JohnnyEnzyme

If you feel like playing today's game, then take a moment to come up with your best answers, and then compare them to the answers below:
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HINTS: (please don't look if you don't need them)
If you need a hint upon #3, then I'll offer two, but you must deduct 2pts from your overall score for reading each one. I'll go ahead and write the hints upside-down just below for those who don't want it.

˙ɹǝᴉsɐǝ ɥɔnɯ sᴉ Ɛ# uǝɥʇ 'ᄅ# ʇno ǝɹnƃᴉɟ uɐɔ noʎ ɟI (Ɩ

¿uoᴉƃǝɹ-puɐlsᴉ ʇɐɥʇ ɟo ʎʇᴉɔ uᴉɐɯ ǝɥʇ sᴉ ʇɐɥM (ᄅ

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ANSWERS:

1. It's professor Pacôme de Champignac, Fantasio, Spirou, and Panoramix ("Getafix" in English translations) EDIT: Oh! I deserve a rap on the knuckles for omitting Spip the squirrel, and Idéfix ("Dogmatix"), The scoring has been adjusted.

2. Astérix en Corse ("Asterix in Corsica"), the 20th Asterix album

"Corsica" is the best-selling title in the history of the series, owing to its sales in the French-speaking market, but is one of the least-selling titles in the English language. --WP

3. The poster is from the annual comics festival in Ajaaccio, Corsica, an event I just learned about myself! Specifically, this is evidently a piece made by Fabrice Tarrin for the event, which... looks like it was maybe from the 19th show, from 2022?

SCORING:

1. Give yourself 1pt for each character you correctly identified.
2. Give yourself 3pts for identifying the correct tome.
3. Give yourself another 4pts for identifying the -specific- city of the event. (let's give back a near-miss Corsican city 1pt in return, though)

HINTS:
As stated above, deduct two points for each hint taken earlier.

Max score is ~~11pts~~ 13pts. How did you do?

Btw, this here festival looks PRETTY GREAT!
And look, mateys-- it's coming up again in November...
https://festivalbdajaccio.corsica/

BACKSTORY: I recently had the privilege of reading US publisher Dark Horse's ~250pp collected translation of the 'Rocco' adventures. Previously, I'd only seen some of Torres' art panels, which I shared here about a year+ ago. Naturally, Imgur bumbled them all away, so don't bother searching. :-/

Right, then-- the first thing that hit my eyes about this series was the delicious, traditional LC art, fairly similar to Henk Kuijpers tremendously clean, detailed work on the wonderful Franka series. But in this case, when it came to the individual figures and faces, they could almost be described as circus-like, or even zoo-like, perhaps a bit of a mashup betwixt Otto Soglow's The Little King and a soupçon ("soups on, boys!") of Serge Clerc's interesting line-work, grotesquely-amusing as it could sometimes be.

Now, Daniel Torres evidently created these stories mainly during the 80's, I think? In this series, he seems to be imagining a parallel reality in which many of the planets and moons of our Solar system have long-been settled by that time, and by that point, they're perfectly abundant with their own politics, tensions, intrigue, and infighting. Yeap, same as it ever were.

More specifically though, we follow the title character, who at this point is utterly burned out from his earlier 'fast-lane life,' and really just wants to settle down and run his pleasant country club, of sorts. Naturally, a parade of both total strangers and people from his past keep intruding on his retirement-life, forcing him to get involved again and again, a traditionally fruitful premise IMO.

FINAL THOUGHTS?
I can easily recommend this one from a style-perspective alone. Frequently, it's simply fascinating to look at, no matter how the story is going. That said, there's a certain busyness and chaos to the stories that I feel like Yves Chaland's artistry captures better, via his Freddy Lombard stories. Then again, the Rocco stories have a totally 'pulpy-noir' feel, if you can overcome the 'noir' aspect being oversaturated by certain googie/jet-set/retro-futuristic stylings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ducreux

So, he was a multi-talented artist who worked under the 'fat boy'* and somehow managed to survive the bloody French Revolution, alongside his colleague David.

