European Graphic Novels+

These appear to be raw covers, in which you can still see marginal annotations.

Claudio Villa, Angelo Stano, Bruno Brindisi, Corrado Roi, and Claudio Castellini are all artists who worked on this surreal, noirish, long-running Italian horror series.

I've read four of the 100-page books so far. An introduction, plus my thoughts are here.

These pieces were found at a nice Tumblr blog which covers BD, manga, and animation genres.

This is an underrated series, altho it can be hard to find.

The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko is a BD series by Hergé, best known for Tintin. The heroes of the series are two young children, brother and sister Jo & Zette Legrand, and their pet chimpanzee Jocko. Mr Legrand, their father, is an aerospace engineer and designer, --WP

Altho we don't get to see the familiar, beloved faces of the Tintin characters, I found this a surprisingly likeable series, certainly better and more well-polished than the first ~three Tintin albums. There's only five albums in the series, two of them being two-parters.

I found the sequence above to be strongly reminiscent of wonderful but dangerous Buster Keaton stunts from the silent movie era, such as these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOo_ZUVU_O8

Unfortunately, Buster tore himself up pretty good doing these stunts himself. For example, in grabbing on to the hurtling car from a standing position, he dislocated his arm. And then when the house facade fell down around him, with Buster 'luckily' standing in the outline of a window, in fact the house grazed his left side, causing him serious injuries. It certainly was a different era in movie-making(!)

The premise here is light as a feather-- a Dungeons & Dragons-type character is in a videogame setting, in which he's attempting to 'exit the game level,' presumably to take a nice rest. Frequently that involves attempting to rescue a princess along the way.

Altho he's rather dwarfish in stature, the problem isn't the hero's energy, fierceness or ingenuity, but rather that something's always going wrong. And by 'going wrong,' I mean that he typically suffers all variety of gruesome deaths at the hands of the dungeon's traps. He, the princess, the endless stream of monsters-- just everyone.

Game Over is technically a spinoff series of Midam's (Michel Ledent of Belgium) Kid Paddle series for kids, but one hardly needs any backstory, even though the full albums (and there are over two dozen) tend to be bookended with Kid Paddle context. To be clear-- these are largely wordless comics that can be consumed in any language.

TBH, I fear that I'm always going to be a bit weirded out by this series, which combines light, kid-like, gaggish elements right next to total gore, in which the characters are seemingly ready to burst in to total pools of eyeballs, bones & blood given the slightest impetus. There's also the fact that the comics (to me, anyway) are *completely* hit-or-miss, with a lot more duds than successes IMO. Still, it's a BD classic of sorts, and certainly worth a look as a BD hobbyist.

Btw, I see there's a big Imgur archive HERE, and happily, those seem to be a kind of 'best of' collection. Cheers.

I stumbled across this series while going through the Moebius art-book Chaos. Only info given is that it´s a series of commercial illustrations for Europe-Assistance. I did a little research and found out that it´s a travel insurance company based in Belgium. Further research revealed that the series was printed as a limited album, titled Europ Assistance : Une belle Aventure, for internal use at Europe-Assistance, as an exclusive gift. Nowadays it is a rare collectors item, sometimes sold privately for around 100€.

Beautiful 20-page album presenting Europ Assistance, its history and results, etc. The kind of (in-house) promotional document that will no longer be produced at this level: more than just illustrations, Moebius has created a real universe to accompany this presentation. Exceptional!

This reminds of Sur l’étoile, the exclusive short comic Mœbius did for the company anniversary of Citroën in 1983, which introduced the characters Stel and Atan and later became the basis for the beloved The World of Edena series.

And as bonus the ISBN: 9 063 32521 0

Epic® Graphic Novel: Moebius™ —Chaos™. Art & Story copyright © 1991 Jean “Moebius” Giraud. Translation copyright © 1991 Starwatcher Graphics. All rights reserved.

So far I've been quite impressed from what I've read . Altho Franka is officially a PI (private investigator), she also reminds me a lot of an adventurous super-spy... very resourceful, dangerous, and strong-willed. She's also super-attractive, and Kuipers' LC (ligne claire) is some of the best I've ever seen. The pages and panel-flow are just wonderful to observe, and the stories, quite entertaining.

Note: I've mainly read the late 80's stuff and on. It seems like the 70's-era books weren't drawn as appealingly, FWIW.

Franka is a popular Dutch comic book series drawn and written since the mid-1970s by the graphic artist Henk Kuijpers. The principal character is a strong female sleuth who solves mysteries in exotic locales. The cases she solves often take place in the worlds of art, antiquities, fashion and film, and also often feature exotic locales full of smugglers, pirates and other shady businessmen.

