European Graphic Novels+

This will be a little bit of an oddball post, covering several things:

1. As for the recent post, I did get to checking out The Spire and added my comments to the OP. Sorry / not sorry.

2. I'm still a bit 'confustrated' at the idea of moving to PieFed, as it doesn't look like it's going to preserve all our content, and yet... what the hell? It's better than nothing, isn't that right?

For example, we have ~550 posts here on EGN+, yet only... 385 are seemingly showing up via PieFed's preservation of our sub/community. Is this normal? Is this just some expected 'collateral damage,' not worth bitching and moaning about? Example of this site as seen through PieFed

3. Getting back to the OP, I'm a huge fan of examining possibilities for what life was like across the ~300k years of modern humans' existence. I mean, we moderns tend to think of 'human history' as basically ranging back to the dawn of pre-civ, pre-agro times (at best), but man... in truth, it is much, much older, and there was even (at minimum) a pretty cool film (albeit depicting H. neanderthalensis rather than H. sapiens), but I think the point was made, eh?

Check it sometime if you're curious! https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+quest+for+fire+movie

Still, getting back to this precise series & this comics' premise, I found this one full of strong, realistic scenarios. Not quite 'brilliant' in any particular way, but overall rather fascinating via its art-storytelling mashup. Certainly, the biggest idea was the idea of 'bitchy spirits' inhabiting each of us, affecting our thoughts, judgements and actions.

Now does that make a smidgen of sense?
I actually think it does!

4. Honestly, this is getting a bit tiresome, but... ...my eyesight is kinda... fading. I.e., things are getting 'misty' from my end, and I have no idea what's going to happen with me, en futuro.

So far it seems like it might be high-BP related, but there's also the fact that macular degeneration runs heavily on my one grandmaw's side. I guess we'll just have to see how the meds and upcoming examinations will shed light (haha) upon all this.

Alright, peace-out, folks!

(if that's not visible for whatever reason, here's a backup)

So, Konstantin Korovin (1861 – 1939) was a leading Russian Impressionist painter. [WP article]

In 1885 Korovin traveled to Paris and Spain. "Paris was a shock for me … Impressionists… in them I found everything I was scolded for back home in Moscow!", he later wrote.

I guess it goes to show that... "Impressionism" wasn't necessarily like a flash-fire that near-instantly traveled around the world, transforming art everywhere, but was in fact more like a philosophy / technique / approach that took time to disseminate across the various cultures at large.

Or something like that?
I mean, Moscow being so close to the hub of European culture, I would have thought that Impressionism, just like other art movements of the day, would have more quickly seeped in to the 'painterly arts,' but I guess there was more of a... gap, as it were?

Anyway, here's ~20 more of Konstantin's excellent works:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Korovin#Works

Always fun to see a Moebius-inspired artist! This is from an eight-issue miniseries published by Boom! Studios in the States, who also own the Archaia imprint, which stands out to me because it publishes some of the most 'Euro-like' titles I've seen across the American market.

It's set in the titular Spire, a vast city in the middle of a deadly wasteland, locked in war with religious zealots and riven by the tension between its rulers and the underclass of "Sculpted", humans who have been hybridized with nonhuman biology. The protagonist is Shå, the city's captain of police, who investigates a series of murders of aristocrats at a time when a new Baroness is crowned and the city's internal and external conflicts are about to come to a head.

More art samples:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The+Spire%22+Boom%21+comic&udm=2

Spurrier described the recipe for the series as "one part 'Mad Max,' one part 'Bladerunner,' one part 'Dark Crystal,' one part nutfuck insanity". (lol) Paste Magazine characterized the "beguiling" comic as inspired by China Miéville's Bas-Lag and Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris in creating a world where "the fantastical aspects don’t mitigate the worst aspects of human nature". --WP

Ayup, I'll be checking this one out for sure.

EDIT:

Daggit, I gave it a shot, but just didn't care for The Spire. For one thing, it was an unfortunate (yet common) case of the designers coming up with a really cool cover that didn't actually represent the interior pages. Sometimes that's perfectly fine, but other times, it's a big no-no IMO. Yet the more troubling issue for me was that I found the story-telling and panel-flow to be hugely choppy and non-helpful in terms of bringing the reader in to the world as created.

