It may not make sense for me to say how great this is, considering that I only understood maybe 50% of it: not only do I not speak French fluently, but as part of her attempt to make the teenage dialogue in Agrippine equally confusing for all ages, Bretécher made up a whole lot of slang no French person ever used before. But that's part of the fun, because it's not just arbitrary jargon but puns on terms that are already puns on or backwards versions of something else, so once you do figure it out it's both logical and ridiculous in the same way that natural language is—plus, her dialogue is fun even if you have no idea what they're saying, because Bretécher has such a perfect ear for tone and rhythm and she directs her "actors" so well. I don't know if she and Jules Feiffer influenced each other, or just developed similar writing and drawing styles independently, but they're brilliant in a lot of the same ways (although for a North American reader, Agrippine also weirdly recalls For Better or for Worse—Lynn Johnston is less rude and more naturalistic, and allows her people to grow up, but I think there's a similar feeling for character and detail).

Anyway, this is a bunch of one-page strips about a teenager in 1988 who's relatable yet unbearable. She's 14 or 15 and she looks just as awkward as people are afraid they look at that age, kind of like Beavis and Butt-Head with better drawings, but she acts insanely confident about everything. Her life is full of drama even though she never really does anything. She has an on-and-off boyfriend, Modern (none of the kids have regular names, they're all English words or weird historical references), who's a pretentious ass, but kind of lovable for his dorky desperation. One very simple story I like a lot is just Modern lecturing her endlessly about his philosophy, while he inches closer into her personal space and she just stares at him with the smallest possible increase in tension, until he's about to try to kiss her and she suddenly says "You're a genius but I'm not interested in you physically" (which, we know from other episodes, she totally is). He brushes it off and says he's not interested either because she's not smart enough. She takes offense to that—so he challenges her to summarize all the bullshit he just said. That's about as adult as the situations get; other times we see how much of a little kid Agrippine still is, with a kid's idea of how to negotiate with the world (she talks her way into a babysitting job at a luxurious home she wants to hang out at, but backs out when she realizes it'll actually involve babysitting).

I guess I'll have to read this in English some time, but I won't get my hopes up: I think even the world's greatest translator might not be able to make the jokes make sense and make the writing work so well with the drawing. In conclusion, Claire Bretécher rules. ( )