Dominant women are a recurring theme of the series, similar to BD series such as Yoko Tsuno. A single woman for a long time, Franka acquired a male partner and love interest in the later volumes, the reformed art thief Rix. More often than not she is also accompanied by her dog Bars. --WP

The series has been translated into a variety of languages, including Danish, German, French, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Galician, Catalan and Chinese. As far as I can tell it's never officially been translated to English, but perhaps there are some 'scanlations' out there..

A vastly more extensive writeup of Kuijpers and Franka can be found here:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/k/kuijpers_h.htm

EDIT: While searching around for scanlations, I did find a little English-translated sequence. below:

I like that mast & sail!

So from my findings, this is a collectible card / postcard, one in a series of ten, meant to mark the tenth anniversary of the Côte d’Azur* Comics Festival. It may also have been used as art for the premier BD festival of Cagnes-sur-mer.

* (The French Riviera)

The back looked like this:

Epic® Graphic Novel: Moebius™ —Chaos™. Art & Story copyright © 1991 Jean “Moebius” Giraud. Translation copyright © 1991 Starwatcher Graphics. All rights reserved.

"The above sketch was found in the notebooks of noted French archeologist Jerome Jones, during his investigation of the ruins of NURUNDERE in the Musgrave Range near Ayers Rock in South Australia. Mr. Jones has been reported missing, and an investigation into his disappearance is currently underway."

Illustration for Canal-Choc comic album.

© and ™ 1995 Starwatcher Graphics, Inc.

© and ™ 1995 Starwatcher Graphics, Inc.

Edit: Oh and

Here's a delightful Russian artist I just discovered whose work hearkens back to classic folklore and intricate folk art. Please do click / zoom in on these, as the thumbnails really don't do these justice:

First Drops Of Rain

In a Corner of a Shady Garden

To me, her ability to juxtapose a lush palette with diverse views, creatures, motiffs & design elements is just extraordinary. One other thing I found pleasing is her tendency to depict creatures & landscape objects at almost any size, most notably tiny trees growing like grass in the foregrounds.

A Giddy Gallop

Royal Grace

I didn't find a lot of info about her online, but she does list her interests as: "Painting, photography, architecture, graphics, illustrations, sculpture and video. All that is beautiful, attractive, dignified, elegant, gentle, amazing, new."

Blooming Mystery

Getting Off The Ground

Here's her gallery space:
https://www.gallerycoronado.com/oksana-baltic

And her Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/ivanikoksana/

In Dreamful Autumn

Moonlight Walk

NOTE: To be quite clear-- I unequivacably support the liberation of Ukraine.
Slava Ukraini.

The above art is "Le bain public," by Thierry Martin.

So, we just had a server / code glitch seemingly delay (or hide?) some content, but then when fixed, it looks to me like federation has actually been improved. For example: offsite instances and links (like WP, fandom, and even mindoki.com) had not been showing up properly in Windows' Chrome for me, until just now.

If anyone else has been through issues like these, I'd greatly appreciate that feedback.

Here we go:

Now as someone who grew up on Marvel's flickering vision* of Robert E. Howard's brilliant Conan the Barbarian series (well before publisher Dynamite), it was so fun to find this GN-- The Quest for Answers.

* that said, John Buscema & Ernie Chan are (or were) the best!

Get hence, you blowhards...
Your queen needeth you NAWT!

From a couple years earlier, I fear.
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/j/jung_etienne.htm

Here's a Polish-French artist with a delicious sense of representational BD. His pseudonym is "O'Groj"* based on his name, Olivier Grojnowski.

A graduate of the Angoulême School of Fine Arts, he published his first comics in PLG and Circus before collaborating on the magazine "A Suivre" in 1989.

More context here:

• https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Groj
• https://www.danielmaghen.com/fr/olivier-o-groj_b288.htm

And here are the full-size versions:

Gaston:
https://i.imgur.com/dLwLYfr.jpeg

Oh, THOSE two:
https://i.imgur.com/KaZBFvh.jpeg

Good Lucky:
https://i.imgur.com/TNBhjU3.jpeg

Aw, supercutie:
https://i.imgur.com/NYhWgfB.png

Wait wait, stop, stop!!
https://i.imgur.com/Jx8Irfd.jpeg

Nice spiral, dude!
https://i.imgur.com/FzVbNVh.jpeg

I bumped in to this the other day and fell in love.
The scan is seemingly a little darker and more saturated than the print version, but methinks that works perfectly. It just needed a little upscaling to clean it up a bit, and voilà.

I'm not too familiar with Bravo's work, but he's certainly a terrific cartoonist.
More on him here: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/bravo_emile.htm

These come from the sixth volume Le Noyé à deux têtes (the "Two-Headed Drowned Man," I believe). The series is by Jacques Tardi, as collected by Casterman. It ran from the ~70's to the 2000's.

