Last week, Jeanne & Modigliani was reviewed on Comics Verse, one of the most important sources of comic news and reviews on the web, receiving a stellar score of 97%.
“We love to romanticize the suffering that goes into art. Take a look at Van Gogh, for instance. His hallucinations negatively affected his process. Yet we’re always hearing false stories about how he would eat yellow paint in order to feel happiness, as if his illness was the art itself. Audiences seem to derive a lot of joy from stories like this. However, JEANNE & MODIGLIANI, by Nadine Van der Straeten, weaves a real and visceral story that makes such romanticization impossible. Van der Straeten exposes the darkness that came hand-in-hand with the love shared between Jeanne & Modigliani..
Those outside this story might be tempted to run away from its intensity. However, this comic reels the reader in with the charm and excitement of new love. From there, it very realistically toys with the emotions of the reader as a real life abusive situation might. Just like our protagonists, the reader anxiously turns each page and hopes that things can go back to how they once were. This lets us understand how inescapable the situation was.”
