Holding up a mirror image to society is a recurring motif in literary history. What reached a high point in the Middle Ages with Dante’s Divine Comedy continued all the way to Honoré de Balzac, who drew a picture of the mores of high French society around 1830 with his Mad Tales.

Twin brothers Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, born in Italy, raised in Paris, only to emigrate to Hollywood in 1994 to work for Disney Studio, Pixar and Sony, now took on three of Balzac’s stories in a very lighthearted comic album. Kept in monochrome, they lead the reader:inside in an entertaining way and a brisk drawing style through the world of the 1830s and skillfully take in their drawings the society, the church and morality on the shovel.

In all three stories told, the real heroines are the women who lead the male world around by the nose with wit, charm and an irrepressible libido. Be it young lovers, old husbands who can no longer get it up and deny the young, too young wife the desire to have children, or have to escape from the lecherous priest, the whole human tangle of love is shown. One realizes that the world has not really changed.

The album is published in French by Futuropolis.