European Graphic Novels+

Posting images is working again :)

(click links for samples)

Last of the Atlases (authors: Vehlmann & Bonneval, illustrators: Tanquerelle & Blanchard, 2019-) Another smash by Vehlmann & Co, and a running series at that. We're following the life of a mobster's lieutenant dealing with Albanians trying to horn in on his gambling business, and more concerning, the police looking to nail him and his operation. Suddenly a Pandora's Box of new problems pops open, such as having to rescue a big regional crime boss, needing to retreat to his homeland (Algeria) for the first time ever, and getting involved in a borderline-supernatural phenomenon while there. Based on all these factors & events, he conceives a mad plan to restore the last remaining "Atlas," i.e. a giant work / combat robot, decommissioned and abandoned years ago. (I'm sensing a nice Miyazaki / Castle in the Sky tribute there) LotA is a brilliant mashup of themes you normally don't see together, told with a level of truth & realism all too easily bungled in the comics medium, featuring impeccable story-telling and artistic expression. I'd call it an instant classic, checking off many of the same boxes as the wonderful District 14, although of course it's quite a different kind of story.

The Princess of Clèves (Bouilhac & Catel, 2019) - Set in the middle 1500's at the court of Henry II, this is a Dangerous Liaisons-style psychological drama about a young married woman struggling against her attraction to a philandering noble. Special tension comes from the fact that the noble decides to give up all his other pursuits in order to woo her, yet it still may not be enough. "Clèves" is perhaps a little dry for those who prefer action, as it mainly has to do with court intrigue, reputations at stake, and correctly interpreting the relentless gossip of the day. Based on a famous novel of the day, and featuring real historical figures, it's an enjoyable delve in to a far different time and place.

Atomic Empire (Smolderen & Clerisse, 2018) - This is stylish, strange and amusing look at a man who believes he's part of a cosmic conspiracy of sorts. We see him somehow, some way in telepathic communication with an important figure light years across the galaxy, thousands of years in the future. The issue at hand is that a tyrant of an emperor has escaped justice, and our protagonist has an opportunity to aid him, stymie him, or even pay for his sins in his stead. This could almost be a Scientology backstory, except this one probably makes a lot more sense. The book's illustrated in an appealing 50's, "googie," jet-set style. Unfortunately, while this was a fun read, it jumped around a lot, and didn't really stick with its characters. Another way of stating it is that there was a certain lack of satisfying 'payoff' moments and scenes that naturally reward the reader for following along. The creative team here has oodles of talent, but for most folks I'd recommend one of their more conventional works, like Diabolical Summer.

BTTM FDRS (Claytan Daniels & Passmore, 2019) - This indie comic was a wild, enjoyable ride that begins with such issues as a strained friendship, urban & racial realities, and a young woman trying to break away from parental influence, settling in to her first apartment. It's the apartment itself (and the odd cement building) that throws the story in to overdrive, introducing abandoned technology and even genetic experiments that become active when new tenants enter the building. Despite not being crazy about the color palette (see for yourself in the link), I'm happy to say that "BTTM FDRS" ("bottom feeders") has a certain weird, raw energy, and is a nicely-realised tale, with excellent story-telling. It's also a bit provocative and open-ended, reminding me of plenty of classic BD.

Cradlegrave (Smith & Bagwell, 2009) - I liked the way this one sets you down so deftly in to the world of urban poverty (it's set in Lancashire, Britain), as told mostly from a teenage / young adult POV. The art is nicely done in a subdued color palette, matching the setting. The story's a bit breezy & aimless (although punctuated by dark moments) and it's not always clear which character we're really following, but that's not unusual for this kind of work. In any case, the biggest takeaway for me was getting a better sense of the cyclical poverty & misery of this way of life, as it was easy enough to see why so many self-medicate from a young age, typically dooming their future selves. On top of that, there was a strange science / horror angle that I didn't see coming, which I'm guessing was sort of a gonzo extrapolation of the 'addict life.' Cradlegrave had some echoes of BTTM FDRS in that way, although I thought that work was more focused. TBH I'm not completely sure why I'm adding a review for this work, as I suspect there's better stuff out there of this type. Still, there's real skill that went in to this one, and I've never quite seen a mashup of these issues before. This will probably be right up some peoples' alleys, if not mine.

