The Forbidden Planet International Blog

Jacques Tardi’s Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Le Blanc Sec is released in new form by Fantagraphics in a week or sos time (UPDATE 20th Aug: ooops, spoke too soon, Mike from Fantagraphics points out in the comments that release of the book is now hopefully October), ahead of what looks like a very fun movie by the great Luc Besson whenever it gets whatever sort of limited release it may get over here in the UK. I fully intend to pick the book up, definitely will be popping along to see it at the local cinema as well:

And the imminent release of the book gives me a chance to point you in the direction of an article written on the subject by sometime FPI blog contributor Rod Mckie that I’ve been meaning to post for ages, and now seems ideal: The extraordinary Adele Blanc-Sec.

“Set in Paris, in the years before and after World War I, Tardi’s stories revolve around the investigative journalist, Adèle Blanc-Sec. On the face of it, it sounds a bit hackneyed, it is after all a familiar European comic trope, the picaresque tale. But as we have discussed in a much older post, the same can be said of Corto Maltese and Tintin and Largo Winch, it is the characterisation, the plotting, the singular magic of the draughtsman’s pen, the degree of craft, that makes them all so very different. Take Tardi’s reason for placing Adele either side of WW1, for instance; “Her feisty nature made it impossible to provide her with a place in the war. She would not have been allowed to fight, and could no more have settled for being a nurse, than she could have remained home rolling bandages”. This is a creator talking about a character that lives and breaths, that could be put in an artificial situation by her author, but who would surely subvert her creators intention.”