Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Return of the Honey Buzzard
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1988
WEBSITE: https://www.aimeedejongh.com/
CITY: Rotterdam
STATE:
COUNTRY: Netherlands
NATIONALITY:
“Aimee de Jongh is an award-winning animator, illustrator, and comics artist. She draws a daily strip for the Dutch newspaper Metro Holland. She lives in Rotterdam.” * https://www.aimeedejongh.com/about.html * http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6823752/bio * http://www.cbr.com/aimee-de-jongh-return-of-the-honey-buzzard/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2015013124
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2015013124
HEADING: Jongh, AimeÌe de, 1988-
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670 __ |a De terugkeer van de wespendief, ©2014: |b title page (AimeÌe de Jongh) page 4 of cover (born 1988)
PERSONAL
Born 1988.
EDUCATION:Willem de Kooning Academy, B.A, 2011; also attended KASK animation school.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Comic artist, animator, and illustrator. Exhibitions: Kulturmuseum, 2007; Gallery DROOG, 2011; Whitney Museum of American Art, 2014; 18th Street Arts Center, 2014; Kunsthal Kade, 2015.
AWARDS:Third prize, Fanthology manga competition, 2004, for Second Sight; second prize, Kunstbende, 2004, for Bored; first prize, Kunstbende, 2005, for Fall; Person of the Year Shield, 2006; second prize, Drempelprijs, 2011, and WDKA Maaskantprijs, 2012, both for One Past Two; third prize, Benelux Beeldverhalen, 2011, for Mariko; Dutch Comic Author of the Year, 2015, for De Terugkeer van de Wespendief.
WRITINGS
Author of comics, including One Past Two, Mariko, Fall, Bored, and Second Sight. Also creator of the animated film Aurora and author of the “Snippers” comic for the Metro newspaper. Creator of commercial animations for TV shows, including De Wereld Draait Door and BNN. Contributor to music videos and children’s books.
SIDELIGHTS
Aimée de Jongh is an animator, comic artist and illustrator who lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. De Jongh attended KASK animation school and earned her bachelor of arts degree from Willem de Kooning Academy in 2011. Yet, she published her first comics book, Aimée TV in 2006. Since then, she has created such comics as One Past Two, Mariko, Fall, Bored, and Second Sight. She is also the creator of the animated film Aurora and author of the “Snippers” comic for the Metro newspaper. De Jongh’s work is known for combining manga and Japanese animated films with European comics. This influence can be seen in both her written and animated work, as well as her contributions to music videos and children’s books, as well as her commercial animations for TV shows, including De Wereld Draait Door and BNN. In addition to her comics and film work, de Jongh has created video intsallations and exhibited her work at galleries and museums around the world.
De Jongh is perhaps best known in the United States for her 2014 graphic novel, De Terugkeer Van De Wespendief. The book was translated into English as The Return of the Honey Buzzard in 2016, and it has been well-received by critics and readers alike. Notably, the work in this graphic novel, was composed similarly to de Jongh’s animations; the author draws every frame by hand. Also notable is the story’s source; The Return of the Honey Buzzard is inspired by the classic young adult novel, Lord of the Flies. As de Jongh noted in an online CBR interview with Alex Dueben, “Lord of the Flies is one of my favorite books, because of it’s unusual setting and the growth of the characters. What I loved most is that the children in the book seem like innocent and curious creatures at first, but by the end of the book, they’ve turned into mean and angry adults.”
Simon, the mean and angry adult who takes center stage in The Return of the Honey Buzzard, is depressed, and he’s depressed because he and his wife will likely have to sell his bookshop. The shop has been in Simon’s family for generations, but nothing Simon and his wife do can seem to save it, or them, from certain financial ruin. As Simon grieves the impending end of his family legacy, he is witness to a suicide; a woman kills herself at the train crossing, and the image of her bloody death is seared into his brain. These two traumatic events lead Simon to withdraw even further from his wife. He sits in his room and loses himself in memories of his childhood. Then Simon befriend a young woman who often comes into the bookstore, and he finds he can tell her everything that he can’t seem to tell his own wife.
