Les aventures de la Mort et de Lao-Tseu #2

Boucq's surreal comedy series delivers its second outing with Pas de Quartier!, and the cover sets the tone perfectly — a skeletal Death, robes billowing, finds itself rather awkwardly at home in what appears to be a butcher's shop, surrounded by hanging carcasses, a bewildered pig's head, and the general chaos of a tiled abattoir floor. There's something wonderfully absurd about seeing the Grim Reaper amid the meat hooks, scythe at the ready, that captures exactly the darkly comic spirit Casterman's Les Aventures de la Mort et de Lao-Tseu has promised from the start. If this 2000 album's cover is any indication, Boucq continues to find rich, irreverent humor in pairing mortality with the mundane.