When the mother of young Zazie wants to spend a weekend with her new boyfriend, she asks her brother Gabriël to look after the little girl.  Zazie looks forward to spending time with Gabriël, because he lives in Paris and she loves the Métro.  Much to her chagrin, though, the métro drivers are on strike.  Gabriël makes it up to her by treating her to a day on the town, not hindered by the fact that the only Paris building he actually knows is the Eiffel Tower.  He takes her along to the nightclub where he dances as a ballerina (!) and introduces her to a cast of increasingly stranger characters, in an increasingly stranger and more surreal storyline.

I bought this book, Zazie dans le métro by Clément Oubrerie (best known to English language readers for co-creating with Marguerite Abouet the engrossing Aya albums translated by D&Q – Joe) on a whim.  The cover art looked a lot like the full-colour, full-sized albums that people like Joann Sfar or Pascal Rabaté have been making off late, and which I really can’t resist.  I knew of a film with the same name, but didn’t make the connection.  Only when I came home, and took a good look at it, I found out that the comic is based on a novel by Raymond Queneau.  My fellow Oubapo enthousiasts will now probably literally roll on the floor laughing, as Queneau and his Oulipo movement is one of the shining examples of this continuing experiment with potential comics (and was the direct inspiration for Matt Madden’s masterful 99 Ways To Tell A Story, with his Exercices de Style).

Knowing this now put the book in a whole different perspective for me.  The story, with its hilarious cast and quite weird plot turns, is only a device to allow the characters to play with language, use different registers in totally inappropriate circumstances, invent words and phrases and generally forget about language being a mode for communication.  Zazie turns out to be a very precocious little minx, who knows a lot of filthy words, but not quite right, while the other characters too often seem to be using words they don’t really understand, or use in a slightly different way than you would expect them to be used.  The only character who always says what he thinks, and then some, is the parrot.

Similarly, people play different parts, and act as if they’re different people – changing their persona as they see fit.  In the end, Zazie’s visit to Paris is a rite de passage, an obligatory passageway into growing up.

I was quite awestruck by this book.  I read it a few times, as the playfulness of the French can be daunting at times, but it never bored.  Now here’s a book that should be translated – publishers, are you listening?

Zazie dans le Métro by Clément Oubrerie (based on the novel by Raymond Queneau), was published in 2008 by Gallimard Jeunesse.

The Adventures of Hergé was originally published in 1999, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Tintin, by Les Editions Reporter, one of the more niche publishers in France, specialising in ligne claire and style atome books by the likes of Serge Clerc, François Avril and Yves Challand. As such, it would seem to have been created especially for a romanticized biography comic about the creator of Tintin, drawn by one of the best style atome artists of the moment (and one of the co-founders of L’association). In sixteen vignettes the book recounts the life of Hergé.

Ranging from one single page to six pages or more, the vignettes each single out a particular year featuring an important event in the development of Tintin, or of Hergé as an artist. The story starts in 1914, when at the age of 7, Georges Rémi develops an interest in drawing and art, and goes on to tell of Hergé’s first successes with Tintin, his encounter with Tchang Tchong-Yen, who taught him the virtue of verisimilitude, and the great Raymond Leblanc, who gave him the opportunity to start again after he had been accused of aiding the Nazi government during World War II (see here for a great translated interview by Toon Horsten with Leblanc on the blog earlier).

From the 1950s onwards the anecdotes largely focus on Hergé’s psychological and marital problems, which typically had their influence on the Tintin books. His affair and subsequent marriage to his collaborator, Fanny Vlaminck, resulted in the white-out of Tintin Au Tibet, which can be read as a philosophical search for friendship and innocence. His growing interest in modern art, and the feeling that he was trapped as a comic book creator and would never get recognition as a “serious” artist, were only some of the reasons why Hergé drew less and less as the years progressed. It is striking how the last few stories are all about his renewed contact with his old friend Tchang, and about his continued friendship with is first wife, Germaine.

