In their Winter 2022 catalog, Drawn & Quarterly have revealed they will be publishing “Time Zone J,” an autobiographical graphic novel by Canadian underground cartoonist Julie Doucet. Set in 1989, the book will follow a 23-year old Doucet as she flies to France to meet a soldier she befriended via fan mail. “Time is not on their side — the soldier is just on furlough for a few days — but the two make the most of their visit and discuss future plans, maybe even Christmas in Doucet’s city, Montreal.”
The book will mark the first time Doucet has inked a comic since the ’90s, when she quit after becoming exhausted by the sexism in the industry. Since 2000, Doucet has been exploring other art forms, including non-sequential illustrations, sculpture, and animation: her last book, 2016’s “Carpet Sweeper Tales,” was a collection of collages made using images from ’70s Italian photo comics (fumetti). In a 2019 interview, Doucet said she began drawing again regularly after the Charlie Hebdo attack, “when I guess everyone was talking about grabbing a pen and starting to draw — the power of a pen. So, I just took one, and I tried something and all of a sudden it looked like, oh, this is… it was flowing and it felt creative, which hadn’t happened in a long time.”
She shared she was just “filling sketchbooks,” “drawing people, and it ends up being crowds and crowds and crowds of people,” with no narrative in sight at the time. The book’s art will “overflow with images pulled from past and present, faces and people that have inspired Doucet across more than three decades”: she will also portray herself as she appears now, as opposed to when she was 23, blurring the line between memory and fantasy.
The 144-page “Time Zone J” will release in hardcover in March 2022, and retail for $34.95 (Canadian), or $29.95 (USD).