I haven't read too much of this series myself, but really liked the color scheme, panel flow, and overall action/noirish aspects of these two pages.

Tardi is one of the most important, versatile and influential French comic artists of all time. He invented an influential variation of Hergé's "Ligne Claire," but is first and foremost hailed as one of the masters of adult comics.

Recurring themes in his productive oeuvre are the early 20th century - particularly World War I -, steampunk, detective stories, and the underworld of the city. His signature series 'Les Extraordinaires Aventures d'Adèle Blanc-Sec' follows a feisty female private investigator in 1910-20s Paris. --Lambiek

Sisters Jeanne & Cécile appeared in Jean-Pierre Gibrat's Le Vol du Courbeau ("The Raven's Flight") & Le Sursis ("The Reprieve"), respectively.

These two connected series, each comprised of two volumes, are some of my most cherished graphic novels of all, representing just about the purest form of "BD" in my mind, being both whimsical and fraught with tension... delights & dangers all around. They're both set during WWII, and focus almost exclusively on the civilian side of things. Here's a brief intro to both characters:

Jeanne (the gal pictured above) is sitting in a police cell, denounced by unknown parties as a French resistance-fighter, when a smooth-talking scoundrel and petty thief is added to the cell. Her fate looks terribly uncertain; that is to say-- likely headed for humiliation, rape and abuse. But then, she and her new 'friend' manage to escape, and from then on are on the run, sharing a bunch of minor & major adventures along the way. The series also features one of the greatest 'twist reveals' I've ever seen. Sweetness becomes pain and vice-versa, and as a reader I'm left totally wanting more story, please.

Now Cécile... dear Cécile-- she still lives in the sisters' home village, helping to run a small café. A local friend of hers ("Julien") has been declared dead due to war events, but after the village goes through their grieving & a funeral, it turns out that he's in fact still alive, and has returned to the village! (albeit hiding at his aunt's place)

The duo reconnect stealthily with Julien's aunt's help, and things seem to reach a sort of normalcy. Cécile et Julien become easy lovers after some difficulties, but then the local collaborators pry in to affairs, and now everything's all topsy-turvy. The series finishes up with another incredible, tragic twist-ending, and note: this series (Le Sursis) was the original.

Remarkably, these two masterpiece series were Gibrat's very first foray in to being sole author(!) In fact I'm quite sure they'd make for some superb movie scripts.

Oolala, I really liked this cool topic from our [~big brother/~sister] sub, r/bandesessinee, so I've done a small tribute, listing all titles in order, filling in [settings] and (creators), and adding clickable samplers... all presented by Super-Grover!

Please enjoy. ^^

Credits: u/ILEAATD and the responders for the suggestions, and Alex Ross for the lovely art.

Aire Libre : Le voyage en Italie [Vietnam, other] (Cosey)
Brelan de dames [?] (Dufaux, Vernal)
By the Numbers [French Indochina] (Laurent Rullier)
Chinaman [China, hah] (Taduc & Le Tendre)
Delisle's Burma, Pyongyang & Shenzen [respective] (Guy Delisle)
Dieter Lumpen [East Asia, various] (Zentner & Pellejero)
Hibakusha [Japan] (Barboni & Cinna)
Innommables, Les [China, Hong Kong] (Yann & Conrad)
Japan As Viewed by 17 Creators [Japan, hah] (various)
Pema Ling [Tibet] (George Bess)
Saigon-Hanoi [Vietnam] (Cosey)
Tengu carré, Le [Japan] (David B)
Toppi's Library, volume six [Japan] (Toppi)
Under Two Suns, from Broussaille #4 [Japan & Africa] (Frank Pé)
Voyages d'He Pao, Les [Vietnam, other] (Vinh)
Yoko Tsuno [Japan] (Roger Leloup)
White Lama, The [Tibet, other] (Bess & Jodorowsky)
White Tigress, The [China, Hong Kong] (Wilbur & Conrad)

Corrections and additions welcome! 🙏

Returning from the newspaper late at night, Phil Perfect had the habit of strolling around the outskirts of the "Royal Palace."

Well, I just kinda liked the arrangement and energy of this piece,
and bonus pts for being set in winter.

Serge Clerc is a creator I don't believe we've gotten to meet yet on this sub. Artistically, he seems to share much in common with Yves Chaland, yet there are of course notable differences.

IMO Phil Perfect the detective isn't all that noteworthy of a character (Clerc quickly moved on from him), but for sure, one day we'll need a good Clerc breakdown, a pretty versatile, rather ingenious creator as he was.