JohnnyEnzyme

These are the Krostons, a wicked little band of fools out to conquer the world. More here.

Being evicted from the sewers by the Head Rat seems appropriate for this Wednesday.

Animaleries is a 64pg book published by Fluide Glacial in 2015. It's chock full of flights of fancy like these, involving animals and familiar objects & scenarios.

Solé was first published in ~1971, evidently influenced by the psychedelic culture of the times. Some of his work is a bit much for me (the Frank Zappa 'dirty socks' piece comes to mind), but his draftsmanship and imagination are undeniably top notch.

More about him and his work here.

This is a wonderfully-fun, charismatic pirate's tale that rises well above similar fare. At 200 pages, it's easy and fun to read, with attractive, cartoony art, but what sets it apart is the excellent, gripping plot and superb storytelling. Even though the author Schweizer is an American, overall this feels a lot more like a 'Euro' work, hence why I've decided to share it. (see the sidebar for more about that)

So to our tale-- we start off on a merchant ship with something of a tense, building Mutiny on the Bounty situation due to the captain skimping on rations and running the crew ragged. "Catfish," our young protagonist, tries to speak up for one of his ailing fellows, but is accused of mutiny by the captain in a moment of extreme paranoia. Just as Catfish is being strung up, a pirate ship is spotted on the horizon, which swiftly runs our ship down.

In the sequence below, our protagonist has an audacious plan to help his new (pirate) captain lure in an English pirate hunter, one who's also carrying a treasure-hold of taxes from the Jamaican colonies.

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Previously, a rather unwise act of mercy on Catfish's part during the merchant captain's execution made him a bitter enemy out of the cruel, dangerous first mate. For the rest of the book, the main plot theme is thus a running battle of wills between our man and the hulking brute. We'll take a closer look at him in the final sample.

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Above we see a sequence that for me hearkened back to the excellent Master & Commander (2003) film, which explored a variety of hardships such tall ships of the time encountered.

The book is certainly loose and simple in graphics, heavy on the line-work, yet balances that with relentlessly fresh energy and expressiveness.

I really can't say enough about the storytelling. There's no wasted panels, no extra story that doesn't help move the book forward, and no overexplaining. It's very much a 'show, don't tell' kind of work, in which everything works together beautifully. Indeed, I found it quite a nice example of Chekhov's gun.

Above we see a page from the big finale between Catfish and the bloodthirsty first mate!

The book was published by Oni Press (~2015), and is a color reworking of an earlier B&W version. There's evidently a series of these "Crogan" books, and if the others are as good as this one, I think readers everywhere are all in for quite some treats.

Above is the fabled porte du temps (door of time), located in the Somonite desert. All three of these images / locations appear in L'archiviste, a companion book to the series. (I'm making this post because of the nice intro to book three published yesterday, here)

Le Lac Vert, Arrivee de l'Expédition Loms-Nered (the Green Lake, setting for the arrival of the Loms-Nered expedition)

The Obscure Cities (Les Cités Obscures) is a BD series created by Belgian artist François Schuiten and French writer Benoît Peeters. First serialized in magazine format in 1982, the series has been published in album format by Casterman since 1983. New installments of the series were published throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s in varying formats, including full-color, partial color, greyscale, and B&W, as well as photo comic, picture book, and multimedia formats. The series is distinguished by Schuiten's realistic rendering of diverse contemporary, historical, and imaginary architectural styles. --WP

Mont Michelson - La Distraction de l'Astronome

In this fictional world, humans live in independent city-states, each of which has developed a distinct civilization, each characterized by a distinctive architectural style. The series has no unifying narrative, instead telling a series of unrelated stories, using its fictional setting as the basis for magic realism and social commentary.

Schuiten's graphic representations and architectural styles is, among other historical themes, heavily influenced by Belgian Art Nouveau architect Victor Horta, who worked in Brussels at the turn of the 20th century. An important motif is the process of what he calls Bruxellisation, the destruction of this historic Brussels in favor of anonymous, low-quality modernist office and business buildings. --WP

A nice overview and wiki-resource for the series is HERE, in English & French.

This is a riff on a well-known sequence from The Calculus Affair (1956), album 18 in the Tintin series. Original page below:

It's also one of the many times in which the original French is altered somewhat to better fit English-speaking audiences. In the original, Putin (Haddock) exclaims "Thunder!," then "A thousand portholes!"

NOTE: This image is claimed by both X and Deviantart. I'm not quite sure who the original online artist is at this time. In any case, Slava Ukraini.

Another recent find from Fluide Glacial magazine, this is a 'police lineup' cut from the book cover of Impostures, tome 1.

The book itself is a collection of screamingly funny tribute / parodies of famous BD characters. I'll maybe post a story or two in future, after I'm done bumbling through the French.

I also loved the inside cover!

For the last 10-15 years I've been trying to branch out my BD and Euro comics reading, yet I regularly seem to be reminded (to the point of bafflement) how much *more* excellent content there always is to discover.

Take the cover pic above from the premier album of Carmen Cru, by Jean-Marc Lelong. I randomly bumped in to it looking through a defunct, BD tumbler acct, and immediately thought it absolutely delicious, and even kind of Halloween (or orc?)-themed. The series first appeared in Fluide glacial magazine in 1981, and later came out in album form (8 total).

Altho I'm just getting in to this series, I already love the excellent ink-work. Even better, the title character is just hilarious, and the stories, highly amusing. Here's the very first two pages published, from the short story The Scammers:

In which Carmen wants to make a bank deposit, tries to strong-arm her way to the front of the line, and is told she must start at the back (like everyone else).

