT. For the same amount of visitors, I will have 40 comments on the English version, and 450 on the French one!

So now we see new type of “BlogsBD” emerging… Mine became more like a “webcomic” (I actually prefer this term), but there’s no real word for that in French. We usually say “BD Numérique” but it can refer to all sort of comics, from blogs to interactive comics. Recently people making interactive comics grouped themselves under the appellation “Turbomédia.” I recommend you that if you have some time (It’s bilingual), check for artists like Balak or Malek! Anyway, just for [clarification:] Blog BD is more the French vernacular name for webcomics, it doesn’t really mean I see that as a blog.





NOVI: You’ve said in another interview I found (with a French website) that you try and always grab the readers emotionally within the first three seconds of viewing a page. It certainly works—in “Darkness,” for instance, you use some tropes from Japanese manga to great effect, but still keep it within your personal style. Can you talk about how you try to build your opening images?

Boulet: Haha! It sounds like a thing you say to make a nice answer [for] a journalist. I don’t remember [saying that] that at all!

Er… I wouldn’t know, actually. I just try to picture in my head different ways to tell the story and I chose the most efficient one! Manga has been a great influence in my work, I love the work of people like Eiichiro Oda, Katsuhiro Otomo, Hiromu Arakawa or Akira Toriyama, so I think it shows a bit in my comics.

NOVI: What are you working on now? What can we expect to see from you in the future? Would you like to give shout-outs to anyone?

Boulet: I’m currently working on the 7th volume of my series “Notes”, which is the book-adaptation of my webcomic. For now I’m starting to work on a new project, an adventure story for young [readers.] You can see some picture of it in one of my last entries on the blog, untitled “just a few drawings.”

I just published here a new book as scenarist, [with] the art by a young cartoonist called Pénélope Bagieu. It’s called “La page blange” (“the blank page” or “the white page,” I don’t know which sounds better in English). Maybe we can hope for translations soon!





Boulet’s English website is http://english.bouletcorp.com/ where there’s two years’ worth of (hand re-lettered) translated comics available for browsing. 

boulet interview novi novi magazine darkness bouletcorp kate beaton pizza island mobius tezuka peter bagge Paris twitter webcomics trondheim dustin harbin Domitille collardey Nouvelle BD L'Association Franco-belge Fluide Glacial 24 Hour comic Angouleme Blogs bd Festival des blogs bd turbomedia balak malek Eiichiro Oda Katsuhiro Otomo
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