European Graphic Novels+

One of the things I always loved about Treasure Island was how Stevenson here & there included little bits pertaining to 'The Pirate Code.' For example, what the "black spot" meant exactly, and what the actual differences were between ranks, such as crewman, 'boson,' quartermaster, navigator, and full captain.

I feel that the two books comprising Republic of the Skull (200+ pages in all) do a fascinating job exploring in much greater depth how that all worked in terms of the early 1700's Caribbean and African Coast "golden age of piracy." Whilst meanwhile telling a damn good story, that is!

https://i.imgur.com/fxq9K6n.jpeg

Another fascinating thing I found in this work is that one of our protagonists was based on a real-life African Queen who really did command pirate fleets and conducted counter-wars against the Euros, i.e. Nzinga. In the story, after the pirates met her with some skepticism initially, she proved to pretty much be a genius at language, tactics, and whatever else.

Which was in fact true to the person!
Seriously, it seems she was a sort of perfectly-audacious, 'Albert Einstein' of the day.

Right so, moving on-- it seems there was a special ceremony when it came to threats against 'our brothers and sisters' (i.e. the currently-serving pirates), in which real trials or mock-trials could occur. Here we have the start of one, for example:

https://i.imgur.com/JxRzdUR.jpeg

Primarily, it was a means of helping ones' mates deal with their inevitable mortality.

Republic of the Skull covers literally 4x significant content as I'm attempting to bumble around via these haphazard words. In short, it's the very best pirate-themed work I've ever read.

I really enjoyed this mashup of Medi / Ren styles, courtesy of "ColinArcArtPerson."

Unfortunately, until the problems are fixed here in terms of including images in posts & comments, I'm gonna just leave you with one more pic in this case:

https://i.imgur.com/mhm9M6k.jpeg

The artist "Colin" is on Tumblr, for starters:
https://www.tumblr.com/colinarcartperson

(from Les Schtroumpfs T4, L’œuf et les Schtroumpfs)

TAGS: Schtroumpf, Smurf, Peyo

Copyright and Trademark 1988 Lucasfilm, Ltd

Full title: Ballad against the enemies of France.

One of 18 illustrations he did for Ballades, a book of poems by François Villon. This immediately stood out to me because I've seen so little of Moebius' watercolor & marker work like this.

In fact the pieces as a whole distinctly remind me of major arcana tarot cards. (hmm, I wonder if anyone's had the chutzpah to try arranging such a deck out of his art?)

You can see more of these at the bottom:
https://www.vagabond-des-etoiles.com/arts/ballades-de-francois-villon-moebius/

This comes from the Conquistador series. As a huuuge Jean Dufaux fan, I'm embarrassed to say that so far I haven't gotten to it yet. :S

Still, tho:

Since their landing in America, Hernán Cortés and his army have been considered deities by the Aztec emperor Moctezuma. Unfortunately, Cortés has been working more for himself than for the distant crown of Spain for some time.

While he mounts a punitive expedition designed to remind others of their allegiance to him, Cortés also sends a motley group, mixing soldiers and mercenaries, to steal Moctezuma's priceless treasures.

That group of adventurers will soon be decimated by a mysterious entity which relentlessly pursues them in the jungle.

Are the enemy creatures mythical in nature, or simply human killers bent on vengeance? Perhaps one should not attack the ancestral and powerful Aztec legends with impunity… --BDT and Johnny

There are 4 tomes in all, listed & summarized here:
https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-32722-BD-Conquistador-Dufaux-Xavier.html

This comes from a fun, rollicking, 8-tome adventure series scripted by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The premise involves a boy born without arms & legs but with a fierce willpower, who finds ways to reverse some of his infirmities by going on various quests, which also tend to involve the fate of his very world. It's not as dark as some of Jodo's other stuff, reminding me more of the Arzach series.

Tragically, the artist (Arnaud Dombre) lost his life around the time the last book was being finished up, which was turned in to a rather fascinating memorial to him in the final pages, the likes of which I've never seen before. Some 'Blackadder & co. making their final push' type of energy, if that rings any bells.

A bit more on Arno here:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/a/arno.htm

And on the complete series: (translate alert)
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Aventures_d%27Alef-Thau

So my French is still very much a WIP, but regardless, I really enjoyed this tome. I found it light-hearted in style, but with a good amount of emotional punch, possessing an interesting slice-of-life storytelling style.

