European Graphic Novels+

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

I had an idea yesterday, so let's see how you like it. Below are sequences from ten classic BD series in which a well-known character is about to first appear. How many can you guess? (hint: these appear alphabetically by character name)

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

EDIT: And here are the answers: https://lemm.ee/post/33519501

Specifically these are from T1: Le dieu vivant. Frankly I've only skimmed the book so far, but wanted to add some long-overdue Comès content, since I'm not sure I got to him before.

Storywise, a wandering astronaut ("Ergün") is forced to land on a class-M planet, and Flash Gordon-like, has to deal with any number of strange peoples vying against each other. Then things go in to a sort of Conan the Barbarian direction, in which the hero is put to the physical test many times. Near the end there's also a stunning revelation that reminded me a bit of Planet of the Apes.

While the above might sound like Comès simply pastiched popular works of the day, in fact this was his very first GN, one in which he played the triple-role of writer, artist and colorist(!) Being from 1974 it's a bit dated, yes, but is quite impressive given the circumstances, and I'd say still holds up pretty well today as some classic BD 'pulp.'

Dieter / Didier Comès was born in 1942 in Sourbrodt, Belgiam, a small village in the east. His father spoke German and his mother Walloon & French, and he defined himself as a "bastard of two cultures", a characteristic of which we will find traces in his imagination. When he left school at 16, he worked as an industrial designer in a textile company in Verviers. At the same time, he learned about music. He was especially interested in jazz, trying his hand at percussion, and only came to comics later.

In 1969, he wrote Hermann, a gag strip published in Jeunesse du Soir. In 1973, Pilote published the first episode of "Ergun the Wanderer, The Living God." The second episode, "The Master of Darkness," would not appear until 1980 by Casterman. In 1975, the man already considered to be the spiritual heir of Hugo Pratt, wrote L'Ombre du Corbeau. It was in 1980 that Casterman published Silence, an album which established Comès reputation, and for which he abandoned color for the technique of black and white. Later came La Weasel (1983), Eva (1985), L'Arbre-Coeur (1988), Iris (1991) and La Maison Where Trees Dream (1995). Comès passed away in 2013. --Bedetheque & Johnny

(side note: why do I love skeletons so much?)

In Lambiek's entry I think one can see the Pratt influences:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/comes.htm

Copyright and Trademark 1988 Lucasfilm, Ltd

These sequences come from early in the sixth album, Asterix and Cleopatra by René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo.

BACKSTORY: Caesar tells Cleopatra that he doesn't think much of 'modern' Egypt, claiming that all the great works were built during ancient Egypt's heyday, thousands of years before. Which was in fact true, as Cleopatra herself was part of a recent dynasty of Greek conquerors. Nevertheless, she's mortally offended on behalf of herself and her nation, and vows to build a great palace to Caesar in a mere three months' time(!)

Haha, I love the wittiness of that right panel above, which reminds me of classic Shaw Bros Kung Fu films. I mean the unintentional hilarity of choppy dubbing, that is.

Such a great premise for a classic adventure, no?

I always appreciated the transition from the queen's palace set in the baking sands of Egypt all the way to the rustic little village in wintertime. Somehow it satisfies the eyes and the soul, both. And for the sharp-eyed, the little dog that tagged along in the last adventure (Banquet) pops up again just above, altho isn't named just yet.

Hats-off to the momentum-building! Indeed, Goscinny & Uderzo are one of the great writer-artist teams in comics at the tip-top of their game, here. But let's also not forget translators Bell & Hockridge, who routinely did an astonishing job of preserving the cleverness of the original French, even when it was pretty much impossible to convey the nuance or cultural references.

EDIT: One last thing I want to add is that the leading panel is actually pretty small on the total page, and after a modest 160% upscale and 125% width-increase, still works beautifully as stand-alone art. A real tribute to Uderzo's attention to detail and composition skills, I think.

That's Bal de têtes, above.

A few weeks back I was pleased to discover that a beloved childhood comic I once had was free to read online here, which includes info about Claveloux' other Grabote comics. Later, I discovered more of her fine arts work, and have been just blown away.

L: Coup de vent, R: La mer noire.

Painter Hieronymus Bosch' work certainly comes to mind(!)

