165 - Winshluss

Winshluss WINSHLUSS Pinocchio, The Hammerhead Sharks 2011 Original illustration no. 51. Signed. Indian ink and white gouache on paper 29.7 × 42 cm (11.69 × 16.54 in.) Winshluss, whose real name is Vincent Paronnaud, is a French comic book author, visual artist, and filmmaker with roots in the underground comic scene. Together with Cizo, he edited the magazine *Ferraille*, where he cultivated a brand of dark humor that was at once schoolboyish, fierce, and provocative. His *Pinocchio*, a scathing reinterpretation of Collodi’s tale (as seen in this “smoking” scene), won—to everyone’s surprise—the Fauve d’Or at Angoulême in 2009. Winshluss is also known as a filmmaker, notably for co-directing the animated film *Persepolis* with Marjane Satrapi, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2007. This is a key moment in the comic book, where the “bad” vagabond boy—Lampignon in Collodi’s tale—convinces Pinocchio to accompany him to the “Land of Toys ”—as Carlo Collodi calls it—after introducing him to tobacco, as symbolized by the square “rings” of smoke coming out of Pinocchio’s mouth. In this “wonderful” land, children have no obligations—no school, no work—and they spend their time playing, eating sweets, and having fun from morning till night. In Winshluss’s comic book version, these children will eventually transform gradually into animals and be slaughtered. Lampignon will meet a tragic end, lynched, and Pinocchio will end up hanged!