[CLICK EACH IMAGE TO ENLARGE, or RIGHT CLICK > SAVE LINK AS...]

But “Du Même Côté” was not exactly the usual fare. Here, more or less, is what you would have seen if you had held the pages up to the light:

[AGAIN, CLICK EACH IMAGE TO ENLARGE, or RIGHT CLICK > SAVE LINK AS...]

My apologies to everyone, including the author, for any and all deficiencies in the above presentation, but I think — I hope! — my crudely photoshopped images are clear enough to give you the flavour, at least, of Mr Ilić′s formal experimentation.

However, if you’re still unsure what, exactly, is going on in the story, you could do no better than to read the description of “Du Même Côté” that Mr Ilić himself posted here at RCN on 21 September 2010 at 10:08 am:

At that time, I was into playing with comics as a media, and the idea of the comics was to be printed on both sides of the page. Because characters are two dimensional, they don’t have a sense of third dimension. When they are standing against a white wall / magazine sheet, and hearing voices on the other side, they don’t know that they’re actually hearing themselves on the reverse side of the page. When they are shooting / stabbing into the wall, they don’t understand that they are actually killing themselves as the knife comes through to them on the other side of the paper. Only when you hold the page up to the light, do you understand the full picture.

Not surprisingly, it was the above description that prompted me to hunt down a copy of Métal Hurlant #57 so I could present “Du Même Côté” here for your, and my, reading enjoyment. And though it cost me a few bucks — 8.25 EUR, to be exact — I think it was worth it. But then again, I have a real soft spot for black humour and bleak endings.

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To read the five single-page fantasies by Mirko Ilić that were published in Epic Illustrated back in the day, click here.

I wonder… is the Corben influence on Ilić′s comics as obvious to you as it is to me?

Another visible influence: Rene Laloux’s 1973 movie, Fantastic Planet.

BONUS LINK:

Success Secrets of the Graphic Design Superstars: Mirko Ilić

Bonus Links:

Wikipedia: Mirko Ilić

Mirko Ilić Corp. official site

Mirko Ilić Exhibition on Flickr – includes a photo of the framed original artwork for “The Victor”; also, this is cool.