European Graphic Novels++

My friends, every once in a while there’s something that’s so absolutely special and illuminating (even if it comes from the ‘Evil Empire’), that I feel like it’s STILL worth sharing, in the clean spirit of what this community aims for, which in my mind reaches above such temporal, petty matters. Content over Style. Truth over Attitude.

That’s Spirou #1392, btw.

Fascinating series, especially in the context of GOSCINNY, right?

Aye, he was a British chap whose best stuff probably peaked in the 50’s-60’s-70’s, perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Searle

I’d posted a small collection of his gonzo, black-humored comics pages before, but it got lost in the instance move from last year, and Imgur deleted the originals, go figure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ottokar%27s_Sceptre

The artist here is Attila Futaki, one of the few Hungarian creatives who worked in the general BD scene. The above image is from "Percy Jackson", a young-adult / all-ages series in the spirit of Harry Potter, about a 12yr-old attending a gifted students school, who discovers he’s the son of Poseidon(!)

11-page sampler here: https://www.bdgest.com/preview-1949-BD-holy-wood-portrait-fantasme-de-marilyn-monroe.html

From Bigby Bear, tome two, “For All Seasons.”

Gino was a Roman bloke (literally, from Roma, Italia) who produced a tonne of classic painted content for a wide range of literary series, such as John Carter of Mars, Sherlock Holmes, The Jungle Book, Fu Manchu, Arthurian legends, Jack Vance’s Science Fantasy, as well as stories by Daphne du Maurier, Mary Stewart, and Flashman.

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

I’ve been seeing these posted on Lemmy lately. They’re Hungarian from 1957 to 1970. They’re using the language of no language to tell charming 3 panel stories.

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-34992-BD-Alix-Senator.html

I believe this is from L’Enfer, le silence, which I suppose means… “Hell’s silence,” or something like that. Artist is Spain’s amazing Juanjo Guarnido. If I’m counting right, it’s from story four from a series which is at least seven books long:

It’s by Appollo (writer) and Brüno (artist), a creative team who’ve already brought us quality series such as “T’zée”, “Commando Colonial” and “Biotope.” (which I previously reviewed HERE)

Euro medieval-fantasy style art. I still have my original book around somewhere, which might have been worth some nice coin today, if I hadn’t covered it in a thick plastic sheet secured with duct-tape. It’s all one piece at this point, probably worth a fraction of its original value.

“The Fisher and the Salamander.”

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

I’d never heard of this book ("The Terrible Adventures of Scholastica") and illustration series before, and yet thar’ she blows– a book in which Escher designed his take on illuminated letters, plus other goodies. Some really cool stuff, to my mind.

It’s a cropped page from Freddy Lombard’s Holiday in Budapest tome. I love the gold-hue style of the top panels set against the grittier, grey and fire-themed panels below. It’s been a long time, but it looks like this adventure is set during the Magyar Revolution of 1956?

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-40001-BD-Medee-Le-Callet-Pena.html

Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/serpieri_pe.htm

Oof, I’m falling way behind the various samples that I have cached. At the moment I have a couple-dozen mostly-finished posts that need some kind of push to get them out the door. Part of the issue is properly curating the images, and another, unfinished text. It’s always something.

I don’t know much about “Jano,” but LBK has some info:

Bah, I’ve really gotta find a nice sci-fi story of Philippe’s to share here. Oh well, here’s his LBK: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/caza.htm

I’ve been having a load of fun reading this Van Hamme series, recently.

I love the idea of a wordless story, telling everything through the art itself. This was released in France in 2014 and ironically translated to English in 2018.

These are a bit dated, but still fun. They go back to ~1966.

Obligatory reading for people who want to understand life under the Iranian mullah regime.

Phenomenal graphic novel about the Arab world and migration to Europe.

Best feminist comics I have ever read are by Liv Strömquist.

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

Flemish artist Pieter de Poortere. And I don’t have the slightest idea how to pronounce “Boerke” correctly, in Flemish. Would it be like in Dutch, or a little different?

I spotted some Western influences in this LC-style goodie, so let’s take a look. First, the backstory:

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-5061-BD-Clarke-et-Kubrick.html

The crew led by Redbeard (Baba, Eric, Pegleg) are caricatures of the pirates created by Jean-Michel Charlier and Victor Hubinon for their adventure comic Le Démon des Caraïbes (The Demon of the Caribbean), published like Asterix in the comic book magazine Pilote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rackham%27s_Treasure

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-76192-BD-Saint-Elme.html

Yet another brilliant Russian artist I randomly bumped in to. I guess it makes sense in a way, i.e. living under such relentless oppression all the more spurs flourishing intellectual and artistic digression from the party line. Or something like that.

The art is by Alfonso Font, whose work I generally enjoy. For example, I really dug this color palette. I don’t actually remember this story very well, but on the whole found it rather mediocre. Those ripples, though!

The site was Kinabatangan, Malaysia. The joke is based on a sequence from Tintin #22, Flight 714 to Sydney.

Finnish artist, now living in Canada. More like this at her site: https://www.evelmiina.com/

This post is kind of a ’next man up’ response to Sergio’s fun post from earlier today, in which Haddock is stumbling around in a theatre set, wearing a huge cattle head.

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

“The Island without Kings” (could be stated more elegantly than that, oh well)

Yet at the same time Mœbius can create these amazingly simplistic scenes, that show so little and say more with what’s missing.

