Posted in: Comics, Digital | Tagged: 3 secondes, 3 seconds, Comics, delcourtes, jonathan cape, marc-antoine mathieu

Following A Beam Of Light – 3" By Marc-Antoine Matheiu

Jonathan Cape are translating the French graphic novel 3" by Marc-Antoine Matheiu into an English edition, and are bringing the web along with them.

Originally published in 2011 by Delcourt, the graphic novel is silent, following a beam of light that bounces around a city (and an airplane, and a satellite) but focusing on a shooting, and those around it, taking three seconds to tell its tale. Along the way we get clues about what it happening here, a dictaphone inside a football trophy, newspaper accounts of a match fixing scandal, text messages being sent, cups and spooons being thrown. And your job is to contsruct the narrative from these small glimpses. After two reads I'm getting closer.

Here was the original trailer.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wETN1ttnPf8[/youtube]

The original novel has hella-spoilery been turned into an animation, showing how smoothly the events progress from panel to panel.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZbRLi0J2s[/youtube]

But you are not going to get the full comic book effect from this. This book demands that you pause, flip back pages, hold pages up against mirrors and the left-and-right flips back-and-forth as the beam of light hits mirror after mirrored surface. It's an emotive education into what light is and how it behaves but also a fully controlled reading experience within that undirectable journey. A reading experience reminiscent of Watchmen.

But what Jonathan Cape are bringing to the party, as well as translating newspaper text, is creating a website to accompany the release of the book, currently leading to a blank page, 3secondsmystery.com, that will enable readers to share their guesses and theories, coming together to a solution.

Checking previous French discussion will, of course, be illegal…

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!