The stories are meticulously researched, and all quotes and anecdotes can doubtlessly be referenced by numerous reference books. What differentiates this book from the numerous biographies and studies that have been devoted to Hergé and his creation, is the fact that the authors continuously pepper their story with elements from the Tintin books themselves. Hergé’s father and his twin brother, who are generally thought to have been Hergé’s inspiration for Thomson and Thompson, speak in a way that is not unlike their moustached counterparts, and Hergé’s adventure on the Lac Leman is presented in a way that is almost a copy of a similar scene in L’affaire Tournesol. Similarly, details in the background of almost every panel make the book a veritable Where’s Wally for the Tintin afficcionado.

Comics creators, as with everyone who is involved in creating stories that entertain others, are often asked where they get their ideas from. A common belief is that everything that happens to them, somehow ends up in their stories. This book, for once, turns the tables and decorates the life of the creator with tidbits from the stories he created. And the result is a lovely, endearing story that rings true, not only because it has been checked (and double-checked), but more in particular because it adds links and connections that explain one another, and add to the general understanding of one of the most important comics ever.

Oh, and one more thing. Once you finished this, why not teach yourself French and continue with Le Groom Vert-de-Gris by Yann and Olivier Schwartz, which at first glance is a romp of a story set in occupied Brussels, but also is a celebration of and a commentary on the traditional Franco-Belgian comic, how it came to be and why it functions the way it does. Like I said, indispensable.

The Adventures of Hergé by Bocquet, Fromental and Stanislas – due from Drawn & Quarterly, October 2011, available for pre-order from the FPI webstore now. Le Groom Vert-de-Gris by Yann and Schwartz – Dupuis, 2009

I first saw the art from it on Alison Sampson’s Space In Text, where she’d grabbed some pages from Rochleau’s Flickrstream. It’s just gorgeous.

Then I find out from Tom that “La Fille Invisible” just won the “Prix Real-Fiction”, for a Quebec author’s first professional album at the 2011 Prix Bédéis Causa awards. Which means the story is probably pretty good as well.

More at Rochleau’s blog and more art at her Flickr.

So please, someone? For me? An English publication?

Cleet Boris is the creative alias of Hubert Mounier, a French singer-songwriter and former singer of the alternative pop band, L’Affaire Louis’ Trio. Boris is also a very gifted cartoonist, with a style that is very much within the Clear Line – Atom Style tradition. But, as the song goes, music was his first love, and he’s continued to make music after his band split up, releasing solo albums every four years or so.

While he was writing the songs that would end up on his latest album, La Maison de Pain D’Epice (2011), Boris also drew a comic about the process, about what happened in his life and how music helps him cope with things. The result, quite aptly also called La Maison de Pain d’Epice (Dupuis), is a wonderful, sweet little comic that not only shows off Boris’ artistic prowess, but also gives a gripping insight in how creativity works.

The book is split up in short vignettes, each focusing on a particular anecdote that took place while Boris was working on his album. Some of these are happy occurrences, such as the birth of his daughter, or his collaboration with French singer and producer Benjamin Biolay. Others, such as the legal wrangle after he loses his recording contract, or the death of his friend and erstwhile collaborator, François Lebleu, are less than fortunate, and have a disastrous effect on the creative free zone Boris keeps safe within his own mind.

The best part about the book, however, is that the story and the art, much like the music of L’Affaire, is steeped with a sense of nostalgia to a, probably idealised, happy-go-lucky childhood. Every chapter starts with a title vignette, featuring Boris in one of the comics of his youth that could be connected thematically to what he’s going to say.  Together with the retro look of the book (if it is to believed, Mounier lives in a veritable treasure trove of 50′s memorabilia) and the retrospective tone of the captions, these vignettes show how Mounier’s art basically functions as a way to cope with the harshness of daily life in this day and age (not surprisingly, when he steps out of his own creative coccoon into the real world, the confrontations are not that pleasant).

Similarly, the scenes in which he explains how his father introduced him to music, or the cheer joy that radiates from the scenes in the music studios, give more insight in why he does what he’s doing than any theoretical review could.

