About Betty's Boob by Vero Cazot and Julie Rocheleau

I'm still digging up all of the European comics I can find digitally, though it's harder as Europe Comics sinks into decline and quietly disappears. But other publishers do French and Belgian comics, so I'm still finding some things.

About Betty's Boob, for example - Archaia published this in 2018, in an Edward Gauvin translation, a year after the original Casterman edition. It won a few awards in French, and was nominated for an Eisner in this edition. It's by two female creators I'm not previously familiar with - writer Vero Cazot is French and artist Julie Rocheleau is Quebecois. (And, having just hit Rocheleau's site, let me gush for just a minute: she does lovely, luminous work, with striking, brilliant colors and energetic, inspiring figures. I'm just sad it looks like none of her other BDs have been translated into English; I'd love to dive into more of her stories right away.)

Now, the first thing you notice about Boob is probably Rocheleau's art, since this book is mostly wordless. There are some lyrics later on, some names exchanged, but it's mostly pantomime and dingbats dialogue and a few pieces of paper with writing on them.

Our heroine and central figure is Elisabeth B. The book opens with a dream or vision of crabs: she has just had surgery following breast cancer. Her left breast has been removed; her hair has fallen out. She wakes in a hospital bed, clearly somewhat disoriented.

Boob is not a book of small emotions, understated actions, and quiet moments - it's big and colorful and more than a little zany, like some kind of silent movie that miraculously is in full color. It's told in a series of chapters - first the hospital, then going back home with her partner, then work, and so on.

It's all big and sweetly dramatic and saturated with Rocheleau's warm-to-hot colors. Elisabeth is trying to get back into the swing of her life, after this big change...but it's not clicking, no matter what she does.

The tag line on the book is "She lost her left breast, her job, and her guy. She does not know it yet, but this is the best day of her life." That's the plot of the first half: that nice-looking guy can't cope with Elisabeth's change, and her work (at what seems to be a Victoria's Secret-esque retail establishment, all young ladies in tight T-shirts emphasizing their frontal development) soon kicks her out, specifically for no longer having two boobs. She goes to a shop for a prosthesis, which is amusing and dramatic, like everything else in Boob, but isn't right for her.

She's in a funk; things are not going well. And then she loses her wig, blown away on the wind. She chases across rooftops and down streets, with a manic air - maybe it's the last piece of who she used to be. And, at about the halfway point in this book, it leads her to a boat tied up on the river or coast - I think this is Paris, from the rooftops and assuming that's a river, but it could be many places, or any place.

At that boat, she meets a troupe of burlesque performers, mostly women. Of all shapes and sizes and types, none of them "perfect." There's a strong man, Nino, who seems like he may be interested in her - he's at least solicitous and helpful with all the little cuts and bruises she got chasing that wig. She gets a new wig, short and kicky, and a borrowed dress.

She watches the troupe's show that night, from the wings, enthralled and excited. And, because it's that kind of book, about dramatic moments and foibles and accidents and mistakes, she falls onto the stage, in her new "costume." She becomes part of the show, as "Betty Boob."

And things turn around, as they must. This is a happy story, one about things working out well and lives that get better than ever. Betty Boob is a sensation; all the people who scorned Elisabeth - that partner, the dragon-lady boss - have to see her and be dazzled by her brilliance and find new peace themselves.

If it weren't wordless, it might be too much: too rich, too emotional, too much wish-fulfillment. But it is wordless, mostly, so it reads like a dream or a fantasy or the kind of movie early enough in the history of the world that all endings must be happy. Betty deserves all of this, and it is glorious to watch her triumphant and happy.

I think this story will be even stronger for women than for men, particularly women told over and over again that the details of their bodies are important, that they have worth because of specific things about their bodies. But, even for a man, even at the distance I come from, it's sweet and lovely and uplifting, like the song that brings a gigantic grin from some energetic 1920s cartoon.