Discussing the graphic novel’s inspiration further, de Jongh told Dueben: “The original idea was to make a graphic novel based on . . . Lord of the Flies . . . I love the dramatic events and themes in the story. The book was never adapted to comic, only to film, and I thought that it would be a great project to start with. My publisher The Busy Bee, which is one of the largest publishers in The Netherlands, soon contacted Golding’s publisher to talk it through. We got pretty close, but in the end, we didn’t get the rights–So we had to start all over again.” De Jongh added: “Then, my editor proposed to make an original story, based on the same themes and elements that intrigued me. That’s how we started. It was almost like a giant puzzle of things that we liked, of which I picked certain things that were interesting enough for a final draft. Based on those, I started writing the new story, and a couple months later the sketched pages were finished.”
Praising the result in Publishers Weekly, a critic announced that The Return of the Honey Buzzard is “like an engrossing but terrifying dream.” The critic also found that “de Jongh’s dark, circular psychological drama . . . gets its hooks in readers immediately.” John Seven, writing in the online Comics Beat, was also impressed, and he felt that “Simon’s psychological journey is something that any adult of a certain age can identify with. Not that we all have traumas of the level that Simon experiences, but we do all have things that just won’t go away, and even after decades can affect, often unconsciously, the path of your life and the decisions you make in regard to it.” Offering further applause on the Letteren Fonds Website, a reviewer advised that de Jongh “brilliantly weaves together the financial crisis, bullying, friendship and coping with trauma and shows true mastery of the graphic narrative.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, October 10, 2016, review of The Return of the Honey Buzzard.
ONLINE
Aimée de Jongh Website, http://aimeedejongh.com (June 26, 2017).
CBR, http://www.cbr.com/ (June 26, 2017), Alex Dueben, author interview.
Comics Beat, http://www.comicsbeat.com/ (December 13, 2016), John Seven, review of The Return of The Honey Buzzard.
Letteren Fonds, http://www.letterenfonds.nl/ (June 26, 2017), review of The Return of The Honey Buzzard.*
About
Aimée de Jongh (1988) is an award-winning animator, comic artist and illustrator from Rotterdam (the Netherlands).
Her work was influenced by European comics, manga and Japanese animated films. At the early age of 17 Aimée
already published her first comicbook, Aimée TV. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in Animation in 2011,
Aimée proceeded to become a promising "sequential artist" with a large variety of styles and techniques.
Her animated film Aurora screened in 71 Dutch cinemas and she is the creator of 10 comic series, including the
daily Snippers for newspaper Metro in Holland. Other works include children's books illustrations, music videos
and commercial animations for TV shows like De Wereld Draait Door and BNN. Aimée also worked with L.A.
artist Miljohn Ruperto and made two video installations, which made it to the Whitney Museum in New York.
In september 2014 her first graphic novel was released, called 'De Terugkeer Van De Wespendief'. The book
was a great success and has been translated in French by Dargaud. In 2016, a Spanish and English version
of the book will be released as well.
At the moment she works on a 60-minute animation film with harpist Lavinia Meijer, as well as her
new graphic novel, written by the acclaimed Belgian comic author Zidrou.
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Exhibitions
2015: Kunsthal Kade, Amersfoort
2014: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
2014: 18th Street Arts Center, Los Angeles
2011: Gallery DROOG, Amsterdam
2007: Kulturmuseum, Oslo
Awards
2015: Dutch Comic Author of the Year for De Terugkeer van de Wespendief
2014: Special Mention for music video Last Resistance at the Klik Animation Festival
2012: WDKA Maaskantprijs for One Past Two
2011: Benelux Beeldverhalen Prijs 3rd prize for Mariko
2011: Drempelprijs 2nd prize for One Past Two
2006: Person of the Year Shield
2005: Kunstbende 1st Prize for Fall
2004: Kunstbende 2nd Prize for Bored
2004: Fanthology manga competition 3rd prize for Second Sight
Clients
VARA, BNN, Submarine, Zoo Magazine, Dagblad Metro Holland, NTR SchoolTV, RVU Educatieve omroep,
VPRO, NRC Handelsblad, HP/De Tijd, Kits, 7Days, North Sea Jazz Festival, LEV Pictures and more.
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What others say
(About De Terugkeer van de Wespendief) "An extremely mature debut. Makes you wish that far
more graphic novels of this standard would appear in the Netherlands." - NRC Handelsblad
"Her comics Jacht and Vlucht are pinned to the wall at my workspace and I really enjoy looking at fox
and rabbit every day. So, consider me a fan." - Jakob Schuh, director of the Oscar Nominated animation The Gruffalo
"She is a natural effects animator, I love her work. She is a rare artist, there are not enough good 2D FX artists left."
