Black drawings and scared colors

After Ebola (2001 - out of print) and Schmo (2004), Holy Moly is the third book of drawings by Jeff Ladouceur to be published by L’Oie de Cravan in Montreal. Expansive and profoundly coherent, Ladouceur’s work hasn’t lost any of its strength over the years. On the contrary, its hallucinatory powers only seem to have become stronger as an alchemical intertextuality has transformed his characters into a people with their own painful history. Intuitively, we begin to realize these people are our own, and that the hidden narrative behind Holy Moly is ours.

With a finely pointed pen in black ink and a meticulous touch, this Vancouver-based artist draws cartoons about a bald, long-nosed, sad sack of a character called "Schmo." Our hero’s struggles with ordinary existence and surrealistic encounters with cloud-creatures, tiny elephants, octopuses and an abominable snowman are funny, weird and touching. Ken Johnson, New York Times, October 2004