Glorious Summers, Vol.1: Southbound! by Zidrou and Jordi Lefebre

This is not autobiographical. The main character is indeed a man who makes comics for a living and lives in Belgium, like Zidrou, the writer of the series. But Pierre Faldérault is a good two decades older than his creator, and is an artist - we see him laboring over his drawing board at the beginning of the story, finishing up his work so the family can go on their summer vacation.

(And it is very much a European summer vacation - they have a month, so they can go somewhat aimlessly and - even more importantly - if they get delayed three days at the start because Pierre is frantically coloring the last pages of "Daddy Clown," that's not such a big deal.)

Glorious Summers is a six-volume series - the first five of which were translated into English almost a decade ago - written by Zidrou and drawn by Jordi Lefebre. They'd done the one-off Lydie a few years before, and apparently worked well together. This first book, Southbound! was published in French by Dargaud in 2015, and this Lara Vergnaud translation came out from Europe Comics in 2018.

I suspect the whole series is told in flashbacks; this one certainly is. We start with Pierre and his wife Maddie in what is probably the modern day - older, settled, happy, as they go to a place where they vacationed many years before. They remember the year 1973, and the rest of the story is told then.

Pierre's career is not terribly stable; he's never had a big hit but does keep getting work from BD magazines. Maddie works in a store selling shoes, and hates it - she notes that she's been moved from one department to another, finding each one worse and worse. She's also on the verge of leaving Pierre, for the kind of reasons that are too big to explain. This, they think, will be the last family vacation - after the summer, she'll take the kids to her mother.

There are four children, all young - the squabbling girls Nicole and Julie, their younger brother Louis with his head always in a Lucky Luke book, and the pre-schooler Paulette. They're fun, quirky kids - each one gets some personality, from the bookish Louis with his imaginary friend Beekoo the Squirrel to each of the three girls - and Zidrou and Lefebre do a great job of showing the ways a family has rituals (we must always get fries when crossing back into Belgium!) and running jokes and just silly standard turns of phrases.

It's a happy family, mostly - the way any family is mostly happy. There is that looming possible separation. And there's also some mostly off-stage drama involving Pierre's brother Xavier, which affects this vacation a lot, in the end.

Southbound! is a story of the day-to-day, focused on the part of life when you can get away from the grind and spend time with your family, the times when memories are made and families are as strong and connected as they get. Zidrou keeps his story mostly mundane - there is the Xavier thread, and the potential breakup looming, but those aren't central. It's mostly about a few days together. And Lefebre draws it all beautifully - his people just a bit cartoony to have energy, but embedded in a realistic world we recognize.

For a lot of European readers, I expect Glorious Summers was an exercise in nostalgia - remembering their own childhood vacations, whether to rural France as here or to some Mediterranean beach or holiday camp or extended family or wherever. Remembering when they were younger, either as kids or young parents, and the memories made then. Americans could easily find similar things to love in it, even if, sadly, we don't get to go off for a month at a time.