L: Les images, R: Les 12 Moi

What's with all the baby heads and masks? After a good bit of searching, I'm... still not sure. Still, her site helpfully reveals:

She's always loved drawing and looking at imagery, for example: illustrated books, tarot cards, illuminations, posters, advertisements, pious images and erotic images, laughing cows, comics, bookplates, culs-de-lampe, rebuses…

Nicole loves images teeming with details, jumbles of characters (schizo-style), interior landscapes, metamorphoses, symbolic figures, caricatures, parodies, enactments of dreams, childhood memories, legged-fantasies and funny robots, and picture games.

These are evidently closeups from a huge wheel-like piece named Les Vepres des grenouilles ("The Vespers of the Frogs")

St. Anthony, is that you?

What I also greatly admire about Claveloux is her utter versatility. For example, one might look at her cartoons, her illustrations, her paintings, and never get a whiff that they were created by the same person.

Loads more of her work here:
http://nicole.claveloux.free.fr/

This was made for a band competition that runs every two years as organised by Flemish-Belgian magazine Humo. More art posters here.

And a musical bonus, another by Meulen:

This isn't meant as a proper introduction to this Belgian artist's work, but I'll try to get to that later. Lambiek in fact has a great intro here.

Here in the States, I sadly never saw any of these when they came out. The closest thing of course was Heavy Metal, which would *occasionally* mirror Métal hurlant's covers, I think.

It's neat to see how the format and style of the covers changed over time. I suppose there are some archive sites out there that track the whole run of Pilote & Spirou from day one; I just haven't looked yet.

Interesting example of how Spirou (the character) got so many treatments over the years. Most of his stuff I've seen has a comedic or 'light adventure' vibe, yet here he is throwing down like a bad boy. Whoof!

EDIT3: Looks like there was a global federation issue the past two days preventing this post from showing up in "active" (and maybe "new") streams. This cut way down on the number of people who could see it, I believe. Issue seems to be resolved, now.

She's from Rivne, Ukraine, and although extensively trained in fine arts, seems to aim for a sort of impressionist-inspired 'intentional primitivism,' a bit like Henri Matisse's latter stuff, perhaps.

But really, that's mostly just clumsy labelling on my part. In her own words (paraphrasing, haha), she's directly inspired by nature and, in terms of technique, the way that water forms a wavy, prismatic lens through which to view the world.

My art is about nature, reproduced in wavy forms, lines. With my artworks, I try to show people's deep connection with the environment and meaningfully remind contemporaries of the need to cherish and preserve nature. I’m reproducing art in wavy lines because I have a very close connection with water and these lines are water, nature waterflow. Like each wavy waterline crosses through different parts of our lives.

Now, it struck me that some of the color palettes and sense of design reminded me of Ukranian folk art, for example the right piece below, which has a sort of sgraffito technique, but hearkens back to traditional "Yuke" artistry, it seems to me.

Tanbelia has more to say about how her work relates to environmental urgencies, below. And of course there are many more examples of her paintings, sculpture & craft:

https://tanbeliaart.wixsite.com/tanbelia
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TanbeliaPaintings

EDIT: I'm pleased and grateful to say that once again, this little article is artist-approved. 🙂 Slava Ukraini.

I love how the sketchiness of the inking works perfectly with this rainy scene. It's from book one of the terrific series Aya de Yopougon, scripted by Marguerite Abouet, recounting her life spent living in a small town in Côte d'Ivoire, late 70's. At least, that's the starting point. I'll try to do a proper overview later, after I've read more of the books.

The French publisher is Gallimard / Bayou, and at least some of the books were translated to English by Drawn & Quarterly. An overview of the series is at Bedetheque.

Haha, gotta love that last panel for the Red Rackham vibes. 😁

So, I found Alas to be a nice, provocative read that also raised a lot of unsettling questions. It's set in a Paris of ~1900, in which anthropormorphic animals have caused humans to go near-extinct, hanging on here and there only in the wilderness. Story-wise, a hunting party finds a little human family of four, slaughters the parents, then captures a small boy and a girl named "Leaf." The rest of the book involves her story, as well as a porcine protagonist, "Léopoldine."

Why does Leaf, a little human captured by poachers, cause such a stir in the country's political and scientific class? She speaks, of course! But that is not the only reason for the prosecution to which she will be subjected, despite the help given to her by the journalist Fulgence and the young Léopoldine, a science student and daughter of a famous professor. From traps to incredible escapes, from false leads to real dangers, Fulgence and Léopoldine will end up discovering the terrible truth. Against a backdrop of political intrigue, romance and dementia, a romantic adventure whose feline, porcine and canine actors demonstrate very... human concerns. --Bedetheque

Thematically there are definite resemblances to Orwell's Animal Farm and similar works, for example in questioning whether humans and other animals can ever properly get along without the former mistreating the latter (and vice-versa). Also-- are hierarchy and the need for control utterly inevitable, whether within the wilderness or urban settings?

