Sartre is a really crappy biographical comic on the major twentieth century French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. Writer Mathilde Ramadier does a remarkably substandard job of explaining the philosophy of existentialism, which Sartre was most famous for, as well as failing to highlight what made him notable to the wider public in the first place. We just get a truncated overview of his (seemingly) uneventful life from bookish youth to teacher to - suddenly! - intellectual celebrity.
The love of his life and fellow intellectual, Simone de Beauvoir, figures heavily as expected but the bio spends a bit too much time on her when that time should’ve been spent on the actual subject of the book, Sartre. Like, how about exploring the ideas and themes of his books instead of just mentioning their titles? Near the end he clutches his chest but it’s never explained - what illnesses did he suffer from? And then he suddenly dies and there’s a state funeral - why? What major impact did he make on French society? It’s such an uninformative pseudo-biography.
Albert Camus cameos but all we learn about him was that he was a bit of a horndog and that he didn’t believe he was an Existentialist. If you didn’t already know he was a famous writer and thinker himself, you’d never get it from this book! That surface-level overview fits in with the rest of this crap. Anais Depommier’s art is ok but very plain and unremarkable.
Sartre is a dull, weak and unimpressive look at Jean-Paul’s life. There’s bound to be better bios out there on this chap’s life but, whatever you do, don’t bother with this boring, unenlightening rubbish.
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