As a minor rant, I find this kind of thing disappointingly common across much of the American comics lit that falls outside 'superhero' and 'indie-alt.' As in-- you can create a fascinating world or backstory, and sometimes have absolutely breath-taking or (even better) lovely art, yet if you can't arrange it in to a sort of 'contiguous whole,' then what's the point, daggit?

Not trying to point any fingers here, but my little bitching and moaning above tends to apply far too often too Image's stuff (i.e. the US comics publisher). I don't quite know why that is, and yet... hmph.

To sound entirely too pompous here, the above is also kind of a conflicted situation for me, because after I absolutely fell head-over-heels in love with bandes dessinées, I always thought that it was only fair to look harder across American comics to find anything that could stand up to the general quality of BD (obviously from my POV). So this was yet again a case where I got a little bit excited at first, then felt let down.

Oh well. Let's go with BIRDKING then, as one where the first two books had a sort of 'American style' in terms of dramatics and 'power-moves,' but also had quality storytelling and flow, like my favorite BD.

https://www.google.com/search?q=birdking+comics&udm=2

\Alright, there's my bitchy mini-rant of the day! :D :S

https://lemm.ee/post/65824884 for details.

Moderators interested in migrating to a new community on another instance might want to consider selecting an instance and doing so sooner rather than later so that users here have time to see a migration post here and subscribe to the new community.

After searching around for the past couple months and making some fruitful discoveries, I'm now starting to add more webcomix titles to the pinned list (you know where it is). I'll let you know when they're all fully added, but here's a couple goodies for now:

Ten Earth Shattering Blows is probably my finest new discovery. It's got some seriously impressive plotting, world-building, story-flow and art, with one of the wildest, most fun, extended chase sequences you'll ever see. It doesn't aspire to be anything 'lofty,' I don't think, but does a great job fulfilling its premise and staying within its lanes. Happily, it's got about eight years of material already finished, with more actively in development.

Now back to Vattu--

BACKSTORY-- the blue flowers seen here are used to create a levitating gas which also has mystical & medicinal properties, sort of like helium crossed with Spice (from Dune). The flowers are also extremely hard to grow, with the sect / cult here having a hugely-valuable monopoly on them. Little Vattu and friend hatch a plan to steal some in order to create a balloon to escape the cult, little knowing that someone else has sacrilegious designs on them(!)

(zoom or right-click-open)

Needles to say that if the elders spot the youngsters, it would be rather catastrophic...

Alright, if you still need that link, it's here. I'm also pleased to say that the ongoing sequel to this (completed) series is even better!

The other day I re-read Matthieu Bonhomme's two re-interpretations of the LL character / universe, i.e.: L'Homme qui tua Lucky Luke and Wanted Lucky Luke. I found them even better than the first time around, altho the feel is vastly different from the source, with those two volumes having quite the brooding, sombre, 'Clint Eastwood' vibe.

Later, I backtracked to a couple of the earlier, Goscinny-written stories and tried to get an impression of how much things had changed. Which was a lot, frankly! Here then is an amusing sequence I rediscovered-- it involves a couple of ruthless card-sharks and con-men (of the 'clever idiot' ilk), thinking to victimize the very town Luke is staying at. Right so, let's continue the sequence:

...

...

I think most would agree that Goscinny's LL stories aren't quite at the level of his peak Astérix work, but I think it's also good to remember that Luke's stories were set in a fairly narrow geographical and historical range (i.e. the 'Old West' of the mid-to-late 1800's), which had already been done to exhaustion across multiple media. Whereas IMO, Ancient Gaul was an incredibly fertile palette, open to bringing in a huge range of ancient cultures, histories, stories, and mythologies.

Haha, plus Morris simply hated puns IIRC, which happened to be one of René Goscinny's big strengths. In any case, here's a listing of the six, absolutely fascinating reinterpretations upon the Lucky Luke franchise:

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-51747-BD-Lucky-Luke-vu-par.html

Once again, it's been a real delight for me to take in Jung's rich variety of facial expressions and minimalist art, no matter the topic...