At ~70pp this reads quickly, and is more of a thought-experiment than something which aims for definitive conclusions. I wouldn't quite call it a classic, and it didn't exactly give me a 'cheerful, satisfied feeling' after reading it, but it's a fine story and good food for the thinking person, particularly one skeptical of man's footprint on Earth, let's say.

I was not previously familiar with the work of writer Hervé Bourhis, artist Rudy Spiessert, nor colorist "Mathilda," but they're definitely on my list from now on. Oh, and the publisher is Dupuis, 2010.

EDIT: Evidently a free English ebook was available for some time at this link, a service I was unaware of until today. Folks might want to check that site out for other free e-graphic novels.

Copyright and Trademark 1988 Lucasfilm, Ltd

Copyright and Trademark 1988 Lucasfilm, Ltd

This is from the book Les cybers ne sont pas des hommes ("Cybers are not men"), in which François Landon wrote the script. The book follows a format in which text appears on one page, then a wordless splash page on the next. I found the 1st/3rd-person narrative rather surreal, almost cynical in tone, in which a couple survivors of a plane crash must contend with a mad scientist's collection of robots... or something like that. Very 50's American sci-fi movie-style, it seemed to me.

The opening text begins: (thanks to Google-Translate)

So an interesting experiment I guess, but I feel like Chaland pulled this kind of thing off far more effectively with his own Freddy Lombard, which was a pretty lively pastiche / parody series.

If any native French-speaker knows this one, I'd be interested in your views. Certainly the art is neat to look at for any LC-fancier!

If you're not familiar with Chaland:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/chaland.htm

The back cover from the album we covered a couple weeks ago.

Three Belgium comic artists set out to make their fame & fortunes in the 'land of Walt Disney,' only to come crashing back to earth in Europe, ironically becoming BD superstars in their own rights.

Copyright and Trademark 1988 Lucasfilm, Ltd

Copyright and Trademark 1988 Lucasfilm, Ltd

Baynes was an English artist who illustrated a landslide of works in an impressive variety of styles over the years. The turning point came from... well:

J.R.R. Tolkien had written Farmer Giles of Ham, a humorous novella about dragons and knight-errantry set in a faux-medieval period, but was dissatisfied with the work of the artist who had been chosen as illustrator. Baynes's work caught Tolkien's eye and she got the job, creating a lively set of pictures that wittily pastiche the look of illuminated medieval manuscripts. So perfectly did Baynes capture the essence of Tolkien's tale that he declared them to be "more than illustrations, they are a collateral theme". He also delighted in reporting that friends had said that her pictures had succeeded in reducing his text to "a commentary on the drawings"(!)

It seems Tolkien also wanted her to illustrate the Lord of the Rings books, but it was not to be. Just imagine the Hildebrandt brothers with serious competition, hey?

In any case, she did do a nice map for LotR:

Lots more of her art and life-story below, including more on her collaborations with Tolkien:

https://www.paulinebaynes.com/

Miou! Miou, get back here!
By Thoth, what's this magic?
Damned cat!

So I'm finishing up tome 1 of this series, titled Kheti, fils du Nil, by Isabelle Dethan & "Mazan," as published by Delcourt. It's nominally intended for young readers, but to me retains that certain charm of being a "childrens book" chock full of delights for adult readers. I also found it not too hard to understand as an A1/A2 French reader, with the Translate app on my phone filling in the gaps nicely.

Kheti, the apprentice scribe, gets bored copying out the precepts dictated by his grouchy master. Suddenly a cat, then a little girl run into the temple where he's studying. When the cat passes through a strange portal in a wall, the children are dragged after it. They're propelled into a deserted place, in ruins, very similar to the one they left. In fact they're now in the world of the gods. The children and the cat will have to foil the plot that's being hatched against the goddess Sekhmet so that she can release the waters of the Nile and thus ensure the future of the Egyptians. --Bedetheque, Google & Johnny

There are certainly some analogues here to Lucien de Gieter's classic children's series Papyrus, but I feel like this one takes the mythos and culture of Ancient Egyptian far more seriously, not to mention allows the story to find its own pace as opposed to pushing it forward ala the classic and perhaps dated 'adventure book' style of Spirou magazine, where Papyrus first appeared in the 70's.

