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User:El.juan.pablo/Editions du Souterrain

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Editions du Souterrain

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The Editions du Souterrain (The "Basement Editions"[1]) is an underground group of comics artists that started off in France in 2006. The main fanzine published by the Editions du Souterrain is called √3. It is entirely hand drawn. In the beginning of the project, the magazine was sent to people who were randomly selected in a phone book[2]. It was also left in various public places such as buses, subway seats, telephone booths, public toilets, libraries et.c[3].

The authors

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Apart from the few issues sent to people, until recently this underground group was hardly known. But, since June 2010, a blog was created in its name[4]. One can assume that the blog was indeed created by the group itself, as the email address of the blogger is the one appearing on the few printed issues that circulate in the underground scene[5]. The identity of the members of the group is unknown, but it is possible they are not French (or at least, not all of them), even if the magazine is in French. The reason to believe that is the publication of some of its images in another blog in Greek[6].

This Greek blog and the blog in the name of the group, along with the few printed copies of √3, are the only existing references to the group. Apparently secrecy is deliberate, as no direct reference to names of the authors is made in their blog.

The blog

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The blog was created in June 2010, but for a period of 10 months nothing was published in it. In the Introduction post of the blog is stated:

"We would have made a web site, but it was too complicated. So, we made a blog. That's already too much Internet for us[7]."

Complete lack of seriousness is one of their main characteristics.

√3

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The main characters appearing in √3 are the rats, who appear to be constantly angry and upset. There is also a human character who appears in isolated pages stating humorist philosophical aphorisms such as

"If the theory of the chords is correct, then God is not playing dices, he is playing the guitar. And, judging by our world, his guitar is out of tune"[8].

There is also a recurring joke with a monkey hanging from a tree branch and wondering about a "banana split"[9].

References

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  1. ^ "Editions from Underground" would be a more accurate translation as the name is probably a reference to Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground".
  2. ^ See the Introduction post in editionsdusouterrain.tumblr.com
  3. ^ Ibid
  4. ^ editionsdusouterrain.tumblr.com
  5. ^ editionsdusouterrain@hotmail.com
  6. ^ kotsiosp.wordpress.com Αερολογίες - Το πιο δυνατό μπλογκ στο Ίντερνετ
  7. ^ See the Introduction post in editionsdusouterrain.tumblr.com
  8. ^ See the post of 29 of March 2009 in kotsiosp.wordpress.com
  9. ^ See the post of 26 of April 2011 in editionsdusouterrain.tumlbr.com
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