A tender, sly, and visually sumptuous collection from acclaimed cartoonist Max Cabanes, Heartthrobs gathers short, intimate stories that explore the small, combustible moments of love, longing, and memory. Cabanes draws with a poet’s economy and a filmmaker’s eye: each panel is composed to reveal character through gesture and silence, and each scene unfolds with the quiet intensity of a remembered afternoon.
These are not grand romances but the private, often comic negotiations that make up a life—awkward confessions, missed connections, the stubborn persistence of desire, and the odd consolations of solitude. Cabanes balances warmth and irony, letting humor soften heartbreak while never shrinking from the ache that gives his work its emotional weight. His line work is at once spare and expressive, and the book’s visual rhythms carry the reader through moments that feel both specific and universally familiar.
Perfect for readers who love graphic storytelling that prizes mood over melodrama, Heartthrobs is a book to be read slowly: to linger on a single page, to return to a favorite sequence, to discover new details with each revisit. Whether you’re a longtime fan of European comics or new to Cabanes’s work, these stories offer a compact, unforgettable portrait of human tenderness—funny, rueful, and quietly luminous.