Here's an invitation for ~~young~~ all-ages readers to discover Egypt through its legends, its deities, its customs and beliefs, for example via the critical importance of the annual Nile inundation. Various divine beings appear to considerable amusement and exasperation, such as Bes the bearded dwarf, Thoth as the learned baboon, a bored cobra goddess, and of course Apophis, an evil python. There's also a nice little glossary to help understand certain figures and nomenclature.

----> more art samples <----

Cruising Tumblr today, I was intrigued by the top-left piece. It reminded me somewhat of the work of the late, great Patrick Nagel. So then, to work finding more...

Wróblewska is a graphic designer, product designer and digital illustrator who graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Supraśl, Poland. She continued her visual arts education in Germany and Finland, later founding her own design studio. --ArtInHouse.pl with edits by Johnny

Her personal work is primarily in portraits, particularly depicting female characters surrounded by magical auras, who dominate, entice and evoke nostalgia. Her works are meant to tell short stories suspended through time and space.

(that left one reminds me a bit of how American Maxfield Parrish so deftly handled polka dots, such as with The Idiot and Florentine Fete)

More:
https://www.artmajeur.com/marta-joy
https://www.behance.net/martawrblewska1

This little story is from Romain Dutreix' darkly-hilarious Impostures series, which are collections of satirical tributes to famous BD cartoons.

---> https://imgur.com/gallery/IP8wYYR <---

Google's translation services didn't do too badly today. Hopefully it will continue to improve.

Note: this is all based on the prior post, its comments, and maybe a little bit of research on my end.

For alt-comix fans, this format is a parody of the glorious, enduring Red Meat indie-American comic, and thank you to Monkeydyne for helping me make this little fake comic. 😘

Someone in an Asterix forums recently complained that Obelix never got a proper love interest, and it got me thinking... I mean, it seems that across Asterix, Lucky Luke, Tintin and probably many other popular series, very few (or outright none?) of the main characters discovered a bona fide romantic partner, and I suspect that the difficulties of mixing romance with a humor format was one of the biggest reasons why.

That, and the fact that adding a love interest would generally mean that such a character would become part of the ensemble, which means another mouth to feed, so to speak. (more storyline & panels for them, etc)

This is kinda why I'm re-reading Henk Kuijpers' Franka series, tomes 14 & 15, in which Franka has a pretty exhilarating love / adversarial relationship with "Rix," an art thief she initially sets out to capture. It's sort of in the style of James Bond films like From Russia with Love and The Spy Who Loved Me, and I thought author Kuijpers brought it with a lot of style and interest:

Now, I suppose that the difference in Franka (compared to more directly humorous series) is that such a series only lightly relies on humor, and maybe has greater license to muddy the waters without getting bogged down. For example, "Rix" could easily have been killed off either immediately or down the road, with the spirit of the series suffering little or no detriment. (much like a Van Hamme series for example, such as Largo Winch and Lady S.)

Compare that to Asterix, Lucky Luke or Tintin, in which it would have been a notably tragic event, doubtlessly shifting the tenor of the series. For Asterix in particular it could have been plainly disastrous, offending readers along the lines of how Simpsons viewers were outraged by the episode which revealed that Principal Skinner was in fact a fraudster.

All that said-- I'm hardly some 'know-it-all BD/Euro person.' So maybe in some other series, particularly humorous ones, romance can work perfectly well..?

This story finds Corto reuniting with many friends from previous stories, searching for the Mu, the fabled lost city. The Mu story is incredibly convoluted, making this a particularly hard translation. Lots of statements contradicting previous statements. It took me a while to come to the decision that Pratt was doing this on purpose, but the discovery of just what Mu turns out to be is a big part of the ongoing story.

This one is one of the longest Corto stories, and there are a lot of trippy dreams and dreamy trips that happen throughout. This is the loosest of Pratt's draftsmanship, and my favorite Corto Maltese art. The story meanders all over the place. The ending is in fact very affecting, especially if one has read some of the previous books (Corto Maltese in Siberia would be the key book there). --ECC blog

I liked the Mayan-style reference art and watercolor style here, but I don't recall if I've read the "Mu" story itself, as it's been a while since I dipped in to CM. Some more art samples from the story here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22corto+maltese%22+%22MU%22&udm=2