Last February, Bananas No. 15 had an 8 page article about the works of Cosey. Bananas is a magazine with reviews and articles about comics and graphic novels.
Olivier Jarrige has read all the albums by Cosey and wrote an interesting analysis of his oeuvre, titled ‘Cosey, une affaire de famille‘. In his study of Cosey’s albums, Jarrige discovered that Cosey’s stories develop around family connections, or family-like connections: the characters in his stories can be classified as children, mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers. Doing this, Jarrige discovered some recurring patterns in the stories of Cosey.
For an example, I pick one of the family roles – the mother. The different mothers in Cosey’s work are all fairly old (the exemption is Drolma in the final Jonathan): Thelma and Grace Henderson (Jonathan 11: Oncle Howard est de retour), the mother of Tallulah (Joyeux Noël, May!), the mother of Zeke (Zeke raconte des histoires). They all have some kind of secret to hide, which forms to a certain degree the engine of the stories. The fathers, in contrast, are mostly blind to these secrets – to busy with themselves.
Another interesting notion of Jarrige is the role of mountains as ‘judge’ in some of the stories of Cosey. Something that deserves further study – we all know mountains and landscapes are an important aspect of Cosey’s work, but to assign an active role to it, instead of being a passive surrounding, is quite new to me.
An interesting, innovative view on Cosey’s work, that invites re-reading of the albums!
- You can buy Bananas No. 15 in the webshop of Bananas.
Thanks to Bernard Matthey-Doret