Musnet: The Tears of the Painter

Musnet concludes with this fourth and final volume. In this final volume, we follow the artist Musnet as he works, and struggles, to make his life as an artist. His life is very similar to how artists used to live and work in 19th-century Europe, and in a way I almost feel a connection to Van Gogh, who also struggled to make it. The story is not just about Musnet himself but about his friends and how they impact his career and life. And like many French graphic novels, the story often has adult themes and violence and the like. The struggles of painters are all told through the eyes of animals, a la Maus. And like a lot of European graphic novels, they are allegorical, examining modern life through a lens that to us Americans might seem silly. To truly understand the story and the metaphors, the reader should probably be in their late teens or older. The art is beautiful, like paintings about a painter. It is not hard to see why this was nominated for a prestigious award in France.