“Matalos to all”: this is the forceful title of the first comic by the French Antoine Maillard (1989), originally published as “The Notch” (The notch). It is a work with marked influences that refer both to the ninth art and to the world of cinema and television. Thus we find traces of the “black hole” of Charles Burns, in the vision of the transformations of adolescence as a disease that can lead to madness; with multiple tributes to the eighties slasher, visible, for example, at those parties packed with young people that, at any moment, can lead to a bloodbath (or a sexual assault); with a small American seaside town for its setting, whose sleepy suburbs may hide imaginable evil, something that immediately makes one think of the David Lynch of “Blue Velvet” o “Twin Peaks”; and, finally, with a mysterious assassin armed with a baseball bat who seems capable of materializing and disappearing at will and who reminds us of the great anime by Satoshi Kon “Paranoia Agent”.
“All I want is for all those sons of bitches to disappear.” comments at a certain moment one of the characters in “Matalos to all” and this is the absolutely nihilistic spirit that runs through the entire work. One night a couple of fifteen-year-olds are murdered by someone brandishing a bat and hiding his face under the brim of a cap. Classes at the local institute are suspended and fear settles in the city. Maillard places the focus of the action on two boys whose friendship is based on how much they have in common: both are considered outcasts, have rather unstable parents and dream of running away from their nightmare life. On the one hand, we have Pola, a sullen and determined girl, who deals deals with the aim of saving enough to escape; and, on the other, Daniel, a very shy boy who, under the grip of a tyrannical mother, begins to lose control of his actions. They just want to go unnoticed, to ignore the contempt that other young people in the city feel towards them. But it gives the impression that the killer follows in his footsteps and chooses to commit his crimes when they are around.
Winner of the 2022 Angoulême Festival Best Noir Graphic Novel award, which makes the story of “Matalos to all” It is the author’s pencil drawing, which floods the vignettes with chiaroscuro and gray, transmitting a permanent atmosphere of restlessness. It is a very remarkable first work that will find its audience among fans of horror or psychological thriller and those who know the darker side of the teenage years.