* one of Louis XVI's most notorious nicknames

My understanding is that he was meticulously-trained as an artist, and generally-speaking, did thoroughly professional work... until he had his personal time, in which he decided to 'boogie on down with his bad self,' as we once used to say in the States. I think. XD

But wait, there's more! I understand that some of his pics recently turned in to a sort of cottage-industry of memes. Behold:

EDIT: Alright, alright, here's a couple of those decoded. Most are rap-themed, I think?

#2 They see me rollin', they hatin' (Ridin song reference)
#7 STOP, it's hammer-time (MC Hammer song ref)

I first saw this question posted at a Tintin community a couple weeks ago, so here's my take on the matter. To be clear, these represent my best 'hangover-cures' for Tintin readers craving more, roughly-ranked from most immediately-relevant, all the way down...

NOTE: in terms of the obvious title-drops, please just google them. More specific stuff I'll link you to directly. Also note: Georges Remi and "Hergé" are the same person. Right so-- here we go!

• Alph-Art, the final, half-finished album, if you haven't already.
• Lake of Sharks if you absolutely must, but it's not by Hergé.
• Ampton's heavenly review series of the albums, breaking them down and providing loads of context and insights.
• The various fan-made Tintin pastiches, if you don't mind that they can get pretty wild and ridiculous (some are French-only). EDIT: link updated.

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Many (or most?) of them even got collected in to two
books, by NZ art historian John Stringer, seen above.

• Then there are the earlier versions of the stories from the original publishers, Le Petit Vingtieme, Le Soir, and finally Le Journal de Tintin, i.e. "Tintin Magazine." So to be clear-- after the full stories ran their course in such works, they were later collected in to album format by book-publishers, and still later, republished with significantly improved art and some editing, here and there. What's especially cool about the early stuff is that one can plainly see the artistry and storytelling of Tintin improving bit-by-bit, not to mention see some scenes which *didn't* make it in to the albums. [N.B. you can find many of these magazines and earlier-format albums at places like Archive.Org, or the same kinds of sites where one can D/L college texts]

Le Petit Vingtieme, a newspaper extra
in which Tintin ran from 1929–1940.

Le Soir, published in the eye of the hurricane, i.e. during the occupation, 1940-1944. (eh, I'm just going to go with a pleasant "Sophia" look for this later edition, as this period wound up taking years off Hergé's life and well-being)

Tintin magazine, in which the character appeared from 1946-1976, with the journal finally ceasing production in 1993, ten years after Hergé's death. (finally, G-Remi had complete control over his own character's publication, and in terms of these covers, there's plenty of silly stuff like the above, plus many other series depicted that appeared in the mag)

• Of course, check out ANY of the many fine books digging in to the backstory and making of the series, as well as the Georges Remi biographies. For example, one can get a fascinating sense of how hard Hergé worked behind the scenes to consistently publish a comic with high credibility and integrity, eventually and directly leading to a nervous breakdown or two, along the way. 😔
• Hergé's Totor, an early template, and direct predecessor to the Tintin character.
• Jo, Zette & Jocko, a Tintin-like, 5-tome series, designed explicitly for children, altho personally I liked it a lot, speaking as a 'supposed-adult.'
• Quick and Flupke, Hergé's fascinating attempt to compete with popular newspaper/magazine strips of the day, altho I'm not sure it stands up to the test of time, very well.
• Garen Ewing's wonderful, superb Rainbow Orchid series.
• Les McClaine's superb Jonny Crossbones (FREE TO READ online).
• Yves Chaland's Freddy Lombard adventures are interesting, since they're in a similar visual format and feature a Tintin-like character, but the style is a lot more arty and mysterious, not to mention "Freddy" and friends are frequently 'punk-ass-bitches,' to express it less than artfully.
• Moving into other media, there's a program of BBC radio adaptations, two TV series, a number of movies & documentaries, seven video games, and more. [LINK]
• Oh, and of course the fake Tintin covers are huge fun! Here's an archive of 1000+ of them.

