Un Mode de Transport
(a mode of transportation)

Éditions du Rouergue, 2004.

(Out of print.)

Un Mode de Transportation was my gateway book. It’s the bridge between the French-inspired but moody and black-and-white graphic novels I made in the 1990s, and the colorful children’s books I’ve made since. There is no story. Instead, it’s a series of illustrations all centered around the theme of transportation.

In late 1999, I traveled to Montréal to a comics expo to promote my book Dear Julia,. There, I came across the French publisher Éditions du Rouergue and their collection of books that look like and seem like children’s books, but read more like surrealist pamphlets and artist’s diaries. This was the first time I’d come across the work of Jochen Gerner, and Olivier Douzou, and Frédérique Bertrand, all of whom had a profound effect on my work in the years that followed.

With great ambition but not a lot of hope, I left behind some postcards of my drawings. I was happily surprised a year later when I received an email asking me to come up with a subject and go make a book. I’d recently woken up in the middle of the night with the phrase un mode de transport in my head, and I’d written it down. It seemed interesting to me. It could mean something banal, like a car or bicycle. Or it could mean something fantastical, like a spaceship, or a man wearing wings. I didn’t explore any other options. I just started coming up with ideas around the theme and around things that I just wanted to draw. An ice cream truck, driven by a penguin. A circus train. A page of airplanes, inspired by posters and books I had as a kid. All of these drawn in this simple but heavily detailed illustration style I was developing. The line and color and toy-like drawings, and the absurd, unexpected and secretly subversive voice became my calling card for the next decade, culminating with my Everything Goes series in 2011-2013.

The book was featured in Martin Salisbury’s book, Play Pen: New Children’s Book Illustration in 2007.

It’s long out of print and probably impossible to get. But if you have a copy and want it signed or if you know where to find them, press the button.