"The anvil of reality falls heavily onto the strawberry pastries of our illusions."
Bouletcorp
is a successful webcomic by Boulet (real name Gilles Roussel), a French cartoonist living in Paris. Originally released in the author's native language, he's been translating it into English over the last few years and new comics are now released in both languages concurrently. Boulet has described his posts on his website as "do anything, whatever;" his comics range from standard slice-of-life comics starring himself, to rants about Hollywood tropes and cliches, to crazy artistic experiments. He really likes drawing dinosaurs.
If you know this comic for anything, you know it for the 24(+2)-hour-comic Darkness.
Hardcover compilations of his comics are available in French, under the series name "Notes." An English volume with this same name (subtitle: "Born to be a Larve" note ) was released in April 2016.
Provides examples of:
- Alt Text: Often adds a bonus picture as first comment, a practice he got from the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereals.
- Beware the Superman: "A Superday".
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: Everyone at the "Sunday Brunch" ends up seeing either wonderful or terrifying caricatures of their family around them as the event progresses.
- Blood Sport: We don’t we have those instead of boring old footballnote ?
- Cassette Futurism: Called Formica Punk in this strip, which is mostly a retro-futuristic re-imagination of the trope, and is not as much based on the sci-fi of that era as on the actual look of the time period. Includes a scene where Boulet uses a Minitel (French telephone network which could be considered as the ancestor of the current Internet) to download an episode of Games of Throne, which is then burnt into VHS format.
- Coat Cape: It may look awesome, but is quickly shown not to be practical at all.
- Deconstruction: Many comics take a critical look at various fantasies, genres and clichés, such as, for example, fairy tales and "romantic" love stories or Rule of Scary when it comes to designing monsters.
- Discussed Trope: Almost always in tandem with Deconstruction, but instead takes place in the Alt Text of the comic. The comics will deconstruct a trope, and then the alt text discusses the trope.
- Distracted by the Sexy: "Darkness" takes the premise of an annoying roommate who embodies Tall, Dark, and Handsome to the point where every girl sees him as made of Rule of Cool/Drama, even when he's actually a perfectly ordinary guy.
- Enhance Button: "Hi Res".
- Even Evil Has Standards: Even the most detached publicists get doubts when it comes to some seriously bad off-brand surimi sticks.
- Fake Static: A good method to avoid someone, but a risky one.
- Frankenstein's Monster: Boulet’s poor, poor computer.
- Free-Range Children: Young Boulet flirted with death a lot
- Humans Are Cthulhu: In
"When the world crumbles", Boulet imagines Ugly Cute creatures living inside his keyboard and seeing him as a benevolent god showering them with food (actually scraps of food falling between the keys when he eats in front of his computer, as well as hairs, dead bugs, etc.). Then a disastrous flood happens when he accidentally spills his beer on the keyboard. - Haunted Technology: Boulet’s dad downloads so much crap on his computer that it basically becomes that.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Boulet would love to do that to the pharmacy spam companies.
- Humiliation Conga: Boulet and trains.
- Hypocritical Humor:
- The original French version of "Nope" has a lame pun as a title (cf. below) and states in the alt-text that there wouldn't be any alt-text in this one because all his creative energy went into the punny title.
- One 2021 gag has Boulet forbidding his girlfriend to write an Instagram story about an incident when he suffered from sudden diarrhea when they went for a stroll and he ate a lot of berries. Which wouldn't be hypocrite if Boulet himself didn't make a post about it on the webcomic (the entry he published the previous day).
- The original French version of "Nope"
- Immortality Seeker: Unfortunately, Mother Nature has a say in it.
- Irony: In "Prosopagnosia", Boulet goes to a bakery and it greeted by a stranger who recognizes him years after they last random encounter (both are customers of a local vape shop, where Boulet last went in six years ago). After chatting for an instant, the man tells Boulet he's able to recognize faces so well because he draws, leaving Boulet (a professional drawer suffering from prosopagnosia) completely baffled.
- Kill Sat: Why isn’t google blast a thing already?
- LOLCats: "Saga of the Slug" has the slugs invading Boulet's apartment talk like this until he removes the old beer cans.
- The Magic Versus Technology War: Done wonderfully in this story, where Boulet imagines a full-on NATO invasion of fantasy lands.
- The Muse: Boulet prefers a Boisterous Bruiser type.
- Old Shame: Invoked. Many examples, but walking in town holding a huge painting of yourself naked, then unintentionnally showing to complete strangers the naked photograph which served as model for the painting certainly counts…
- Pun-Based Title: Occasionnally.
- "When the world crumbles" is both about breadcrumbs and the annihilation of a civilization (cf. Humans Are Cthulhu). Its original title, "Super Manne", is a pun on the biblical manna and the French usual pronunciation of "Superman".
- "Nope" original title is "Avant que ça ne ténégaire" (untranslatable pun between "before it goes south" and the French name of the tegenaria spiders).
- "When the world crumbles"
- Real Men Eat Meat: One of the volumes of his comics is titled "Meat is Strength". Boulet later turned to vegetarianism.
- Recognition Failure: "Prosopagnosia" is about Boulet suffering from... well, prosopagnosia. It includes a panel where he falls to recognize Johann Sfar (though the point wasn't that he failed to recognize a celebrity but that he failed to recognize someone he works with).
- Self-Deprecation:
- Boulet’s author name means is a French slang which can means The Load or The Millstonenote . It can also be translated as "cannonball".
- This untranslated strip consists in a series of puns on The Call of Cthulhu. One of the alt-texts says Boulet spent two hours on this and doesn't feel proud of it.
- Seven Deadly Sins: Apparently, being a comics writer covers all seven.
- Socially Awkward Hero: Quite often.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: This trope gets quite awkward without the required camera tricks.
- Sugar Bowl: "Neoteny" has a terrified Boulet convinced that the world will head toward this.
- Take That!: Narnia isn’t just lame, it also makes you dumb!
- The Tetris Effect: One gag has Boulet walking by a stack of wood lying in a street and noting he may pick it up if he has enough room in his inventory. He quickly realises he's not in a video game.OK... I don't think video games make people violent... But they sometimes make them a but dumb.
- Visual Pun: The strip L'Appel de Cthulhu (French-only) is a series of untranslatable puns on the French title of The Call of Cthulhu, illustrated by drawings of Boulet's avatar interacting with Cthulhu. The series starts with a strip of Boulet receiving a phone call from Cthulhu, and becomes more and more far-fetched, like Boulet borrowing Cthulhu's shovel ("La pelle de Cthulhu"note ).
- The World Is Just Awesome:
- "Meanwhile", to the frustration of the narrator stuck in his boring ol' room.
- Also "Summer Rain". Turns out God's just an overenthusiastic graphic designer.
- "Meanwhile"
- Worth It: One gag has Boulet receiving a hand mixer as a birthday gift and growing more and more frustrated because he has no occasion to try it out over the course of the following month. He eventually decides to use it to make vinaigrette. The last panel shows Boulet with an insane grin, wielding the mixer like it was a weapon, and standing in the middle of a mess.Was is worth it? It was. I have no regret.