My unread pile has now reached 30 graphic novels (roughly half are European, the rest are mostly American but not only).

I have been in a shopping spree during August but now it is time to stop as this pile should last me for a while. I hope. :)

Girl: Arms up, coyote! Keep your hands well away from your hardware!

Jolly Jumper: Here we go again...

Lucky Luke: Tsk, tsk. Little girl, it's not safe to play with your daddy's rifle...

(sound): *BLAM!*

Girl: One more word about my daddy and you get the next volley of lead where it counts!

This will be published by Dargaud, and is created by the singular Blutch, a huge talent and one of the main innovators in BD, it says here.

Thanks to Jérôme Lachasse's Mastodon 'tweet' [here] for the news!

"Caza" is the pen name for Frenchman Philippe Cazaumayou, who created such works as Worlds of Arkadi, Arkhê, and Laïlah. [his WP page]

This was a poster he did for the 23rd BD festival held in Chalonnes sur Loire, 13th-14th February 2010. The lettered version looked like [this].

https://imgur.com/a/e1nwfHo

This is a lovely, deadly 8-page story from the book, right in the mold of Hitchcock. Like the other stories in Deadly Vacations, one never really knows what's going to happen until the final frames!

Jan Lööf (b. 1940) is a Swedish illustrator, author, comic creator, and jazz musician.

From 1967 until 1973 he created his most famous comic strip Felix, which soon gained popularity in many parts of the world. Mixing humor and adventure, Felix has sometimes been described as a more naivistic or underground-style version of Tintin in terms of the drawing, but in its themes and morale it is also somewhat leftist.

Later, Lööf created other comics, such as Bellman (a humor strip about a Stockholm hobo) and Ville (1975–76), a "comedic adventure" about an unemployed Stockholm author, teaming up with Olof Palme and Carl XVI Gustaf to fight the bad guys. This was originally serialized in the Swedish periodical Vi.

His children's books are continually popular, both in Scandinavia and elsewhere. Among them are The Story of the Red Apple and Uncle Louie's Fantastic Sea Voyage. Based on these books Lööf produced his own children's show, the animated Skrot-Nisse och Hans Vänner (Scrap-Nisse and his Friends) for Swedish National Television in 1985. --WP

Captain Haddock drinks a bottle of whiskey for some quick energy on the long trek to search for Tintin's friend Chang. Predictably...

From Tintin in Tibet, the 20th album in the series.

(click links for samples)

Monsieur Jean (Dupuy & Berberian, 1989-) is a light-hearted yet pointed series of episodes revolving around a one-hit-wonder book author. He good-naturedly suffers through various difficulties, such as his dating life, publishing deadlines, social situations, a gossipy landlady, and most of all, a chronic pain in the arse in the form of his best friend. Jean's anxieties are the featured player here, playfully being exposed in various ways, such as through flashbacks or Walter Mitty fantasy moments. All in all, this series falls somewhere between a 'palette cleanser' and a rather point-blank look at human neurosis. Indeed, I feel it quite exemplifies the spirit of BD, ligne claire, and even French cinema. Don't let the starting date throw you; this series is primarily set in the 90's and 2000's, and looks & feels modern-enough.

Through Lya's Eyes (Carbone & Cunha, 2019) - A young wheelchair-bound woman discovers a lead that may reveal the hit-and-run driver who wrecked her life only a couple years before. She decides to do the unthinkable-- interning at the very same law firm involved in paying her parents hush money. There, she attempts to unravel the case from within, taking serious risks, helped by a friend or two. This three-book series features pleasant, poster-like art and a young-adult, 'Nancy Drew' storytelling style that works well for the most part. There's a happy, altho abrupt ending that I feel could have been more complete.