The basic situation concerns the cock Chanticleer, who lives with his three wives in an enclosure on a rich man's farm. He is forewarned in a dream of his capture by a predator but is inclined to disregard it, against the persuasion of his favourite, Pinte, who has already caught sight of Renart lurking in the cabbage patch.

Eventually the two creatures meet and Renard overcomes the cock's initial fear by describing the great admiration he had for the singing of Chanticleer's father. If the son is to equal his father, he explains, he must shut his eyes as he stretches his neck to crow. But when Chanticleer obliges, the fox seizes him and makes a run for the woods with the farm workers and a mastiff in pursuit.

Chanticleer now advises the fox to turn around and defy them, but when he opens his mouth to do so Chanticleer flies up to safety in a tree. Both then blame themselves for the gullibility their pride has led them into. --WP

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

(Lancelot, you naughty thing! 😳)

For a few moments I thought perhaps this was by Czech great Alfons Mucha. It is indeed of the period, though, and in fact the two men's lifespans ran in close proximity.

De Leftwich Dodge became known as a muralist when the genre was at a peak of popularity, commissioned for major public buildings as well as hotels and mansions. Murals were seen as a kind of art that could reach directly to the people. Dodge drew on a variety of styles for his murals, settling on a heroic, neoclassical look. Achieving success with commissions for his murals, Dodge designed his family home in Setauket, Long Island, in 1906, the classical Villa Francesca, named after his wife.

In his private work, Dodge's paintings show the influence of Impressionism and Fauvism. Toward the end of his career, Dodge became interested in Mayan art. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Academy of Design. --WP

Gallery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_de_Leftwich_Dodge#Gallery

Following on from Jung's caricatures, here's a look at some of his 'newspaper-style' comics. And just for fun, I tried testing how Google's image translation services were working these days...

(mobile: zoom in, desktop: right-click-open)

For those unaware, "Scooby Doo" refers to the titular, cowardly Great Dane character starring in a bunch of animated Hanna-Barbera cartoons and later media. The riff here is that Mac the basset hound isn't nearly as thrilled about the whole bribery situation as Scooby.

As for the translation services, it seems like they're just about the same as last time around. It would certainly be nice if they could format the text better, in future...

Some of the humor in these is a little culturally elusive to me, as above, but what I love regardless is the masterful storytelling style, and especially the hilarious portraits and expressions that Jung is so great at pulling off...

What greatly helped me understand the above was learning that John the Baptist was said to have eaten a diet heavy on grasshoppers and honey (Matthew 3:4). His mother really should have seen this one coming, haha.

Hmm... I think I'll add Étienne's blog to our webcomics' list. It's somewhat outdated, but does contain ~11yrs of content, including something like 700 content posts(!)
https://etiennejung.blogspot.com/

]

Just a super-great artist-writer-creator, that's Italy's Giardino... whew laddie! 😅

All kinds of things going on here... <3

]

https://www.bedetheque.com/auteur-972-BD-Giardino-Vittorio.html

It's one of LEO und friends' shorter series, clocking in at two cycles and 7 books total. The basic premise involves a post-apoc civilisation, one in which white people interestingly find themselves in the minority, with darker-skinned people running the show for the most part.

https://www.bedetheque.com/media/Planches/PlancheS_35328.jpg

Police inspector Romane, one of our two leads, is a skinny white gal, not taken very seriously by her colleagues, yet she's got a great nose for sniffing out inconvenient facts. She's assigned work with Ibrahim, a Middle-Eastern colonel in the UN Forces. Later, they and their little team go up against almost impossible odds against a giant, multinational corporation whose aim in this case is the conduct of genetic experiments designed to produce human-cetacean hybrids, specifically in order to better take advantage of Earth's rising sea levels.

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-35328-BD-Mermaid-Project.html

In fact I'm re-reading cycle two right now, called Mutations, in which Romane & her now-boyfriend 'Brahim' have predictably been screwed over by governmental-corporate interests as the two-book series opens, stripped of their jobs and titles until the ~~morons~~ er, powers that be gain a clue, and bring them back on board to address a new threat... one in which an outside agency is using weapons and mind-control to attack the various fishing vessels largely sustaining what's left of humanity.