Yeah, there were lots of obvious similarities with Lewis Trondheim's classic McConey / Lapine series, but Durbiano has her own way of telling these tales, not so much alongside Trondheim's humorous-nihilist approach. (hah)

In terms of the story, we start with a minor "rock oldies" band that's been engaged to play nightly on a cruise ship.

https://i.imgur.com/GNf3RO2.jpeg

Fun little tableau-style scene there. And now an entire page, by golly:

https://i.imgur.com/qFJtaRn.jpeg

Pretty funny. The group's manager is arguing with "Mick," the singer / lead guitarist about the band's one and only groupie. One who was tacitly invited to come along on the cruise, and naturally, she has an enormous crush on the laddie. Poor, poor inconvenienced Mick. XD

https://i.imgur.com/U9K5c71.jpeg

WHAT were you saying just now? Huh, what, huh?

SIDE NOTE: One of the things which routinely blows my mind as someone who usually can't stand anthropomorphised animal comics is when I barely even notice that such was the case.

Eh, actually I found it completely charming here, serving well alongside such masterpieces as District 14 et Grandeville. TBF, if I can offer up any particular critique here, it's that the book can be ever-so-slightly "soap-operish" in nature. Still tho, it never seemed to wallow in such, as they commonly do.

Oh, and here's some more on this laudable comics gal:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/d/durbiano_lucie.htm

EDIT: For anyone curious, we're still having a "suspicious glitch" when trying to post images in text. Still working on it...

It's Simon Stålenhag again.

Earlier post on him:
https://lemm.ee/post/30828607

This English story dates to 1734, and was of course later known as Jack and the Beanstalk. But get this-- the story actually seems to have proto-IndoEuropean origins, dating as far back as 4,500 BC(!)

WP has a solid article on this stuff here.

As for the artist:

Scott... is primarily known for his work illustrating children’s classics such as Peter Pan, The Night Before Christmas, and the more recent titles, Classic Fairy Tales, Favorite Nursery Rhymes from Mother Goose, Classic Bedtime Stories, and his novel for young readers, Eddie: The Lost Youth of Edgar Allan Poe, which he wrote and illustrated.

More of his work on "Jack" is here and some of his fairy-tale works are there, which also link to his overall art portfolio.

Style-wise and theme-wise I find some similarities to the work of Kit Williams, who I briefly covered in a post here from six months ago: https://lemm.ee/post/16931863

Is too much texte, maybe...!?
Lewis OfMan

https://i.imgur.com/OWwp3Qz.jpg

https://lemm.ee/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FOWwp3Qz.jpg

So this is Nävis ("NAY-vee") from my favorite long-form sci-fi series Sillage ("Wake"). It's about a human girl who was the only survivor of an interstellar ship crash, who grew to adulthood with the help of one surviving robot and a sort of orphaned tiger-cub who grew up alongside her.

Eventually, she's discovered by the travelling collective "Sillage," which immediately turns her life upside down, but unexpectedly she proves uniquely valuable to the collective-- her human mind simply can't be read by the best telepaths in the galaxy, making her primo material as an espionage agent, particularly since she grew up in fairly savage circumstances. It's all a bit of a super-creative riff on the classic Tarzan formula, I find.

More on the wonderful Sillage / Wake albums:
https://sillage.fandom.com/wiki/Sillage_(comic_series)

Side note: I get the feeling that her bird friend here doubles as a little homage to John diFool's Deepo!

NOTE ALSO:
I've been having some pretty weird problems posting here since I publicly critiqued Lemmy.ML the other day. Let's assume it's just a total coincidence for now, but at the moment, it looks like I'm not allowed to share extra images in the body of my posts.

This page comes from a couple years ago.

So-- clockwise from L, we have my unfinished attempts at the letter "E," from an illuminated manuscript, one of the industrial fans from my apt-building rooftop, an inflatable cactus creature, and a doodle-space that a couple kids filled in at the local cantina.

At this point I'd switched from watercolor / gouache to straight-up watercolor pencils, mainly due to ease-of-use and declining health. In theory I found watercolor pencils a generally wonderful idea, but one fraught with complications and hardships, such as the reality that, daggit... the color markings one makes with the pencils really want to stay RIGHT where they are despite all the coaxing in the world from wet brush-strokes. Bah...

Still, I'm naught but a noobie when it comes to watercolor pencils, so please do take that as a grain de sel.

The last quarter-sketch (the one the kids did) embarrasses me a little bit and makes me laugh, both. Indeed, if I ever publish my 'great non-fiction' bookend, I'm planning on naming it Faces and Phalluses, directly in reference to the super-amazing ability of the human brain to recognise faces and reproductive organs in almost any possible chaos of an image.

I love this mashup of styles, in which I'm seeing both Mucha, ancient art, ancient architecture and Jordans on the feet!

