Week of 7/15/2024
This week on The Shapes, Bob starts the job hunt quest. Meanwhile, I give a long-winded anecdote about my recent stopover in Paris.
The Shapes
Close Endeavors of the Bob Kind 17-18
The Parisian Stopover
As many of you already know, I spent 3 months staying in the Congos before making my timely return to the States last week which was not without its initial setbacks being the three-stop platter it was. Departing in the afternoon, the first leg of the journey would begin at N’jili Airport in Kinshasa to Maya Maya Airport in Brazzaville where the same plane would pick up passengers on its way to Charles de Gaulle Airport. With an interval of approximately an hour, the connecting flight at CDG would fly to Heathrow where I’d catch the flight heading to the final destination JFK.
For the uninitiated, Kinshasa and Brazzaville are merely separated by a river that’s an easy ferry ride away, so the travel between the two by air is only 15 minutes, yet that was where my problems began. Weather problems brewed, delaying the departure from Maya Maya by 2 hours. Naturally, as one would predict, this meant by the point I arrived in CDG, the London plane already left, leaving me stranded with my mother and 10-year-old sister in Paris for a day with free accommodations and a meal voucher to make up for it.
While it wasn’t my first time in the supposed “City of Love”, the prospects of being there again sure sounded nice, so my mind immediately sprung to all the urban nooks and crannies I could check out, by which I mean comic book shops (which you’ll figure out why as I go on). Of course, the fun couldn’t begin until checking in at the hotel and setting aside the baggage, which took up half the day due to the airport’s haphazard spaciousness and the staff directing us in contrary direct left to right, north to west, and the deuced catawampus. The free shuttle bus was departing from a different terminal, sending us on a labyrinth of a commute that ended ceremoniously with us embarking on the wrong bus. Eventually relenting to general fatigue from the concrete spelunking, we took the taxi.
After taking an hour to rest in the room, the journey resumed. Tally-ho— to the mall. Yeah, I probably should state the hotel’s location in the suburban neighborhood Rosier is a tease. The only upside was that it’s a quick 10 minutes to Charles de Gaulle (convenient when your flight departs at 8 AM) and there was a dope manga cafe next door.
Besides that, it was damn near indistinguishable from American suburbia. Stupidly huge roads hostile to pedestrians, sidewalks beginning and ending in random places, and acres of parking lots. But hey, at least they’ve got protected bike lanes! Gotta give the developers credit where it’s due, right?
Did I also mention the nearby mall Aeroville marked by its stunning lineup of generic fashion chain stores, fast food eateries (guaranteed to bust your arteries), and other consumerist delights? Now one might be asking why I stepped foot into such a place to which I can just say my sis really wanted to hang out at the arcade and wouldn’t budge otherwise. To be fair though, the arcade had a lot of fun stuff including a free-falling and spinning ride. And for all the redolent corporate confluence, there were still some local businesses and kiosk stands thriving such as the Vietnamese boba tea stand which, mind you, was the most heavenly boba I’ve ever tasted.
Fast forward to late afternoon and I finally get to travel to the center city via bus and commuter train taking about an hour in total. Both were timely, very clean and well-maintained, making for a smooth sailing ride. Hell, the train was so smooth that I was getting drowsy (must be a sedative magic permeating those quarters). It was then as I got off at the Notre Dame station and stepped out into the streets did I feel a cathartic worthiness as I reexperienced the majestic city beauty once more.
As for my comic book shop prancing plan, I didn’t go to more than a comic shop which was the comic shop I had been looking forward to all along, Aaapoum Bapoum aka the comics treasure trove.
From the outside, it looks like a tiny dainty bookstore for dandies and dames, but upon entering, you’re met with a relatively large yet packed space containing two floors of mouth-watering amazement that would give a frothing horndog like R. Crumb a run for their money. The ground level features new releases of the latest alternative comics in both the Francophone and Anglophone scenes alike, manga, American comic books/graphic novels, and your traditional bande dessinee volumes from legacy series such as Tintin and Astrix (I personally went with Roger Leloup’s Yoko Tsuno).
As one would hope, however, the basement was the real gold mine. Even upon approaching the staircase, I was met with an ongoing layout of comic and illustration originals leading downstairs which is an absolute joy to stare at. It only gets better from here as there’s a plethora of children’s graphic literature, comic journalism magazines, and French anthology back issues of classics like Spirou, Metal Hurlant (the French Heavy Metal mag), Charlie, A Suivre, and so so so much more, several of which were priced at 1-3 euros. Even the NYC French bookshop Albertine does not hold a bloody candle to this mind-boggling discovery. Curious about what those exact titles were and want to read me wax zealously about them? Leave a comment or reply to the email.
Inevitably, being the comics fanatic I am, I stocked up on as many of these titles as I could possibly fit in the check-in baggage, spending altogether 95 euros I will never regret. Not to mention I dropped some copies of the French version of The Shapes there!
Oh yeah, I never mentioned it until now, but during my time in the Congos, I got The Shapes #1 & #2 translated and printed into French and released as one volume. It’ll soon be available to purchase on my online storefront when I finally get it up and working, hopefully by early next week.
Overall, even though I only had about an hour to spend shopping around, that brief time alone was a moment of pure bliss worth the world I could never trade regardless of what you offered.
I would love to know what else you got at the French comic shop! Sounds like an amazing place