- Joseph Gilland, special effects animator for Walt Disney Pictures, including Pocahontas and Brother Bear.
Documentary
Want to see the artist at work? Watch the documentary "Aimée" made by Alwin Ritstier, Lisa van der Drift and Nathalie Everts down below.
Aimée de Jongh was born in 1988 and lives in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She literally draws every single day and has worked for six years as a professional illustrator and comic artist. In 2006 BeeDee published her first book, called Aimée TV. Her style in drawing is influenced by the Japanese manga comics, yet she gives it her own, recognizable touch. Since 2007, de Jongh has been an animation student at the Willem de Kooning Academy; in 2010 she also studied a semester at the KASK animation school in Ghent. She prefers to draw every frame to establish a pure and hand-drawn effect. When making films, she's part of the whole process - from storyboard to sound editing.
Aimée de Jongh Prepares The Return of the Honey Buzzard
11.29.2016
by Alex Dueben
in Comic News
Comment
Aimée de Jongh Prepares The Return of the Honey Buzzard
Trained in animation, Dutch cartoonist Aimée de Jongh has made a number of short films and just completed “Behind the Telescopes,” which is a collaboration with the musician Lavinia Meijer. She’s drawn children’s books, has a daily comic strip “Snippers,” and has created a number of short comics. Now, her first graphic novel — “The Return of the Honey Buzzard” — has just been translated into English.
The book, available now from SelfMadeHero, is de Jongh’s first graphic novel, but it shows she’s already developed a mastery of the form. Earlier this year, her second graphic novel was published in Holland, and a feature film was made based on “The Return of the Honey Buzzard.” And while the book establishes de Jongh as one of the great young cartoonists in the world, she took time out of her busy schedule to talk with CBR about her graphic novel debut.
Where did the idea for “The Return of the Honey Buzzard” originate?
Aimée de Jongh: The original idea was to make a graphic novel based on the incredible book “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding. I love the dramatic events and themes in the story. The book was never adapted to comic, only to film, and I thought that it would be a great project to start with. My publisher The Busy Bee, which is one of the largest publishers in The Netherlands, soon contacted Golding’s publisher to talk it through. We got pretty close, but in the end, we didn’t get the rights–So we had to start all over again.
honeybuzzard-1
Then, my editor proposed to make an original story, based on the same themes and elements that intrigued me. That’s how we started. It was almost like a giant puzzle of things that we liked, of which I picked certain things that were interesting enough for a final draft. Based on those, I started writing the new story, and a couple months later the sketched pages were finished.
What is it about “Lord of the Flies” that continues to resonate with you? And what aspect of the book did you feel you needed to have in “The Return of the Honey Buzzard?”
“Lord of the Flies” is one of my favorite books, because of it’s unusual setting and the growth of the characters. What I loved most is that the children in the book seem like innocent and curious creatures at first, but by the end of the book, they’ve turned into mean and angry adults. And this change happened because they needed to survive. In “The Return of the Honey Buzzard,” there’s something similar, in the way that Simon needs to go through many changes in order to get his life back together. Changing personalities, surviving, these are all themes in the book. But also selfishness: It’s interesting how kids can appear selfish to us, adults, but when it comes to life and death, we all will think of ourselves first before turning to other people. That’s what the bullies (and eventually Ralf too) are doing in my book as well. They are choosing what works best for them, without considering the consequences it will have on other people.
What was the process of writing the book like?
I wouldn’t say that I wrote the book, in the conventional way. I usually work with thumbnails of each page, which I sketch very rapidly. Almost as if I see the film of the book and I’m translating it into a storyboard. It’s not working quite as well for me when I write or type a full scenario. Expressing movement and pictures into words feels so limited. It kills the dynamics and emotion that I have in mind quite easily. So dialogue and text are really the last phase for me. When the flow on every page works, that’s when I’ll fill in the dialogue. The flow is everything to me – and that’s what makes the book read like a film sometimes. It’s also why I don’t use text in every panel or even on every page. Sometimes the pictures say it all already.
You’d been making comics for many years, but what was the experience like working on a graphic novel like this?
It was a great adventure. Normally, I work for the Dutch newspaper “Metro,” where I publish my daily gag comic series “Snippers.” It’s a typical four-panel humouristic comic, and I’ve been writing and drawing it for five years now. It’s nice to do, but I could never draw very detailed backgrounds for example, because that’s just not the place for that. Storywise I felt the same: I could never go very deep, while I was actually very interested in storytelling and human behaviour. The graphic novel finally gave me the freedom to draw and write the book I wanted to make. It’s been incredibly hard sometimes, but it was so much fun to do. I realized this genre is more for me. It fits my personality better, I guess.