Er, I'll be honest... the whole reason for this post originated from the fact that I found the doggos' facial expressions in panel 1 so dang amusing, as compared to the overall gravity of the situation. XD

Seriously, though-- this is quite a solid series, containing lots of thought-provoking fare. Biggest nitpick is that it didn't quite have the stupendous windup in tome 7 that I was emotionally hoping for, but... life's like that, sometimes, mais non?

Just to be clear-- if you're not interested in issues such as sustainability, animal rights, the defeat of fascism and so forth, this series might just be a 'dud' for you.

Requested The Collected Toppi: Vol.1 The Enchanted World from my library's interloan service, and the library that responded gave me Vol 1-3! Three library loans for the price of one, haha.

I dig Toppi's linework. He's a very technical artist, and the work is very detailed and intricate. I'm also a sucker for black and white comics, which is mostly why I requested him after seeing a few people recommend him online for b&W bandee dessinee. The stories from Vol. 1 are all dark fairy tales basically, they're quite short and simple in the storytelling, not a lot of dialogue or plot. But damn, are they atmospheric.

If you have a local library, you should definitely check if they have an inter-library loan service. The majority of comics I have requested, they've been able to find. I also got The Collected Crepax Vol.1 from them as well, which I'll post when I get the chance.

Been in a B&W type of mood, if you guys have any more recommendations, let me know ;)

edit: Also, noticed that lemm.ee scaled the image, so here's a link to the larger original in all it's glory: https://ibb.co/prxDH8Hs

It's professor Calculus' space ship from Destination Moon of course, from the Tintin series.

The rocket is so iconic of Tintin that I find it easily over-represented at times, but this one stopped me in my tracks, as I'd never seen a photo-realistic attempt before; especially a night-view. Just a slight bit of upscaling added, and Robert's your avuncular figure.*

* (Bob's your uncle)

Day view.

I thought this all might be AI at first, but thankfully, I'm not acting the goat this time.

In fact it's professional animator Erik Wernquist's work, with more here:
https://erikwernquist.com/work

And one more boffo piece I stumbled upon... I believe this one by someone named Anton Hebert Baron.

To zoom-in on desktop, right-click open:

Gina Lollobrigida, from Fanfan la tulipe (1952)

Leslie Nielsen, perhaps from around the late 50's

Norma Shearer, Canadian-American
actress and feminist pioneer

John Wayne, Paulette Goddard and Ray Milland,
from Reap the Wild Wind (1942)

Harold Peckridge (1906-1989)
(no idea who that is, but I'm thinking he'd be a lovely fit
as one of the professors from Tintin's Shooting Star)

Marlon Brando, presumably from
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Claudia Cardinale

"Blanche Neige fêtera ses 80 printemps cette année"
I think that says "Snow White is ~~80~~ 88 springs old this year"

More coming...
https://www.bedetheque.com/auteur-6045-BD-Jung-Etienne.html

I can't remember if this fits in to the classic Den series, but my digital library has it, so I'll be giving it a whirl, soon. In any case, TCJ (The Comics Journal) has a solid article on this book(s), including more sample art, like this one:

And the rest:
https://www.tcj.com/reviews/murky-world/

Corben of course was an honorary member of the 'Euro art club.' Moebius for example was gaga about his work. My Denz part III intro is still alive on Imgur, for those curious:

https://lemm.ee/post/11235458

How I adore this series, by Pénélope Bagieu:
https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-18832-BD-Josephine-Bagieu.html

It's such a catty take-down of all our little interpersonal, social tricks, with Josephine being my absolute heroine (and center of the hurricane) upon this madness. Anyway, here's slide two:

Now me, I barely watched "Desperate Housewives," but could this be kinda-sort of the like?

This of course is a Euro adaptation of one of the great Conan tales, here reconstructed by Régis Hautière & Didier Cassegrain, and indeed, part of an excellent series:

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-60536-BD-Conan-le-Cimmerien.html

In Red Nails, Conan and Valeria happen to bump in to each other whilst fleeing a dinosaur-predator. They're not exactly fond of each other due to past history, but they're forced to form a truce, so as to escape... well, being dinner.

Unfortunately, the only real place to flee is an abandoned... castle, or palace... weirdly without windows, or any sort of 'usual' architecture.

It gets much, much crazier from here, and is absolutely worth a read, via this particular BD, or via [the source].

