Rohan at the Louvre

Hirohiko Araki – NBM Publishing – 2012 – 1 volume

So, Hirohiko Araki is my favorite artist. Period. I gush at length about Yasuko Aoike, and I’m also quite fond of One Piece. Those are good for different reasons, but really, there’s nobody like Hirohiko Araki. I could talk forever about why I like his work, but I don’t often get the opportunity since so little of it has been translated into English. That’s an absolute tragedy. But, coincidentally, his birthday is on June 7th, which is the same day as mine, so I use that as an excuse every year to talk at length about his art and work.

In years past, I’ve always held on to a volume of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure so that I had something to talk about that I could actually promote. I have no English Jojo this year, but I do have this extremely unusual book. Issued as part of a series of graphic novels meant to celebrate the Louvre Art Museum in Paris, this actually came out in French about a year before it appeared in Japan, and is more of a French album than it is a volume of manga. I was going to write this up as a license request, but NBM released it in English earlier this year, and I couldn’t be more shocked and thrilled. In order to understand the beauty of this book, you have to see it, so I’m going to scan parts of it and include them under the cut.