I’ve always been amazed by how much detail Mœbius can cram into an image yet still keep it readable.

These pages constitute the beginning of this superb, crime / heist / noir series, created by writer Fabien Nury (France) and artist “Brüno” (Germany). It’s called “Tyler Cross,” and is set in the fifties.

Willy Pogány was a Hungarian artist who lived from 1882 to 1955. I hardly know a thing about him, but HERE’s more of his art.

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

Mssr Poirot, You pride yourself on solving mysteries too difficult for our poor, brainless British police force

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTDdIO74BuA

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-87755-BD-Au-Chant-des-Grenouilles.html

Fierce is an amusing riff on the King Arthur legends that reimagines things from the ground up. The main holdovers from the old stories are Arthur, Merlin and ‘Excalibur,’ but each of their narratives have changed a lot. In this version, Arthur has defeated a demon hoard in order to secure his kingdom, and nowadays, with nothing much else to do, he descends in to sloth and gluttony.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAZJAzCshN4

Well, in any case, the main thing is that Spip made it safely aboard!

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

Thorgal is one of my very favorite series, but wow, can the main character be a major blockhead, sometimes. These are from the recent tome 41, I think it was.

I have an infected molar from a root-canal, and I’m having much problems lately getting it professionally extracted. &@!$!*(^

I happen to like pixel art, and in the past, posted a couple collections here. Sadly, they didn’t survive the move from Lemm.ee, but I’ll see if I can find the backups.

Pretty wild panel I thought worth sharing! And from publisher Humanoids page:

Concept art for Verne on Vacation, an animated pilot (Cartoon Network, 2009) that recently got picked up as a series (or is it a film?). HERE’s a 3min sample. (always interesting to see completely different genres hybridize like that!)

This is all new to me, but these three seen to come from "The Silent Kingdoms".

Oh gosh, obligatory novelty song from my youth! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZmV5pF4eNA (Wet Dream - Kip Addotta)

Interstellar Dust is written by C.J. Hudson, with Polishman Igor Wolski handling the art. The special cover above was done by Brandon Graham. Print copies are offered HERE, and it can be read online THERE. I checked it out a bit, but it kind of missed me, amounting to modern-American sci-fi pulp, I’d say. But if that’s your ‘cuppa joe’…

So, not exactly a red-letter day.

From an earlier, short interaction we had, Mssr Lvxferre was kind enough to help catch me up with some nice Portugais & Brésilien comics & graphic novels.

In terms of surreal-inspired work, there’s a bit of a ‘Jim Woodring’ vibe here, but Rickheit’s work initially tends to be more quiet, contemplative, and slightly spooky, with settings which are generally Victorian, steampunk, and ‘mad scientist’ in inclination. But sometimes horror and gore is just around the corner. * (right-click as needed)

. https://i.imgur.com/JpfVzsH.jpeg (right-click as needed)

Yes, that Jordan Mechner*. I just started his "Templiers" two-parter GN, and in the collected-edition preface, he explains that he’s seen and read any number of historical fiction works, but he’d never come across anything outside of prose works that told the story of the spectacular, nefarious downfall of the Knights Templar, formerly the absolute badasses of mighty Catholic orders.

Balbuzar is an older kids book, in the popular ‘text and picture’ format. The story is quite the absurdist tall tale, in a certain classical tradition, but really nothing too remarkable to me. It’s moreso the completely over-the-top, hilarious imagery of Pillot that had me chortling in appreciation.

This panel appears in T5 of the Dick Hérisson detective series by Didier Savard. TBH, I’ve had a copy in my BD folder for ages, and simply liked the image, which vaguely reminded me of the classic Red Rackham’s Treasure.

These are from V2 of the "The Golden Age":

These come from Sabbah’s 133pp "Ladies of Legend" GN. I found it both fun to read and surprisingly thought-provoking, as the author really digs in to the implications and modern interpretations of 21 female historical & mythical figures.

(right-click as needed)

You know… there’s sort of a theme of semi-morbid, historical human curiosity that’s run through my life, but also there are some personal health reasons which dictated, essentially: “you simply can’t make a career out of such curiosity.” And such is life, of course…

Here we go:

(right-click as needed)

Sylvain Chomet’s Les Triplettes de Belleville is easily one of the great accomplishments of movie animation, and something that one can watch on repeat, discovering new features with every viewing. Now, I’d shared it’s pop song breakthrough hit a week ago, but here I want to talk about the movie, as a whole:

Right-click as needed: Frank Adams, 1904 (British, 1871-1944)

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-22255-BD-Arzak.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdOFwuN8Nb0

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-21479-BD-Royaume.html

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-34992-BD-Alix-Senator__1.html

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-482-BD-Donjon-Parade.html

Oh gosh, I love this poster.

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-4654-BD-Berlin-Lutes.html

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-16560-BD-Aigles-de-Rome.html

https://www.lambiek.net/artists/l/loisel.htm

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-5-BD-Quete-de-l-oiseau-du-temps.html

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-500-BD-Blacksad.html

While La Langue des Vipères will officially come to French bookstores in April there is already a crowdfunding underway for the Collectors Edition. The funding goal of 12’000 € was reached after less than 4 hours which shows how eagerly the fans are anticipating her work. Me included. https://www.ulule.com/la-langue-des-viperes-edition-collector/

https://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/corben.htm

https://www.daughterofthelilies.com/comic/part-1-a-girl-with-no-face/

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-76623-BD-Bibliomule-de-Cordoue.html