Oof, I was trying to go to Youtube to pull out one of my favorite phrases of all time such as to wrap things up, i.e. "Well, there it is!" (from Emperor Joseph in Amadeus, 1984)

Somehow, in search of that, I bumbled upon a different, beloved scene, and... oh dear, haha, I'm just gonna leave it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKPDfB40t48

UPDATE:
In the interest of fact-checking, I decided to consult with u/jm-9, upon my various reccos, someone who I (and quite-likely many others) consider a particularly fine Remi and Tintin scholar. Very graciously on JM's part, they provided some fascinating, thoughtful feedback that stacked upon what I'd written, but also specifically corrected certain of my errors, plus a certain naiveté upon my Tintin history.

Hummm... and yet, after some reflection upon how to best integrate our notes & opinions in to a combined, rigorously-fact-checked whole, I'm settling upon it simply being wiser to simply add-on jm-9's notes after mine:

Great post! It's accurate for the most part. I know that Tintin appeared in Tintin magazine until the 80s through reprints and a colourisation of The Blue Lotus (similar to the recent publication). Of course, this is only a minor detail as the last new story to be published was indeed Tintin and the Picaros in 1976. The only other thing, though also a really small detail, is that Le Soir Jeunesse isn't mentioned. The majority of The Crab with the Golden Claws was published in this children's supplement of Le Soir before it ended due to wartime paper shortages.

As to additions, here are a few that I thought of:

You could mention Tintin and the Golden Fleece and Tintin and the Blue Oranges. These are movies but book versions were published by Methuen in the 60s. Of course, they haven't been reprinted since, and aren't in comic format either, so if this is targeted at English speakers it mightn't be that relevant given the difficulty of acquiring them.

When discussing the older versions, it would be a good idea to mention that they often have extra content. Feel free to reference this post of mine if you wish, though the formatting seems to have disappeared with the new Reddit site:

**https://www.reddit.com/r/TheAdventuresofTintin/comments/clz69e/deleted_scenes_from_colour_tintin_albums/ **

If you're targeting French speakers, Hergé: Le Feuilleton Intégral is a really good resource for the serialised versions including cover art of Le Petit Vingtième, Le Soir Jeunesse and Tintin magazine. It is unfortunately incomplete though.

For Quick and Flupke, you could mention the four books that are somewhat available in English. They are Fasten Your Seatbelts, Under Full Sail, Double Trouble and Two of a Kind. The others are unfortunately quite rare in English.

For Tintin and Alph-art, you could mention that the original 1990 album has full size drawings instead of much smaller ones, and is much easier to see details in. That version is much more expensive in English though, as the curent edition has rediscovered pages that the 1990 version lacks.

Thanks so much for creating this post by the way! It's a really good resource for Tintin fans.

I thought this was a neat, sepia-like piece, what with it's effective pen-like line shading, and a quasi-fairytale interaction of light and shadow. Could be a wimmelbilder, I reckon.

It comes from a book I've just started, Ye, in which Brasilian talent Petreca seems to handle almost every aspect of the book's creation.

---> a high-detail version of the art is here, as long as Imgur can manage to hang on to it <---

About the book, I can't give any sort of review yet, but here's what BDT had to say:

One of his generation's most talented comic book writers, Guilherme Petreca offers us "Ye", a cauldron of references to the inner-workings of his own mind. It tells the story of a young mute who goes in search of healing.

This fantastic, poetical work shows us Ye's learning journey, set during his transition from adolescence to adulthood. We encounter pirates and monsters, a retiring accordionist, and even a drunken clown*, all in a world full of nightmarish dangers and misadventures. But all this will eventually lead him to Miranda, an old healing witch with 'a thousand eyes.'

