After “The Chess Player”, David Sala returns today with a moving comic strip. A largely autobiographical story that looks back on his childhood and the story of his grandfathers during the Second World War, between heroism and trauma.
They are not uncommon in comics, albums that tell the childhood, youth, ancestors of their authors. They are not rare, the books which speak to us with emotion of sacrificed destinies, the horrors of the war, resistance and deportation.
Nor are the colorful, luminous comic book albums rare, which magnify nature and the elements through dreamlike or poetic pages, sometimes even inspired by the works of the greatest painters.
What is rarer is when in the same album, there is all that at the same time. This singular story is even more accurate, more moving, more moving, more universal too.
After the adaptation of “Chess Player” by Stéphan Zweig, David Sala presents what is undoubtedly his most personal album. A story of family, memory and transmission that takes us on a journey in historical reality and in the imagination, in the footsteps of the little boy he was, grandson of a deportee and resistance fighter, son of militant parents, and child of the 70s and 80s, those of the record player and the cassette recorder.
“The Weight of Heroes”, by David Sala was published by Casterman editions.
Rebroadcast of the program of Wednesday, February 16, 2022.