Biotope (Appollo & Brüno, ~2018) - Lovely, economical, two-volume sci-fi story, a bit out of the Orson Scott Card / LEO playbook, perhaps. Three detectives travel to a research station on a world under scientific observation in order to solve a murder. Little do they know the whole situation's a powder keg about to erupt. In a way that directly belies the simple 'ligne claire,' the reader is challenged to notice a subtle, steady buildup of clues and ominous portents before the story really takes off. This is not just a murder mystery, but a breakdown and post-apoc kind of work. I can certainly recommend it.

Rose (Alibert, Lapière & Vernay, 2019) - A young woman's father has been murdered, and now it's up to her to sort out his affairs, including one last case from his detective agency. There's a compelling blend of themes & premises here, combining murder-mystery, the 'out-of-body' effect, personable ghosts, family tragedy, psychosis, and historical witchcraft, all portrayed in an art style of lush colors, skillful shading and enjoyable oil pastels. I'm always amazed when a wild mashup like this comes off so believably, so major credit to the creators, here. The biggest critique I have is that this one felt kind of rushed once it really got going, despite being three volumes in length. Definitely a quality, satisfying work, though. Style-wise the target audience might be argued as 'young adult,' but I'd call this a really nice, all-ages read.

Alpha (Renard & Jigounov, 1996-2019) - Right in the mold of Lady S., Largo Winch and I.R.$., here's an espionage / mob / political thriller series centered around fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union, during the Yeltsin years. "Alpha" is the code name for a talented young agent recruited to the CIA, tasked with investigating shady international money laundering. The more intriguing figure actually is a beautiful young Russian gallery-owner whose husband is a significant post-KGB official and whose childhood friend is the son of a powerful Russian mobster. She's caught in a web between these three men in her life who all love her, yet are each willing to use her for their own ends. Alpha is a little heavy on the dialogue, but it makes up for it with ongoing tension and bursts of action. If you like the three series mentioned above, you should enjoy this one.

Angela is no "cheesecake," but actually the star pilot of the series, navigating a world of largely chauvinistic men during wartime.

This is a terrific series, and I'll have to do a proper review one of these days.

https://imgur.com/a/JoRYmmd

Here's a fascinating throwback story about an 'outsider' chess champion who gets discovered during a pleasure cruise. The gaming aficionados on board eagerly press him to play a few matches, and he finally agrees, insisting that everyone team up against him in order to produce a fair match. Naturally, he crushes them with sloshing ease, game after game.

That is, until an unknown stranger saunters over and begins suggesting moves and strategies to the local group. Remarkably, his play serves to stalemate the champion. *Who* is this guy, anyway, who evidently doesn't even play chess? The answer turns out to be rather astonishing.

I thought the art and storytelling in this work really captured the spirit and discipline of both chess and the specific timeframe in a way I'd hardly thought to see in a BD. Thumbs way, way up for this lovely album.

CREDITS: The original BD is called Le Joueur d'échecs, published by Casterman in 2017, based on a Stefan Zweig novel Schachnovelle, from the 40's. Major thanks to Philly-Willy for producing a scanlation, as I don't believe this one's been published in English yet.

Lucky Luke: Finally, we've arrived at the home of the Shava-Shava. We can spend the night here; it's a tribe of old friends.

Man: Gosh! They have amazing totems!

Ran-Tan-Plan: These Indians are crazy!

This panel is from a tribute collection, Asterix & His Friends, with art by "Achdé."

Across both manga and Euro comics, I've never seen electric-pastel covers like these before!

On the whole, this series seems to have some BD-influences, such as cinematic storytelling, experimental and 'sketchy' artwork, as well as tight, historically-driven scenarios. It makes me wonder if there was some cross-fertilisation going on between manga and BD during this period (60's to 80's). For example, I could easily imagine figures like Moebius, Jodo, and Osama Tezuka borrowing ideas from each other.