* (N.B.-- not a JohnnyEnzyme reference in this case)

[more pics]

EDIT: To be clear-- I think there's a good chance this is from the superb Angel Wings series, by Yann and Hugault. I'd say: RUN, DON'T WALK, if there's a chance of you getting hold of that series!

Details on the plane itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_J2F_Duck

I was seemingly out of the loop in Druillet's heyday, not really being aware of Heavy Metal magazine until the early 90's, I guess it was. Unfortunately, by that time I don't think 'HM' was publishing much of Druillet's stuff, anymore.

NOTE: just in case it's not known, Mssr Philippe was one of the four founders of Les Humanoïdes Associés, which were a huge advancement in getting BD / Euro-comics published across the world, including the States.

Anyway... for me, this amazing magazine cover is a typically wild, hilarious, and even somewhat nightmarish work that this living-legend produced. (yes, he's 80yo now)

I understand that it comes from a retrospective by "Mel" publishers, back in 2017. Anybody read that edition..?

Here's a Franco-Italian collaboration about an English pilot leading an historical Dutch expedition across the mighty Pacific, towards the Southeast Asian 'lands of silk,' circa 1600. (this was an historical thing, no joke)

Bah, and as happens far too commonly with me, my initial thought was to simply share some nice art, namely the two halves of page 11:

To me, the above is nice, satisfying and competent art in the draftsmanship sense, but what really sent me was the overall sunset gradient, saturation and mood. It's just nawt something I'd seen before in comics, and thus wanted to share.

(like it? don't like it? just meh?)

Anyway, (*oh boy, and here we go again*) then I just had to share a couple more panels in order to help improve the narrative sense, which IS....

Yes... in fact, it's about the real-life historical figure of sailor William Adams, whose preliminary life & times in Japan were captured by a great book by James Clavell (and further, creatively elaborated upon), and later, two great series and a stage play, all united by the title Shōgun. [link]

Oh, and it also has heavy overtones directly upon the great Catholic vs. Protestant rift in Christianity, in which we observe that the mutual antipathy was nawt confined to merely Europe. That these allegedly 'brothers in a Christian God' were perfectly willing to shred each other to bits based on the old yadda-yadda of 'mine is the one true faith,' etc.

In any case, this was a two-book series which mainly focused on a sort of running, philosophical / ideological battle between Adams and his daimyo captor / frenemy Tokugawa Ieyasu (i.e. Lord Toranaga in the books).

Now I wouldn't call it nearly as spellbinding (and incredibly long & epic) as Shōgun itself, but it did capture an interesting, more historically-accurate picture of the situation, in a mere two books of standard BD-length. (about 56pp each)

Oof, and I'd not previously heard of this creative team before, so let me just quote:

Scénario : Mariolle, Mathieu
Dessin : Genzianella, Nicola
Couleurs : Alquier, Fabien
Lettrage : Dewrée, Amaury

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-55149-BD-William-Adams-Samourai.html

Nice work there, mateys! 😃

THEME MUSIC: While I was working on this post, I enjoyed listening to Azymuth - Cuica Laranja Azeda, which sorta-kinda represents the Portuguese members of the drama.

So, not to 'beat myself hoarse,'* but ah man... there's just nothing like René Goscinny, i.e. the classic writer upon this series. <3

* hahaha (a little Belle & Hockridge tribute right there)

And yet, and yet... let's give the new crew a chance, i.e. the new writers & artists assigned to carry on the series.

It certainly can't be easy.

*phew* It's been a pretty overwhelming last month for me, what with vital paperwork I needed to fill out exactingly on a deadline in order to retain my Medicare, plus doctor followups, plus snap inspections upon my apartment, necessary to qualify for another rent-contract.

Just, lordy... as a middle-aged dude with ME, I must say it's been rather overwhelming at times.

Ah, but still-- things seem to be successfully winding down at this point, and I hope to get back to this sublemmy in more normal terms, what with my usual *Jenny-says-quack* gusto, sometime next week. Altho truth to be told, my hope is still that a mix of others will one day (hopefully sooner rather than later) be able to do the majority of posting here, thankfully & graciously taking over for this tired, irritable old man.

