The bus

Joyau surréaliste méconnu, le bus aura attendu 25 ans cette traduction. Initialement publiés dans Heavy Metal, la version américaine de Métal Hurlant, les strips de the bus furent pendant de nombreuses années un des piliers de la revue. À partir du plus insignifiant des quotidiens - un homme qui attend son bus - Kirchner bâtit un univers désopilant et vertigineux. En 6 ou 8 cases, sans dialogue, cette situation ordinaire bascule dans la quatrième dimension, la ville est transfigurée en un labyrinthe surréaliste. À l'instar de Little Nemo, le bus met en scène un univers de papier abyssal où l'extraordinaire peut surgir de toute part. Les bouches à incendies prennent vie ; un bus sombre dans la délinquance ; l'image est soudain rappelée à sa planitude ; l'horizon vers lequel file le bus n'est plus qu'à une portée de main... Entre exercice oulipien et flânerie ludique, le bus aura attendu 25 ans cette première publication en France. L'ouvrage rassemble l'intégralité des strips réalisés par Paul Kirchner, soit demi-douzaine de plus que l'édition originale publiée aux États-Unis en 1987 par Ballantine. Paul Kirchner a par ailleurs spécialement écrit une postface, réalisé une nouvelle couverture et diverses illustrations inédites. À noter enfin qu'une édition en langue originale est également disponible. Né en 1952, Paul Kirchner a longtemps été l'assistant de Wally Wood, dessinateur légendaire notamment connu pour ses publications chez EC comics. Paul Kirchner en a gardé un dessin classique et méticuleux. Il fut également l'auteur dans les années 70 du western psychédélique The Dope Rider, dont certains épisodes sont parus en France dans L'Écho des Savanes.

The bus comic strips were first published in 1978 in Heavy Metal magazine, where they appeared regularly for seven years. From the simple, mundane premise of a man waiting for his bus, the strips quickly slip into a weird yet hilarious world where cities are surreal labyrinths and bewilderment is just around the corner. Six to eight wordless panels is often all it takes Kirchner to display his sense for the bizarre. In the bus, fire hydrants come alive, buses chose to stray away from the law, the distant horizon might be just an arm's length away and the whole world might just turn out to be a two-dimensional panel messing with our sense of depth. More bizarre yet, in 25 years since its original publication in the USA by Ballantine Books in 1987, the bus has never been republished. This new edition contains the entire collection of strips drawn by Paul Kirchner, including a half dozen strips previously unreleased. It also includes a postscript and a new cover by Paul Kirchner. Paul Kirchner was born in 1952 and worked as an assistant to legendary EC Comics cartoonist Wally Wood. Among his other works is the surrealistic western Dope Rider, published in High Times magazine.

During the years 1974 to 1986, after working as an assistant to Wally Wood, Paul Kirchner created several comic strips such as Dope Rider for High Times magazine and the bus for Heavy Metal. In 2012, French publishing house Tanibis published an anthology of the bus strips that was nominated at the Angoulême International comics festival, proving that even a 30-year old public transportation vehicle can take part in a Grand Prix. In 2013, Paul Kirchner surprised commuters when he decided to start working again on the bus. He fixed the old vehicle up, took it out of the garage and called its iconic passenger in the white overcoat back on duty, waiting to be taken on new, exotic adventures. The bus' unpredictable personality causes him to mimic classic pop culture icons such as King-Kong or Steve Martin while in turn analyzing or teleporting his passenger. And that's only when it's not cheating on him with other commuters. Kirchner's new ideas are on par with the original strips, proving that his creativity didn't end with the 80's. The crazy cartoon logic of the original strips is still present, and wackiness is the norm. Some details, such as the so-called « smart » phones or the passengers' looks, root the stories in the 21st century, but Paul Kirchner's universe retains a timeless vintage aesthetic that blends eras, lending these new stories a hint of nostalgia. The bus 2 will be published in hardcover horizontal format identical to the previous collection published in 2012. Back in that twilight dimension he calls home, it is rumored that Paul Kirchner is at work on new material for his psychedelic western Dope Rider. After all it seems that the bus' passenger is not the only one who gets caught occasionally in strange time warps... Parts of the bus 2 material have previously been published in magazines in north America and in Europe.