ABSTRACT
One of the works Lequeux and Schlesser discusses is Philippe Squarzoni’s documentary comic about climate change, Saison brune, which they describe neologistically as a “chef-d’oeuvre ecolographique”. Comparing the original French title and its English counterpart provides several insights into the multi-layered complexity of the comic. Whereas the English-language title highlights the pragmatic aspects of Squarzoni’s project, which charts the author’s own subjective attempts to understand the scientific evidence behind climate change, the original title, Saison brune, is more abstract. The documentary comic genre that Saison brune belongs to has attracted considerable scholarly attention over the past decade. In Disaster drawn: visual witness, comics and documentary form, Hillary Chute specifically examines how the genre can visualize catastrophe in ways that images or texts alone cannot. Recalling Morton’s concept of global warming as a hyperobject that has already brought about the end of the world, it would nonetheless be misleading to classify Saison brune as an apocalyptic narrative.