Anyway, about the manga itself? It's one of my favorites, altho dated. [SAMPLES] I like it because there are fascinating themes of discovery, danger, and sacrifice that you rarely quite see in BD's & GN's.

One thing I've noticed about manga is that the writers commonly love to 'go for it.' For example, one of the main samurai - heroes, and a highly sympathetic one at that, gets badly disfigured whilst escaping a firebombing which took out most of his clan. So for the rest of the series he's sort a chilling 'no-face,' whilst remaining exactly the same principled character. It creates an interesting kind of tension, in that we typically associate heroes with handsome, virile-types, and not maimed, disfigured characters. Which perhaps hearkens back to Shelley's Frankenstein, in which the suave scientist is the villain, and the monster, the real hero.

Final thoughts? This is a super-good, nuanced, humanistic series, with plenty of action & drama. More HERE, and there's also an animated series, which doesn't seem terrible. [YouTube]

If you don't know any French, you should still be able to recognise a bunch of the album names, which are helpfully placed in chronological order. (or just click google's "translate" option)

In fact the quiz can be played in four different ways: 1) all panels are displayed, 2) only panels with text are displayed, 3) only panels without text are shown, 4) only text is shown without any panels at all.

These quizzes can be played endlessly, so see how high you can score (out of ten questions). Whoever scores a ten, please add a comment below! :D

EDIT: If a web-savvy person wanted to host a site like this, for example with a general-BD theme, I'd be happy to provide plenty of good-quality art samples.

From Lucky Luke, altho I forget which volume.

Arzach took me to fantastic imaginary worlds when I was a teenager

For JohnnyEnzyme because he is a fan of Daredevil

This is from Tintin's Tibet album, serialised in the late 50's.

Me, I love this scene, because it's so 'anti-Tintin' in the traditional sense, in that he always strives to be so polite and genteel.

Digging further in to the album, however, I find it fascinating how author George Remi constructed this major episode as a sort of love-letter to a beloved Chinese friend of his from decades before. (see WP entry for more)

(click the links for art samples)

Green Manor (Vehlmann & Bodart, 2001) is a superb, darkly-hilarious historical fiction series, consisting of a delicious collection of short stories about murder and mayhem, in which the main participants are members of a famous gentleman's club in 1800's London. There's a 'Sherlockian' kind of vibe running through these albums, altho in this case the stories mainly focus on the perpetrators and victims. One other fascinating aspect of these works is the butler's framing story, who now resides in a mental ward, recounting all these stories to a visiting psychiatrist. In his deranged state is he making it all up, or did these fine gentlemen and pillars of society indeed sink to such sadistic depths through the years?

The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman, with Melchior & Oubrerie, 2014). This is a part one of a BD adaptation of the modern classic series His Dark Materials, set in a sci-fi / magical realism genre. In this world, humans have animal familiars ("daemons") able to shape-shift until their host reaches adulthood, at which time "dust" begins to shut down that ability, a sort of counterpart to original sin in the biblical sense. The series' protagonist is a young girl believed by many to have a great part to play in the world's destiny, even as her estranged, obsessive parents are attempting to abolish the effects of said dust, each according to their own scientific approach. The unusually original story can be a little obscure to get in to, but makes comfortable sense about halfway through. Still, the adaptation isn't amazing, and one might want to start with the source novel over the BD.

