The animals best known in comics are usually anthropomorphized—from Donald Duck and Pogo to Usagi Yojimo and Blacksad. The animals in Love: The Tiger are anything but humanized. This graphic novel, the first in a series by writer Frédéric Brrémaud and artist Federico Bertolucci, presents the natural world in all its splendor and terror with brilliant painted art and highly researched settings.
Love: The Tiger, due in January from Magnetic Press, follows a day in the life of a Bengal tiger as it crosses paths with other creatures, hunting a tapir, chasing an elephant and having a savage battle with a black panther. It’s a vivid, riveting story that subtly expresses the animals emotions without softening the edges of nature’s cruelty. At the same time it captures the beauty of these creatures—many of them gravely endangered—and the wilderness they wander through. Wordless panels and cinematic storytelling combine to bring the reader directly into the tiger's life.
Brrémaud and Bertolucci are well known in France for this and other graphic albums; Love: The Tiger won the Special Jury Award at the 2011 Lucca Comics Festival. Magnetic plans to follow this with two more volumes by the duo, Love: The Fox in the fall, and Love: The Lion later in the year. All three volumes are all ages.