My only frustration is that try as I might, I haven't been able to find the original artist. Using reverse-image searches I've been able to come up with a couple names, like "Ely Ferreras," "Samuel Huynh," and others, but so far it seems like maybe they were just people who shared the art on their social media streams. Or maybe "Ely Ferreras" is actually the name of the subject / piece?

Bahhhh, I don't know.
Anyway, you'll get a gold star from me if you can definitively solve the mystery via your internet sleuthing skills. 😀

So I'd been building up this little collection over time, wondering when I might best introduce it, when it hit me today that, holy heck-- it's Pride Month, after all!

So then...

https://i.imgur.com/lBa1EAd.jpeg

This guy's just the best!

TBH, I've been pretty fascinated with ancient Greek culture since I was a sprat. At one point in my early journals, I even ascribed actions of mine to various Greek gods, like Helios the Sun god, Apollo, Janus, and Athena...

But not YOU, Zeus, oh no, buddy!!
(eh, that dude was just too domineering for young me)

Those are frankly some silly-ass journals, but what can I say?
The things we once held dear as kids, amirite? XD

Oh rabbits, sorry for wandering off, but the technicolor coin above is pretty cool, no?!

Anyway, I love how some modern artists like Petela are such absolute bosses at mixing up modern art techniques & sensibilities with ancient, authentic art, such as the Minoan-inspired piece above.

Okay, that's an interesting... moustache? XD

https://i.imgur.com/wzzZgly.jpeg

Full disclosure, I guess--
I'm in the arts.
It's both my hobby and my life.

I guess my point is-- this community will always be inclusive of all but the intolerant as long as I'm involved.

And of course, I <3 cephalopods.

Honestly? I don't really know much about Alexander Petela, but I do gots some links, hey!
https://alexandriad.tumblr.com/
https://www.redbubble.com/people/AlexanderPetela/shop

Here's a nifty, noirish 5-tome series originally published by Epsilon / Verlag. The author "Erik" is a German graphic designer who seems to have worked outside the typical comics publishing format, and as a result I find there's a certain unconventionality to both his art and storytelling. Style-wise, the Dédé books remind me of Blacksad and Jérôme K. Bloche in that they're all a fairly casual mixture of pastiche and tribute to the genre, with traces of satire thrown in. This one happens to be my favorite of the three, having good pacing, wry humor, and being the least pretentious.

Almost an obligatory scene, but here's how it's handled in this series.

It's usually raining in Dédé's world, because of course.

Here we see our detective's usual haunt, the café below his apartment.

...His girlfriend Yvette and a shot of his standard-issue office.

These come from his first adventure, which has some horror overtones. Dédé's hired by an anonymous caller to check on a series of elderly ladies, all of whom he discovers to not only be deceased, but somehow mummified as well(!)

At this point I want to mention the art. While it has some 'LC' characteristics, it's also cartoonily expressive, visceral, and perhaps even self-indulgent. Facial expressions are usually over-exaggerated, female characters are built from the same toolbox, and color gradients are downright nonexistent. To be fair, the rather monotone color scheme is clearly meant to stack on the 'noir' concept, and does so pretty nicely. And while I'm nitpicking individual qualities which otherwise might annoy me, I did find that on the whole, the art works quite well. Some won't like it of course, but that's also where Erik's unconventionality comes in, which is worth a couple bonus pts for originality, I think.

Alrighty then...

Like Rodney Dangerfield, Dédé's typically in short supply of respect.

Speaking of the art, I like the isometric framing here, complete with angular rain. In terms of this particular adventure, someone's been leaving body parts around a little resort town. The inset faces represent some of the onlookers who might double as the perp.

Another almost obligatory scene. Despite his generous build, our detective's not really a fighter, and has been worked over hard. Now he's headed home. Unfortunately he has to pass the café on the way there, and it doesn't go well.

Still, he can put his foot down when necessary.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of info out there about "Erik" and this series. It seems to have been translated to Dutch, but I'm not sure what else, nor where to get it. Scanlations perhaps, if you're in to digital comics. The GCD has a little info, if that helps.

OTOH, Erik's site is still up, and he generously offers six-page previews of all his books, provided you can read German. There's also more about his background:

https://www.eriks-comics.de/

Thought I'd throw this up since the link is missing from the op and it is a very cool catalog.

If that doesn't show up for some reason, the page link is here. I just happened to bump in to his work on Tumblr, the other day.

He's uploaded a lot of cool, sketch-like animations recently:
https://b-liba.tumblr.com/

A fun mix of familiar artists, characters, personalities, and... the obscure.