Centaurus (LEO / Rodolphe / Janjetov, 2018) is my favorite of LEO's space series, right behind his excellent Trent books. The premise here is a "life ark" situation, in which the survivors of a dying Earth set out for a new world in the Alpha Centauri system. Against many odds they manage to reach the target and send out a reconnaissance crew. Unfortunately, they swifly lose communication, and what's more, discover to their shock that someone or something has tampered with the ship's navigation system, and they are *not* in fact at the destination planet. What's more, it's discovered that the same intruder presence mated with some of the colonists two decades earlier, producing a generation of children with various paranormal powers, one of whom is a member of the ground crew(!) Meanwhile on the ground, the landing party explores the surface, occasionally struggling to survive dangerous wildlife, even as they're dumbfounded to discover what seem to be human ruins. Things only get more intense from there, as they struggle to understand who or what is responsible for the mission going sideways. As usual, LEO's characters are a bit on the 'mannered' side, as if this was all something of a stage production, but the excellent story more than makes up for that quibble. Indeed, there's a tangle of mysteries in this work, some interesting personal dynamics, all set against a dire survival situation, that makes this series shine.

Hasib & the Queen of Serpents (David B., 2015) - a wondrous adaptation of one of the lesser-known Scheherazade stories from One Thousand and One Nights. We begin with Hasib, son of a sage, struggling to make a career for himself. He eventually finds work as a woodcutter, only to be betrayed by his colleagues, trapped in a cave and left for dead. It's from there that we embark on a sinuous, nested group of tales, many of them involving the terrifying Queen of the Serpents, a mostly benevolent being whose main work involves torturing the dead in hell(!) Eventually the tale winds back to Hasib, who escapes with the Queen's aid, and must make his way through a series of betrayals to save his dying ruler. With all that said, the stories aren't so much the main focus as is the wonderful art, framing of words and images, and storytelling process. I found this work almost beyond rational judgement, rather something to absorb more than "read." It has something of a children's storybook quality, but speaks to some mythological, emotional, and archetypical realities, if that makes sense.

Islandia (Marc Védrines, 2007) is a 3-book series set in 17th-century Iceland, and wow, was it tough to review(!) Did Islandia work as a concept, and would I recommend it? Yes and yes, but with some qualifications I'll get in to later. Also worth noting is that the series may have special relevance for Icelandic folks, and perhaps even Christians who enjoy a certain Old Testament dynamic, in which God takes an active hand in the proceedings. Getting to the story, a fresh-faced French lad has recurring visions of strange symbols and specific places that he believes may be related to Iceland, and stows away on his dad's fishing boat in hopes of making his way there. Things don't go smoothly for him, however. He's continually mistrusted and even physically attacked, forced to flee from one place to another before finally reaching what seems to be the specific place he had visions of. Whilst there, he meets a sorcery-practicing woman who helps him understand what it all means, and who he really is, before they're caught by the local authorities, placed at the stake, and burnt alive! That sums up the first two volumes, and from there we go on an intense whirlwind of changing 'vessel-characters' (I don't want to give too much away), plus an important new character, who helps our antihero understand his terrible, traumatic past, the very one which sent him down this sorcerous path, hounded perpetually by God's minions. Finally, many years later, our character's existential crisis is resolved, and as a bonus, we even get an interesting look in to major events of Icelandic history, which I absolutely was not expecting.

My impressions are like this-- I found the lead character to be unusually sympathetic, which made it truly unsettling to see how poorly life treated the young lad throughout the story. Now yes, it did make sense in later context, but still... wow. Regardless, I suppose that this is really a tale about humanism and perhaps 'thwarted love turned to generalised hate,' so to speak. Major credit here to writer-artist Védrines, who does a noteworthy job portraying the historical settings and character of 17th-century Icelandic folk. Although to be honest? It wasn't entirely flattering. That is-- everything was permeated by a wretched, gloomy commonness of paranoid superstition, leading to much pointless blame, death and tragedy for the simple people of the time. Still, to be fair, I suppose it was a relatively accurate portrayal. *shudder*

In the end, apart from the Icelandic settings, I almost felt like the way we conduct ourselves and treat each other as humans was the main theme of the series. Overall, this was a sharply unique tale, the like of which I doubt I'll ever see again.

A great Sunday to all of my fellow comic book nerds 🌞