The Conquest of the Cosmos
By Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau and Francis Desharnais, ill.; translated by Pablo Strauss and Mary Thaler
Pow Pow Press, available now

The Conquest of the Cosmos is an irreverent look at the original space race from the perspectives of both the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. The satire of the motivations and the stages of sending machine, animal, and human into space is played for broad comic effect, including generous dollops of anachronistic calls of “dude.” In fact, the creators even apologize to historical figures “for the many ridiculous things they’ve been made to say.” Soviet scientists work to “convince” the dog Laika to undertake her one-way mission, as well as the first cosmonaut, who keeps asking about what happened to Laika; President Kennedy’s speech to the nation shows the vanity and hubris of the American space program, and Michael Collins, who never got to participate in the first moon walk, documents his petty resentment of his fellow astronauts. The format of repeating panels with only minor variations in the illustrations underlines the satire of the text, yet also provides brief, touching moments that underline both the grandeur and the isolation of floating in the cosmos.

The Conquest of the Cosmos was originally published in French in 2021 and won the BDGest’Arts Award for Best Comic in Europe that year, but because of the pandemic, the translation of the title was postponed, says François Vigneault, Pow Pow’s marketing manager.

Montreal-based independent comic book publisher Editions Pow Pow / Pow Pow Press is foremost a French publisher, publishing the work of Quebec authors and artists; its publishing program is significantly larger in the French-language market, though the English-language market is growing, says Vigneault. Approximately four titles a year are translated into English from titles Pow Pow originally publishes in French – about half the number of titles produced in the French publishing program.

During the pandemic, the English publishing program was hit much harder than the French side, so publisher Luc Bossé decided to put some English translations on hold. 

With new distribution for the U.S. and internationally, Pow Pow has started to increase the number of English editions and The Conquest of the Cosmos is the first of the “backlist” titles to be translated, says Vigneault.

Although some of their authors, including Julie Delporte, have long-standing arrangements to publish in English with other publishers (Delporte with Drawn & Quarterly), authors are increasingly interested in having both language editions published by Pow Pow, Vigneault says. (In the last two years the press has also started to acquire more original English titles, including from outside Canada, that are then translated into French.)

“Now almost every title we release in French we are strongly considering when and how we can bring it to market in English,” says Vigneault. And “we do have an absolutely wonderful backlist of still-untranslated works that we can pick from.”

The upside of the delay is that the timing now “is really perfect for a book that tackles the space race and the nationalism and military competition that went along with it,” Vigneault says. “Given the current political climate and the fact that we’re once again in open competition to get to the Moon and beyond makes Conquest hit even harder than before.” 

The Jellyfish King
Brecht Evens, translated by François Vigneault
Drawn and Quarterly, Oct. 6

The Jellyfish King is the fifth book by Paris-based Belgian cartoonist Brecht Evens to be published by Montreal’s Drawn and Quarterly, Canada’s powerhouse of comics publishing.

The new book by the creator of The City of Belgium and Panther is the dazzlingly illustrated education of a young boy in nature, science, and art by a father grief-stricken by the death of the boy’s mother. But that rich education is also an immersion in trauma, paranoia, and conspiracy thinking.

 Quebec cartoonists make up a significant portion of Drawn and Quarterly’s catalogue, and approximately one-third of the publisher’s list each year consists of translated work from around the world. In the past five years, the list has included translations from French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, Chinese, and Italian. 

D&Q commissions and acquires translations via many avenues, but the primary route for acquisitions is searching for exciting new cartoonists at comics festivals around the world. Collaboration with Canadian translator Janet Hong has made it possible for D&Q to introduce a number of Korean authors to the English-language market, including Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, whose fifth book with D&Q, My Friend Kim Jong Un, is one of the highlights of their fall season.

Another route for French-language authors is the unique advantage of D&Q’s own Montreal bookstore, Librairie Drawn & Quarterly. “We sell French and English comics, so we see what sells, what people are excited about from a retailer’s perspective,” says VP of marketing and sales Julia Pohl-Miranda.

“Brecht is an interesting example of an author in translation for a few reasons,” says Pohl-Miranda. “We acquired him based on his cold submission of work to [executive editor] Tom Devlin – not through a publisher, translator, or rights agency. And as a polyglot, he actually has such perfect command of English that his last book, The City of Belgium, he translated with the help of Tom Devlin and no official translator. This time around, François Vigneault is collaborating with Evens on the translation, but is also providing the hand lettering of that translation. It’s the kind of thing that only happens in comics!”

Quebec-based illustrator, author, and translator Vigneault had also undertaken the hand-lettering for the translation of The City of Belgium. For the new book, he worked closely with Brecht to “discuss, re-write, and tweak” the translation. “One of the challenges was to translate the text so that a North American audience would get what is going on, but try not to lose that particular flavour that is woven through the book.”

Vigneault says the manual process of hand-lettering the English edition “puts you in a state of almost being a medieval monk, carefully transcribing words one letter at a time…. It’s about as close to an illuminated manuscript as you can get in the modern world.”