This is zoomed in and upscaled from the event poster, with the exhibit running to the end of August 25th, 2024. The museum is located at rue des sables 20-1000, Brussels, Belgium.

https://www.comicscenter.net/en/exhibitions/the-great-temporary-exhibitions/le-lombard

I hadn't checked Mastodon for a while (I do it like this, which is also on the side bar), and discovered a load of promising titles coming out. Or which came out recently, I guess.

Pics of the albums are in the thumbnail / lead image, and below is a listing with news sources. Some are in English, but with others need you'll to hit the "translate" button:

• Le Fils de Pan
• Le Visage de Pavil
• Rune, et Luna
• Alerte
• Scavengers' Reign
• Wilderman
• Carcajou
• Petit Pays
• Turing - dangit, I forget where I first saw that one! :S

NOTE: Jon Juarez is the artist for the bottom left one (Scavengers Reign), someone who I previously covered a little bit here.

The quiz is here, for anyone who missed it. Following are the answers:

.
.
.

1. Bobo from Sillage ("Wake"). Altho they met as enemies, he wound up becoming one of protagonist Nävis' closest friends. She did, however, permanently blind him in one eye, as is just happening above.

2. Bianca Castafiore, the Milanese Nightingale, from The Adventures of Tintin. As it happens, there's some slight differences of opinion regarding her singing talents.

3. Dogmatix ("Idéfix") from Asterix the Gaul, who was sitting right outside the Butcher's shop the duo entered. In fact he spends the rest of the album following Asterix & Obelix around Gaul, until finally at the big feast, Obelix happens to notice him:

4. Herbert of Craftiwich, from Lewis Trondheim & Co.'s brilliant Donjon series. He's one of the two main adventuring characters along with "Marvin the Red" in this deep, varied series.

5. Kriss of Valnor, from Thorgal. She's arguably the greatest, most complex villain across comic-dom, and even stars as the anti-hero in her own companion series. Gotta love how she disdainfully orders her future husband around here, i.e. Thorgal.

6. Laureline, from Valérian and Laureline. She was originally a bold, curious-minded peasant girl from 11th century France, who happened to rescue Valérian in the first chronological adventure, Les Mauvais Rêves ("Bad Dreams").

7. Monsieur Choc, from Tif & Tondu, perhaps the least-known series on this list. "Mssr Choc," the man in the dress suit who always wears a medieval helmet, is in fact the leader of a global criminal organisation, not unlike "Blofeld" from the James Bond adventures.

8. RanTanPlan, from Lucky Luke, the dumbest dog in the universe. Actually he's probably right to flee the Daltons, here.

9. Roxanna (or "Pelisse" in the French editions), from La Quête de l'oiseau du temps ("The Quest for the Time-bird"). Part of why I'm introducing her along with the other secondary characters in this list is because her father "Bragon" (seen here & earlier in the quiz) is really the main character, while Roxanna's very existence is more... subtle.

10. A Smurf, from the Johann & Peewit adventure La flûte à six trous ("The six-holed flute"). The Smurfs proved so popular that they took over as author Peyo's main body of work in their spinoff series.

While finishing up the "answers" section to the recent quiz, I accidentally bumped in to this panel (from Banquet) and was struck by how unique it was.

Now, there have been plenty of times when an overconfident oaf looked to put Astérix in his place, only to be sent skyrocketing to the heavens, but in this rare case we have a solo legionary of mediocre physical build (name of "Spongefingus" in English) who's been worked in to a perfect wrath, eager to take on our Gaulish duo.

Well, what the hey... let's see the backstory:

(previously, Asterix & Obelix on their tour through Gaul happened to gain possession of a 'breakdown' chariot, likely a playful anachronism, altho who knows?)

As usual, Obelix is dreadful at playing along, and now the vendetta is ignited.

Brut: a French word meaning "raw," used to describe a style of wine that's very dry and crisp, with little to no added sugar. In this case, a dry, sparkling wine.

The Beatles have matured
"A dynamic and realistic team"

JOIN THE WINNING BEATLES TEAM BY FILLING OUT THE SUBSCRIPTION VOUCHER BELOW:

This seems to come from his We walked on the bubble series of collectibles / postcards.

Goossens is evidently a humorist and master of the surreal, who does a lot of work for Fluide Glacial magazine.

Goossens' stories can be best compared to the absurd sketches of the British comedy group Monty Python. He picks conventions from literature, film, television and history, giving them a surreal twist. His serial 'Route Vers L'Enfer' is a war film pastiche starring Father Christmas, while 'La Vie d'Einstein' tears down the myth of the theory of relativity and its inventor.

He often uses the same documentary approach as his mentor Gotlib, as his stories are populated with TV hosts, interviewees and talk show guests. Besides being a cartoonist, Goossens is also a lecturer and researcher in artificial intelligence at the University of Paris VIII. --Bedetheque