* "je ne sais quoi," haha

Along those lines then, big thanks to Nacky and "Wolfie" @wolfinthewoods@lemmy.ml for vitally pitching in recently with some fascinating topics and art. 💖

The honorary Vitalstatistix award is yours, mateys! ^^
speech, speech!

Right, in terms of sub-business, the last thing I have to say is that I apologise for sharing such a shoddy, half-finished post about the cool FreakAngels series, some days back.

I went back today and fleshed it out with helpful reviews and info, then added my notes. Please give it another look, kind readers? (it's a really fine series IMO, free to read)

FreakAngels:
https://lemm.ee/post/59557234

Aha, and as for the lead image, that's a bit of an inspiration. It begins with the fact that I used to have this game as a kid: D&D Computer Labyrinth game.

I'd say it was a pretty solid little game for the time, with nice atmosphere via the various 'authentic dungeon' sounds. Probably more aesthetically enjoyable than Dark Tower, if only because DT had some of the most plodding elements and annoying sounds ever (altho I still liked it). Meanwhile, other games like "Stop, Thief!" were just so simple, genius, and well-executed! (i.e., plainly superior electronic games of that class)

Hmm, why am I babbling about all that, though?

Oh, it's just that I ADORE the artist's work to death in the lead, multi-colored dragon image, above. Sadly, even on the typically know-it-all BGG page there's just nothing dang listed. Every once in a few years I try to put on my serious-hat so as to figure out the dang-ol-artist, yet still have never been able to!

Bah.. bah-ram-ewe.

Thanks to the folks at the Tumblr BD stream! [source]

Now, I'd already read the first tome, but didn't notice this funny capture, maybe because the 'marsu' in question seemed very hunted in T1. So, I suspect this is from T2, where our long-tailed lovely hooks up with some proper friendos.

Anyway, this is from a new-ish, two-tome work that imagines a Marsupilami awkwardly getting caught up in an modern urban-scape.

As with the recent, inspired guest-shots on Lucky Luke and Les Schtroumpfs (i.e. The Smurfs, which I previously covered across the "Tebo" version here), it's so interesting to me to see completely new talents taking these BD classics in funny, new, modernistic directions.

This two-part series is by the always fascinating Zidrou, and Frank (Pé).

Series link: (turn on translate)
https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-70835-BD-Bete-Frank-Pe-Zidrou.html

"The Third Testament" in English, that's it, yes.

In this sequence, Marbourg and Elisabeth (our two protagonists) are sneaking down a booby-trapped chimney in order to discover a critical, lost, Christian document that refers to the location of the fabled Third Testament, one of the great undiscovered documents in Early Christian literature. (haha, take that Nag Hamadi & Qumran scrolls!) (eh, sorry, I guess that was a bit rude)

NOTE: Either zoom-in or right-click-open all these five images. I've uploaded them in the highest quality I can, but you'll need to do the former to see them properly, I think.

So, the story is about... wow... it's a deep story. But it's an absolute THRILLER at the same time, and I sure don't see that very often in terms of philosophical / historic / mythological works. Anyway, it's about the hunt for a certain lost tome of Early Christianity, which in turn reveals an absolutely breath-taking figure in the religion, still alive... still jonesing for... well, let's just say some BIG THINGS. oO

Personally, this is one of those that I'd call a "flawed-masterpiece." It has a few, couple hiccups in terms of pure-storytelling, and perhaps a bit of logistics-issues, but otherwise it's utterly fascinating, compelling work, with all kinds of interesting discussions and sub-discussions that it engenders, IMO. In plain English, this is an UNCOMMONLY good little, movie-like masterpiece.

(if it's not completely clear, Elisabeth winds up falling in to an underground lake, and it's *just* short enough of a drop as to not cause her physical harm)

More info and different perspectives here:
https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-23-BD-Troisieme-Testament.html