Red Nails was Howard's last Conan tale, before tragedy cut short his life at only 29yo. Like most of his Conan (and other) work, it's very dark-pulpish, aspects of which the various comic adaptations only occasionally capture, IME.

Once again, I'm still lingering on Cape Horn, this time on book two:

In the meantime, I'm still grappling hard to understand the relevant context and history of this particular region (Tierra del Fuego, set in the late 1800's), as well as the various individuals the 4-tome series tracks in this chaotic, frontier environment. Anyway, let's start with something pleasant:

It's a young French officer serving with one of the local small navies (Chilean or Argentinian, I can't remember) writing to his sweetheart. The words to me are almost secondary to the way the panels are pleasantly, skillfully laid out:

As a chronic fan of 'show me, don't tell,' I really like the way these panels communicate his sweetie's letter sparsely, mixed with getting a sense of the local flavor.

Ruh-roh, but now enters the sinister Kruger (see the map diagram last post for more on how he absconded with his buddies' gold), who we now learn has even more of a darker backstory.

Poor Ernesto...

I can tell you, however, that Kruger will eventually pay for this humilation.

You see... that 'she' was in fact Ernesto's wife, who he'd previously reformed and pledged his devotion to. Yikes.

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-12686-BD-Cap-Horn.html

This is so clever and impressive to me, even if it's a bit scholarly in form, I suppose. It's from the opening pages of In the Cormorants' Wake, T2 from Cape Horn. The point is that you can completely miss T1, yet still get everything you need to make the backstory work in T2.

It's just brill, at least for the likes of me, anyway.

Btw, I added some colors to help make the notes clearer, themed to Roy G. Biv, a tremendous son-of-a-gun if there ever was one. :P

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-12686-BD-Cap-Horn.html

I.e., seemingly another fruitful Franco-Italian combination upon BD. ^^

In any case, I'm just getting in to this series, so let's see what happens...

Now, I haven't read this one recently, but hopefully you'll allow me the brazen chutzpah to share some thoughts and pics, right here. (I mean, it was already on my list, and I just figured-- let's get to it, matey)

Anyway, for me, Gemma Bovery was hugely significant to me around 2yrs ago, when it re-lit my fire to learn français, once and for all. Since then, by hook or by crook, I've genuinely worked much harder both via the DuoLingo app, as well as across my attempts to read French BD in general, getting me to about the mid-A2 level now in French, perhaps? (oof, it's a process, anyway)

Okay, what I find immediately, *highly* unique here is the way in which this BD combines both text and illustrative passages. I mean... sure, you can see this across many (or most?) children's books, but these days? It's more like... 'coucou, not how we do things in comics et BD!' XD

And of course, as English-speakers, we get these little bits of easy French words and phrases to discover across these comics. Not sure about you, matey, but it just really WORKS over here, I think, perhaps, maybe.

Without diving too absurdly deeply, there's a love-triangle working here, or quadrangle, or maybe just a bunch of unfortunates converging upon devastating topic of choice? :S

But the main thing, really? It's all about Joubert's (the baker) fascination with Gemma suffering across a bad marriage, her terrible taste in men, and just rotten, lousy work, at the end of days.

Now me-- I'm used to judging these works (heaven help my idiot opinion), upon a gathering of things, let's say, but this is one of those that, to me, examines some rather deep workings of a woman's soul, as seen from an immediate distance.

Of course, it's just my pure flight of fancy that artist Dongni Hau was specifically imagining Joan here, but the ages (and maybe armor style?) seem to roughly fit, in which Joan would have been between 17-19yo, around 1429-1431AD.

One of the most fascinating things I've seen across the arts is the way in which vastly-different cultures examine each other (and produce imitative work) across such vast, geographical & social gulfs. As in-- no matter how culturally-conservative and predictable such a process might go, there is STILL almost always something fascinating in the interpretation and recapitulation, I personally find.

Now me, I don't really know what to make of the heavily religious-political overtones during Joan's (or almost any other) era, but in terms of pure narrative (based on historical fact, mind you), I find Joan's sadly brief life & times rather fascinating, tragic, and certainly moving.

The artist's site is below.
She's from Fuxin, Liaoning, China, and now lives and paints in Paris:
https://dongnihou.com/