'Jazz Club' with story and art by Alexandre Clerisse is a werid graphic novel about a former saxophone player and the end of the world.

Norman was a good saxophone player until he is singled out and kidnapped to join a madman's jazz band to play out the new millennium in 30 years. In the following 30 years, Norman loses his ability to play, but that doesn't seem to stop people from appreciating his music.

This is a trippy story. I liked the sparseness of it and the odd characters. The art really fits the craziness of the whole thing.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Europe Comics and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

This was just so bizarre, but actually kind of funny!
Norman is a jazz musician, he plays the soprano saxophone. One day, just when his band is about to make it big, his girlfriend Emily dumps him for three valid reasons: he drinks too much, he snorts way too much coke, and he pays no attention to her because all he thinks about is music.
That very night, Normal loses the ability to play... at least he thinks he does. Everyone else seems to think the weird Donald Duck noises coming out of his horn are amazing but he just doesn't want to play anymore, so he flees to the south of France and becomes a recluse.
Also, there are flashbacks to the summer of 1966, and a doomsday cult that may or may not worship jazz... and which may or may not have been waiting to find Norman for 30-some years.

Originally published in France by Dargaud in 2007, now in an eBook English translation from Europe Comics, Alexandre Clérisse's Jazz Club is a slight work perhaps, but the bold, colourful painted artwork has a stylish quality that not only fits in very much with its jazz theme and the 60s' period characteristics of the work, but it also represents other moods that its main character undergoes over the course of 33 years.

Jazz Club opens in Los Angeles in 1966, just as Norman's life is going off the rails. A soprano saxophonist in a jazz band, the lifestyle of drugs and alcohol have been taking their toll, and now his girlfriend Emily has walked out on him. Unable to make his instrument sing, Norman walks out on his band in the middle of a set, tells them to cancel the tour and goes off on a bender. Meeting a woman in the bar, the two of them head out in a car into the desert, and into trouble for Norman.

Before we get to the nature of the trouble, the story jumps to 33 years later to the South of France on the eve of the millennium. Norman has long ago left the lifestyle of Los Angeles behind him for a more peaceful existence in the French countryside, but he hasn't entirely left his troubles behind him. Emily, who he hasn't seen for over 30 years is about to come and visit him for the New Year celebrations, but on New Year's Eve in 1999 much of France is to be devastated by storms, and there's more than one brewing in the woods around Norman's new home.

The plot line that ties the two time periods of Jazz Club together is light-hearted and a bit silly, involving missing jazz musicians and a strange cult. Also in the intervening years, Norman has become something of a jazz legend, much to his astonishment since he knows he's never been able to squeeze a half-way melodic note out of his instrument since the disastrous final tour after Emily left him. But there's more to Jazz Club than just its plot. Alexandre Clérisse's art work is not only quite beautiful, but it does manage to capture a world of contrasts of place, character and time.

Clérisse's painted panels have a 60s' hepcat cartoon feel about them, but this style extends well beyond the jazz club scenes, capturing the heat and danger of the Californian desert and contrasting it with the gorgeous winter colours of the south of France. There are lots of little details in the panels that add to mood and character and a lovely sense of movement, particularly in the windswept French countryside scenes. Once the conspiracy plot has been blown away, there remains a poignant sense of two people having gone on a long journey, and it's more than just from LA to the South of France.

The story of this book is sad yet touching.
I like how the illustration really support the whole story makes it beautiful to read :)

Can You Dig It? I Knew That You Could.

This is a cool, jazzy bit of improv that could be a metaphor for the creative life, or just a goof on artists and musicians. (And maybe those are the same things anyway.)

Our hero is a jazz saxophonist who's about to hit the bigtime when he slams into a creative block, (because of booze, a woman, drugs, and maybe something else). He disappears and reappears, ends up an expat in France, is rediscovered, kidnapped by diehard fans at least twice, and finally brought to a fitting ending. And he spends some time in the trunk of a car.

The story is actually told in an understated and sort of deadpan way, which gives it a cool and mellow tone. The drawings are simple pencils with only a little ink and bright, even garish, colors. Expressions are minimal and figures are distorted, which gives each panel a hip, fluid, abstract quality.

The story is broken up into chapters, and the chapters are out of time order. That isn't at all confusing as it turns out, and gives the tale a nice edge. It feels a bit like a music album, with the chapters being separate tracks. That said, though, the real appeal here to me was the visuals. This could have been drawn dark and noirish in that doomed musician "Young Man With A Horn" sort of style. But this is all light, balanced heavily toward yellows and reds and oranges and blue. That puckish changeup on how you would expect such a story to be drawn is another aspect of the hip and jazzy feel you get from the book.

So, I ended up enjoying this very much, and appreciated both the art and the storytelling, (and a good bit of deadpan humor). A nice find.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

This is a graphic novel written and illustrated by French designer Alexandre Clérisse. I was immediately drawn to this book, not necessarily for the story but more for the amazing artwork. The illustrations are bright and colourful, the images filling every page. As a graphic novel it follows quite a traditional style in terms of layout; there are no large spreads, all of the boxes are laid out plainly. Usually I would find this a little boring but in this case I feel that if the layouts were more experimental, it would have been more difficult to follow because of the illustration style. Overall, the illustration style was my favourite aspect of the book.

From this it can be inferred that I was not a big fan of the story itself. I found that the story was quite forgettable and didn't capture my attention enough. Interesting things happened every so often but I feel that it needed to be a lot longer in order to flesh out the characters and develop the plot more fully.

On the whole, I liked this book but it's not something I would recommend for the story. If you want to read a beautiful book, give this a go, or check out Alexandre Clérisse's artwork.

An interesting art style, but made it difficult to read the text at times. I'll recommend this one through ILLs.

Norman is a normal guy who loves his music and neglects his girlfriend in 1966 when the story starts, we see him heartbroken as his love leaves him. Fed up with his lack of attention she realises he loves jazz far more than he could ever love her.
However in the process of her leaving him he loses the ability and inclination to make music again.
The story is cleverly illustrated and often the drawings are allowed to speak for themselves. The story is complex and bizarre as Norman shunning his playing results in him becoming something of a cult figure and his music has a group of fans who havenever forgotten his sound.
The story the switches from his former life to his seclusion in France some 33 years later. It involves New Year's Eve 1999 and all the Y2K conspiracies and fears that this event will trigger the end of civilisation as we know it. Norman has unwittingly been caught up in this coming catastrophe. Members of the cult have sought him out believing his playing will herald a new dawn. For once in his life however, Norman is anything but morose for his one true love has been communicating with himand is coming to spend New Year's with him in his French home.
A tale of misplaced love and lost opportunities. That a loss in one area can reveal what shows where true happiness lay but for selfish choices when it's gone it's too late and what we thought was fulfilling is empty and souless.
33 years too late but can Norman find his true love before it's too late or will his music come back through misplaced dogma and a fanatical cult to frustrate his last chance of romance and wouldn't another missed opportunity, and losing Emily again might as will be the end of the world

If you ever thought that jazz music fans were weird, then this is proof. A saxophonist gives up on his career when he loses his girl and his mojo, only to be kidnapped and forced to play at a private bar with a band of fellow hostages, but that proves to be not the only demanding audience of his life… A little out there, all told – the fact someone pops up out of nowhere at the hostage taking, someone talks in pictograms as opposed to dialogue, and more mean this will be a divisive title. It wasn't bad, but not really my thing.