Petit (The Ogre Gods Book One) by Hubert, design and artwork by Bertrand Gatignol. Translation by Jeremy Melloul. Lion Forge, 2018. 9781942367772. 176pp.
I loved Hubert’s fantasy graphic novel Darkly She Goes (with art by Vincent Mallie), so when I saw this on the shelf at the Seattle Public Library I picked it up.
It begins with the giant ogre queen unexpectedly giving birth to a human-sized baby at a dinner party, where the ogres aren’t just being served by humans, they’re eating them, too. The king orders her to kill her child because it’s an aberration; the queen instead gives the child to the king’s kind aunt, Desdée, who loves humans, to raise in secret. (The ogres are becoming smaller and less noble with each generation; Petit’s mother thinks his destiny is to mate with humans and save the line of ruling ogres. She may be right.)
This is a strange book. There’s cannibalism, violence, sex, giants (of course), and pages of text at the beginning of each chapter that tell a character’s backstory. It’s all held together by Gatignol’s black and white art, with its solid blacks and the way he uses grays and white to add texture and depth.