So she duly heads to the back... then goes right back to the front of the line, this time on the other side! Assured again that she must wait her turn, she walks over to the bank manager's office and interrupts things, once again asking to make a deposit(!)

Told that she needs to see the teller for that, she complains that she already tried but was refused service, and even insulted. Hearing that, the bank manager reluctantly begins to appease her. [the story concludes with Carmen winding up making a fool and petty servant of the manager, incidentally ruining the client's morning]

To give a little background on her, Carmen is essentially a deranged, misanthropic old recluse who's also a master of bending people to her will. I sense that she's also designed to be a certain commentary upon French provincials from an earlier age. This isn't the first time I've seen this sort of formula at work, but I'm really impressed so far with the skill which in which Lelong carries it all off.

The French WP page gives further background in amusing style, and is translated here.

Classic Astérix illustrator Albert Uderzo passed away in early 2020 at the ripe old age of 92, and many artists did lovely, touching tribute art to Uderzo at the time, including the one above by Polish-American artist Bill Sienkiewicz.

Sienkiewicz has been working in both the fine art & comics fields for many decades, and his stuff tends to be rather breathtaking and wildly imaginative, quite unlike the usual comic art fare. In the case of Astérix he made the interesting decision to base his tribute on a Frank Frazetta piece, below.

Frazetta was yet another iconic artist in the vein of Boris Vallejo, with a touch of Richard Corben, often painting lush swords & sorcery pieces. [samples] My personal favorite work of Frazetta's was his collaboration with Ralph Bakshi on Fire & Ice, an animated film using the painstaking rotoscope process, in which the individual cells were drawn over live action reference material.

Some clips and full movie videos below. Check out the fluid movement of the figures, and remember-- this is a film from 1983!

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fire+and+ice+film

It's suddenly rather cold, dark and rainy here after an unexpected run of ~80°F days. This panel from Blake & Mortimer's La Marque Jaune (translated as The Yellow M) fits my mood pretty well.

Overall, I don't feel like Jacobs is quite on Hergé's level as a ligne claire artist, but every once in a while he charms me, as with this rainy panel that looks like it could be out of The Third Man (classic Orson Welles film from 1949, set in Vienna).

Funny, when I was looking for a higher-quality version of the original, I came across one with a much different color scheme. Hroom, now... which seems the better fit?

I'm still taking a posting break on the whole, but just wanted to add that I appreciate the group support from the other day. Clearly, a post per day was way too ambitious, but perhaps I can settle for a couple per week.

We're now past the two-month mark, and I've done my level-best to stock up our community with a load of content to be delved into by newcomers and reviewers, both. So far it's been a labor of love.

As such, I typically spend about 1-3 hours per day investigating future stuff that might make for interesting posts, sorting through things, upgrading art, writing notes, then giving it a shot (i.e. posting) every day, balancing the days I miss by posting twice the next day. Also, I usually post in the early mornings, such that our posts begin in Europe.

That said, I don't blame anyone in particular for not liking any particular stuff I decide to post on any particular day. That's just natural.

At the same time-- with 300+ subscribers now, it frankly stings to get a negative reaction like this, upon European artist Brecht Evens' work. After all, we're talking about one of the most awarded, modern, most-legit European comics creators doing their thing when it comes to Evens' work.

So here's a question--

1. Can you explain why you don't like the Evens' post? Because I'm open to editing / switching things up.

2. Would you like to post your own material? Because I welcome that.

Me, I'm going to take a break from this sub and think about some things..

EDIT: At the time of posting this, the Brecht Evens' post had a zero score, with more downvotes than upvotes. This was after a full day+, in which I gave the voting time to adjust itself.

EDIT2: Thank you so much to the positive responders. I've read the replies and have commented below.

His graphic novels have been a little hard for me to get in to so far, but one thing's for sure-- at his best, Evens' watercolors are gorgeous, striking and lush.

I see him as sort of an 'anti-ligne claire' artist. One who deliberately avoids clean, straight pen lines, and enjoys experimenting with color, blank space and storytelling innovation. Maybe a little bit like if Marc Chagall had done comics?

Evens' work has won him several awards in the comics industry, including the Prix de L’Audace at the Angoulême International Comics Festival for The Wrong Place in 2011 (also nominated for an Eisner Award), and in 2019 the Special Jury Prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival for Les Rigoles (translated in to English as The City of Belgium, 2021). --WP

More samples of his work HERE.

This is a delightful, Moominesque, all-ages book, published by Humanoids in 2019.

I daresay it's the kind of work that smaller kids and zen-philosophers might both enjoy. Or just a middle-aged bloke such as myself. :D

These cartoons actually date to the early 80's I believe, but remarkably, still seem fresh in a way utterly removed from 'cutting-edge' comics.

If I understand correctly, Coudray originally produced ~four volumes. Humanoids has published about three translations, each at ~100 pages.

"...They're a lot of fun and well worth a read for those looking for something lighter, humorous, and visually appealing. And, yeah, the gags are pretty timeless. Good stuff!" -- Augie De Blieck

Bigby / Barnabé is also part of a small series published under Humanoids' BIG imprint, meant for kids and all-ages readers.

Side note: if you're a beginning language learner, these books published in different languages are pretty great. By comparison, many other series, such as Astérix, Lucky Luke and Tintin, are generally too complex for beginners IMO.

More info on Coudray here and Augie's own review there.