Are you interested in birds? Where did that aspect of the book come from?
honeybuzzard-2
Not particularly. The idea of the honey buzzard came from a Dutch TV documentary about wildlife in our country. The honey buzzard is called a “wespendief” here, which translates to “wasp thief.” I found that a very poetic name, and I instantly wrote it down. I learned more about the bird on TV and internet, and found out that it had fascinating habits, that would work well as a metaphor. That’s how it all started. Still I’m not much of a bird expert, and I don’t think I’ll ever be.
How did you decide on the way the book looks. Why did you draw the book in pen and ink and not use color?
I’m a big fan of black and white comics, whether it’s the cityscapes of Will Eisner or the post-apocalyptic grounds of Katsuhiro Otomo. I think it’s incredible what you can do with just two colors. Depth, movement, shade, light. I wanted to make a black and white book from the start and my publisher believed in it as well. I’m glad we kept it that way – I love how the lines are sketchy but never chaotic. It would’ve been a shame if all those lines would’ve been filled with colours and gradients.
You mentioned a few different cartoonists, but as you were starting to think about the book that would become “The Return of the Honey Buzzard,” were there comics you were looking at or thinking about? Not necessarily models, but a starting point for the book, similar to how “Lord of the Flies” was in a narrative sense?
I didn’t use any books in particular to draw “The Return of the Honey Buzzard.” It’s more subtle than that. In a way, I used all the graphic novels I ever read, because they’re somehow still with me when I draw. I’ve read Craig Thompson’s “Blankets” a million times, so I’m sure that his style is influencing me on a subconscious level. But it’s not like I’ve really looked at books for reference during the process. I also didn’t read too many comics in that period, because I didn’t want to get too influenced by what others did.
You also make a daily comic, “Snippers,” as you mentioned. For people who haven’t read it, what is the strip like?
The comic is about me and my fictional roommate Stef. We really just go about our business like everyone else, but funnier. It’s about everyday life, or maybe more about the struggle of living. The jokes can be very humouristic, but sometimes it’s also more philosophical and subtle. I like to make readers think about how the ordinary things in life can be ironic, or funny – even if they are maybe a bit painful too. I love making fun of my own faults and mistakes, and luckily, I’m not alone. I hear that many people recognize themselves when reading the comic.
Do you in fact have a roommate who is being fictionalized? Or did you just invent a character named Stef for the comic strip “you” to interact with?
honeybuzzard-4
I invented Stef to have someone to talk to in the comic. But I did not use an existing friend or relative – that would be too difficult. I make up everything of the conversation in the comic, and I could really imagine that person not liking or connecting with the things I would make him say. It’s easier to just use a fictional character, so you never have to discuss that. As for me, that’s easier. If I don’t want my own character to say something, I’ll just let her say something else. But I can’t decide that for other people.
Were daily comics a big influence for you as a kid and when you were starting out as an artist?
Not necessarily. I did read many Belgian comics like “Spirou,” “Tintin” and “Lucky Luke.” Those were the biggest influence on me when I was younger. When other kids wanted to be a dancer or a soccer player, I wanted to become a comic author. That never really changed.
You also had a new book “Reborn” which came out in the Netherlands earlier this year, which is a very different book. Did you intentionally want your next book to have a different look and approach?
“Reborn” was in fact a commissioned comic book, a 44-page one shot, about a girl who finds out that she’s the first human clone. It’s about finding your identity and dealing with where you came from. The comic was published in a bi-weekly magazine that focusses mainly on traditional Belgian and Dutch comics. That’s why I decided to change the style of drawing, and make it a bit more “classic” in a way. I wouldn’t say that I prefer drawing that way. It was purely a choice to make it fit in the magazine it was published in.
Besides your comics work, you studied animation in school and have made many animated projects over the years. What for you is the relationship like between comics and animation? Do you think of them as similar art forms or are they very different for you?
They are very similar in the concept phase, when I’m working out the characters, flow and story. But when it comes to the work itself, it’s very different. Animation isn’t really something you do alone, it’s teamwork. Another important difference is the amount of work. It takes up to 25 drawings to animate 1 second, and I usually animate 1 to 3 seconds on a day. That could be the movement of a person lifting his hand a few inches, for example. But on the same day I could draw two comic pages, in which a character can travel, fight, talk, meet people, where it can kill or die. That’s why drawing a comic gives you the idea that you’re progressing more quickly. That’s nice. As a job, I think I prefer making comics. Still, animation has music, sounds, and it’s magical in a way. In my free time, I love looking at both media just as much, that’s for sure.
