We’ve never talked about Boulet (Gilles Roussel) before. We probably should have. He’s a massively talented French comic creator, and with his championing of online comics, he has only gotten more experimental. While most webcomics (Penny Arcade, Sluggy Freelance) stick to the “3 panels with a punchline” format beloved by newspaper comics, every now and then someone plays with it a little bit. Boulet’s The Long Journey is an “infinite comic.” No panels, no page breaks, just one continuous image the whole way. It has been done before, but rarely as well as it is here.

We open on the artist struggling with boredom and lacking inspiration, a common occurrence, as many artists can attest. So he decides to get out, clear his head, find some inspiration, maybe go on an adventure. As many video games have taught, adventure involves exploring dark, shadowy caves. He decides the only place fitting the bill is his toilet, so off he goes, down the sewers, to the center of the Earth, even to Hell itself, before finally coming out the other side. We follow his descent by scrolling down the page, encountering Nazis, dinosaurs, alien worlds, Satan himself, impossible graffiti and, of course, David Bowie. It’s fun, silly, philosophical, and very French.

You can read the whole thing for free here. You’d be mad not to.

Donal O’connor