The Forbidden Planet International Blog

I have been known to regard mainstream Eurocomics with something of a tired disdain : pretty soon, you’ve seen it all, and you start looking for something a little more sophisticated.  But there are always series that you keep following, at least for old times’ sake. Or because they were the things that you were raised on, and they continue to taste good. During the past few months, at least four classic series saw new episodes published,with varied levels of success.

The latest album in the long-running series, Blake And Mortimer, is one by “Team 2″.  Ever since the series was taken up again after the death of creator Edgar P. Jacobs, creative teams have struggled with combining the level of detail that fans expect in the art and the narration, with the delivery speed that is currently expected of a hit comic series.  No less than four teams have been involved in new albums featuring the classic British gentlemen, with Team 2 (consisting of writer Yves Sente and artist André Juillard) being the most productive.

This book, The Oath of the Five Lords, is not so much a classic Blake And Mortimer as what could pass for a classic British murder mystery.  An incident in Blake’s past (yes, we’re back in prequel territory) results in a number of lords getting murdered by a masked killer. The plot involves archaeology, a very rigid class system, trench coats and a deeply rooted misogyny (spoiler alert : that girl is not as naive as she looks) – what more can you want in a Blake And Mortimer story? Especially when the creative team now have Jacobs’ style mastered to the next level, with large wads of text, very detailed imagery, static action and overtly superfluous descriptions? Just one thing : science fiction.  Every classic Blake And Mortimer story (The Sword Fish!, SOS Meteors! even the Yellow Sign!) involved some kind of futuristic technology going totally awry. Instead, we get a run-of-the-mill spy story drenched in a melancholic longing for British imperialism and a time when the most you could hope for was a perfect cup of Earl Grey in your favorite club. Looks nice, reads adequately, but leaves you empty.

Colêre Rouge (Red Anger) is the 18th book in the mega-popular Largo Winch series, which is still being created by its original team of writer Jean Van Hamme and artist Philippe Francq, chronicling the adventures of the richest man on Earth. As is the case with all Largo Winch books, this is the second instalment of a dyptich, which this time started with Black Sea in 2010.

As you would expect of a thriller series set in the world of business and high finance, Largo’s company has suffered considerably in the 2008 financial crisis and is undergoing serious restructurings.  At the same time, some new and hitherto hidden aspects of Largo and his stepfather’s past come to light, as well as some less than savoury dealings with Black Sea arms traffickers. But even though the situation seems very desparate, Largo and his continuously growing band of outcasts manage to get on top of it all, leaving quite a spectacular trail of stunts, explosions and horrible deaths in their wake.  Even after more than ten years, the books still read like an action movie on paper (and more often than not are more exciting than the actual movies that are based on the series), which is both thanks to Francq’s amazing art, which is at once very detailed and realistic, but also very readable. Naturally, Van Hamme’s storytelling, even though it depends quite heavily on a lot of back story and rather tedious exposition, is paced in such a way that you keep on reading, and don’t lose track amidst all the intrigues and financial jargon.

Le Maléfice de L’Améthyste (The Curse of the Amethyst) is the 26th book in the Yoko Tsuno series, which is still fully produced by its creator, Roger Leloup (in a distant past one of the members of the legendary Studios Hergé, and responsible for the private jet in Flight 714 For Sidney). This series was one of the first in mainstream BD that featured a female protagonist, but it also distinguised itself pretty soon by not playing out Yoko’s sex appeal, but rather focusing on her abilities as an electro-technical engineer.

This book is a continuation of the previous one, and that, in my opinion, is its weakest point.  Yes, the story is adequately gripping and features all the Yoko Tsuno mainstays, such as time travel, exotic technology, a love for machinery combined with eastern wisdom, but at the same time Leloup is starting to depend heavily on adding new characters to the cast of his stories, and revolving new plots around them instead of around the main protagonists. I had lost track of the general storyline of this series about six books ago and had to seriously read up before I was even able to follow what was happening and who was doing what to whom. The artwork of the books is still brilliant, especially when it comes to the scenery and the machinery, which is detailed to the core. Leloup’s characters have always looked a bit like overgrown babies, and in this book they could almost have stepped out of a contemporary manga.  After this book, I reread The Three Suns Of Vinea and On The Edge Of Life, and instantly knew what I missed in this latest instalment.

Finally, L’appât (The Bait) is the twentyfirst book already in Jean Van Hamme’s other megaseller, XIII, chronicling the continuing tribulations of Jason Fly (or whatever other name he goes by), a mysterious bloke who lost his memory and turns out to be involved in matters of national importance in the US.  A couple of years ago, Van Hamme announced he was tired of the series, and didn’t feel up to the task of making up new and consistently more intricate intrigues, and left the books to writer Yves Sente (him again), and artist I. Jigounov, after tying up all loose ends in his storyline in book 19.

With the mystery of the Twenty and their attempted coup solved and a new, black, president safely in power, Sente and Jigounov had to weave a new web of mysteries, starting in the previous book, Mayflower Day, which tied Jason to the earliest settlers and founders of the United States. The Bait continues the story, and brings Jason and his mentor Carrington to Afghanistan, where they are set to liberate Colonel Jones, who has been taken hostage by some unnamed rebel force. Naturally, this is only a pretext for a mysterious organisation tied to the history of the Mayflower and set on mining Jason’s lost memories. The book ends in the middle of the plot, which will probably meander along for a couple more episodes before culminating in a book full of explanations and back story, but for the moment it’s very entertaining and even gripping at times.  Jigounov’s art manages to mimick the style of the series’ original creator, William Vance, to a tee.  At least this series has a fresh feel to it, which is more than you can say of the various XIII Mystery spin-offs that Dargaud have been weaving around the most important characters in the XIII mythos, and which basically stink.

So there, you’re up to date until Richard brings a more detail account of the English editions of these books from Cinebook.

Le Serment Des Cinq Lords was published by Blake Et Mortimer Editeurs. Colêre Rouge and Le Maléfice de l’Améthiste are Dupuis productions, and L’Appât was published by Dargaud. I guess you can expect English-language editions pretty soon.