Could you talk a little about “Behind the Telescopes,” which just premiered?
honeybuzzard-3
“Behind the Telescopes” is a fully animated film that I just finished last month. The project is quite unique, because it combines live music with an exclusive animated film, that is only played together with the music. The music is played by harpist Lavinia Meijer, who is no doubt the best harpist that we have in Holland, and has worked with Philip Glass and many other composers. She wanted to tell the story about young astronaut Lyra. Lyra decides to start a colony on another planet, because Earth is in danger, with of all the refugees and the environment issues. Still, in a way, she becomes a refugee herself. Her journey is illustrated in the live music, as well as the live sound effects and the animation. There’s pieces from Philip Glass, James Horner, Nils Frahm and even John Mayer. The complete show is 70 minutes long and took exactly a year to make. It’s a stunning experience to see, because the music and images are perfectly balanced. I hope we manage to travel abroad with the show soon. For anyone who’s interested, there’s a trailer on my webpage (www.aimeedejongh.com).
Have you started thinking about your next book? One that unlike “Reborn” is more in “your” style and playing with the space to experiment with storytelling?
I’m working on a new graphic novel, together with the acclaimed Belgian comic writer Zidrou. He is one of the best and very well-known in Europe. It’s a great honor to work with him, and the book will be something special too. It’s about two older people who fall in love, while struggling with showing and loving their older self. The book will have it’s release at Dargaud first, hopefully somewhere next year. It will be more in my realistic style of drawing, for sure.
“The Return of the Honey Buzzard” has also been made into a movie. What was the experience of that like?
First off: I still can’t believe that there’s a film based on my book. It all happened so quickly. And it’s very weird, to be honest. I saw how the crew went looking for locations that looked like the fictional ones I came up with for the book. Or how they searched for actors that looked like the characters I designed from scratch. It’s even more fascinating to visit the set – it’s really like walking in your own book. But I’m also very proud and I realize that it doesn’t happen very often with graphic novels like this one. It’s such a subtle and psychological story, and they did a great job! I loved the end result. During the making of the film, I wasn’t really involved, and I’m glad. They were professionals doing what they do best. I did my part by making the book, and I let them do the rest. I did get to play a little part, a cameo, as a visitor in the bookstore. I’m buying my own book–really corny, I know! But you won’t really notice unless you know the book’s cover. The film will be released in Spring 2017 and will be broadcasted on Dutch TV. Hopefully it will go to some international film festivals too. I’m a bit nervous though, to hear what the audience loved more–the book or the film.
Aimée de Jongh
Aimée de Jongh (b. 1988) is a prize-winning animator, cartoon-strip artist and illustrator, who is influenced by European graphic novels, manga and Japanese animated films and commands a wide range of styles and techniques. She has created a daily cartoon strip for the newspaper Metro and a music video for Wende Snijders. Her animated film Aurora was shown in seventy-one Dutch cinemas. Her work has been exhibited in The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Kulturmuseum in Oslo, among others. The Return of the Honey-Buzzard is her first graphic novel.
The Return of the Honey Buzzard
Publishers Weekly.
263.41 (Oct. 10, 2016): p65.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Return of the Honey Buzzard
Aimee de Jongh, trans. from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison. SelfMadeHero, dist. by Abrams, $22.95 (160p) ISBN 978-1-910593-16-5
Like an engrossing but terrifying dream, de Jongh's dark, circular psychological drama (originally published in the Netherlands) gets its hooks in readers immediately. Simon, a bearded, bird-loving protagonist, is already depressed at the
story's start because he and his wife will likely have to sell the bookshop that's been in his family for generations. That's before a woman commits suicide in front of him at a train crossing. Traumatized by the event, Simon withdraws
from his wife into memories of childhood, which metastasize into another strand of gnawing guilt. He also strikes up a friendship with a book-loving female student whom he tells everything that he keeps from his wife. Though
credulity is sometimes stretched by all the catastrophes befalling Simon, the narrative has a page-turning quality frequently absent from psychologically astute graphic novels. In her graphic novel debut, de Jongh draws with a spare but
expansive eye that captures the dramatically empty spaces and dark woods that emphasize the subconscious trauma threaded through this elegantly rendered tale. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Return of the Honey Buzzard." Publishers Weekly, 10 Oct. 2016, p. 65. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466616187&it=r&asid=88b54e51f82a094434f860c2d1532d29. Accessed 28 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466616187
Review: Missing the mark on magic realism, but doing well with realism itself
12/13/2016 5:00 PM BY JOHN SEVEN 1 COMMENT
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honeybuzzard_cover
Looking at the effects of trauma as a long term property that you find visible bursts of in the short term, The Return Of The Honey Buzzard evokes Nabokov and magic realism in a way that simplifies the concept and plays well to younger people, but might be a little unsatisfying and literal for adult readers.
Simon inherited the Antonisse Bookshop from his father, and he has turned it into a massive roadblock to achieving any of his personal dreams in life. Vowing to keep it alive at all costs — and if unable to, to go down with the ship out of some sense of duty — Simon is standing by and preparing for the closing of the shop, even as his wife has brokered a solution to save it. The solution does not appeal to the quiet oath that Simon has taken to allow the bookshop to be the seagull around his neck.
But the bookstore isn’t the only thing that from the past that is clinging to Simon. There’s also the memory of his childhood friend, Ralf, who is tortured by bullies in school, and who elicits a great sense of guilt in Simon. There’s also a more recent jolt — Simon witnesses a violent tragedy that begins to cause him to move more inside himself and allow the burdens of the past to overwhelm his motions in the present. Some of that begins to change when he makes the acquaintance of a younger girl named Regina, and a friendship develops between the two.
For all the subtext about magic realism that is scattered throughout the book, the presentation of the story is extremely meat and potatoes and entrenched in the world we inhabit. Magic realism is a literary device that creates fictional dimensions that deny logical parsing as they fold in the impossible with the mundane, making the incredible, the weird, the mysterious just a part of the experience of the characters. That’s not really what happens here — magic realism is used more as a way of making logical the internal emotional struggles of the character. Magic realism should be, well … magic. And it’s not here. It’s actually a little mundane.
That’s a little disappointing, as it seems like a great chance to get all meta about the concept of magic reality in literary terms and use this genuinely interesting personal drama as a way to explain it to the younger audience this seems best suited for.
But even as a missed opportunity, I still liked The Return of the Honey Buzzard, because despite what it might have missed in the loftier corners of its interest, it does well with the emotional parts. Simon’s psychological journey is something that any adult of a certain age can identify with. Not that we all have traumas of the level that Simon experiences, but we do all have things that just won’t go away, and even after decades can affect, often unconsciously, the path of your life and the decisions you make in regard to it.
You never realize just how hard that is to grasp until you get old enough to have to deal with it. You can intellectually understand it when you’re young, but the hold it has over your life is unfathomable. Aimee de Jongh presents this with the same literalism that she does magic realism — while I can tell she hasn’t quite reached the age where she’s hit this horror of self-awareness, it’s obvious that she knows it’s coming, and she’s pretty good at presenting it in a way that is prescient to others who are only still on their way with her.
Aimée de Jongh
The Return of the Honey-Buzzard
The Return of the Honey-Buzzard
Psychological thriller in graphic form from the Netherlands’ youngest and most promising talent
The Return of the Honey-Buzzard is a visual masterpiece of magic-realist tension. Its apparently sketchy yet precise style, its subject matter and its filmic narrative are reminiscent of Craig Thompson’s Blankets and Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.
Simon Antonisse, and his wife Laura, had reluctantly taken on his parents’ bookshop. Now that it is threatened with closure because of the financial crisis, he becomes increasingly self-absorbed. This is made worse by his witnessing a suicide in the woods on his way one day to the building where his books are stored. Unable to open up and share his experiences with others, he spends more and more time in the storeroom where he withdraws in his mind to his schooldays and his friend Ralph, who died while trying to take revenge on the bullies who were making his life a misery.
This repressed trauma of childhood gradually turns Simon’s life into a nightmare. Then he meets the mysterious Regina, with whom he feels a close bond. She alone seems able to bring him comfort and peace. But who is Regina?
Aimée de Jongh’s decision to draw in taut black-and-white with a powerful narrative rhythm, places the focus entirely on Simon’s inner world. She brilliantly weaves together the financial crisis, bullying, friendship and coping with trauma and shows true mastery of the graphic narrative.