The book requires some basic background knowledge about French popular culture, and music in particular. However, even without, it is a beautiful little gem that’s just a pleasure to behold.

Cleet Boris – La Maison de pain d’Epice. Dupuis, 2011, 22 EUR (ISBN 978-2-8001-4828-1) – Read a very good interview (in French) with Boris at Pose Magazine.

According to a report by Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool (which I haven’t been able to corroborate at the Fantagraphics website yet), Fantagraphics is planning to publish an English translation of the classic BD series Gil Jourdan by Maurice Tillieux.   Some online sllers are indeed listing Murder by High Tide in the series Gil Jordan, Private Eye as announced for June, 2011.  Which is amazing news.

Gil Jourdan is one of the most essential BD series ever produced.  It was created in 1956 by Belgian writer and artist Maurice Tillieux for the notable comic magazine Spirou and ran until its creator’s death in 1978.    The series dealt with the continuing adventures of a private detective (a “candidate at law”), his silly and ex-con sidekick and most intelligent and sarcastic secretary, along with their reluctant ally – pretty straightforward stories with a good dose of suspense and humour, and still as entertaining after several decades as a good Maigret novel.

Tillieux’s genius, however, was that he took the medium of comics a little further, and merged two genres that were completely distinct up to that point.  From his stablemates at Dupuis, people like André Franquin, Jijé and Morris, he took the dynamism and sheer velocity that they infused in their art.  That he combined with the realistic and well-wrought plots that had been the strict domain of the so-called realistic comic.  No robots on the prowl or mad scientists for Jourdan, but rather ordinary people committing ordinary crimes.  He also brought some realistic grittiness to his art, without abandoning its funny confines.  Whereas Tintin lived in a nondescript apartment building in a rather featureless city, Gil Jourdan typically strolls around the back alleys of a 1950′s Paris, with derelict buildings, in which crooked people live crooked lives.   Tillieux managed to inject a sense of realism in his comics that was quite rare in BD at that time.  After him, people like Gos, Walthéry or Wasterlain would benefit from his example.

The book that’s being listed for release in June is not the first in the series, but rather the third long story, La voiture immergée from 1958.  It was Jourdan’s first adventure that took him beyond the boundaries of the 1950′s city.  By this time, however, Tillieux has established the world he’s writing and drawing, and its constellation of characters, and his narratives had become flawless.  In this respect, it is the perfect book to get acquainted with this graphic genius, whose stories, in terms of timing and speed, every aspiring comics writer should read and study.

Since the listing describes the book as having 96 pages, I think Fantagraphics will also include a few of the short stories that Tillieux created to fill the gap in Spirou when he didn’t have a feature story ready.  I guess going straight for a translation of the excellent intégrales was a bit too much of a gamble.  Still, I hope they’ll find enough of an audience to continue with gems like L’enfer de Xique-Xique, Carats en Vrac (with one of the best car chases in comics) or Les cargos du Crépuscule.

In addition to Gil Jourdan, Fantagraphics also seems to have set its eyes on Raymond Macherot‘s animal adventure series Sibylline (translated as Sybil-Anne) which was the (rather less exhuberant) continuation of Macherot’s excellent Chlorophile when he left Tintin to join Spirou.  I can only hope that they also pick up the Chaminou et le Khrompire, a “funny” animal vampire story that, in my humble opinion, is simply one of the most perfect comics ever produced.  Bar none.

Well, at least, this time it’s “Translation, thanks”, rather than “Translation, please“…

The package consists of four tracks, ranging from the extremely short to the quite longish.  In each of them, band leader Philip Paquet teams up with one of the other members to paint a sweet little tune, which can be anecdotal or revering, slow or fast …

-- sigh — I tried to write this as if it were a review of a real jazz record, but you can only stretch a metaphor so far.  Yes, I’m talking about Playin’/Smilin’/Fightin’/Cookin’, the new jazz comic by Belgian cartoonist Philip Paquet, which is just as amazing as I thought it would be.

This book contains four stories, each written by a different writer and illustrated by Paquet, and each calling up a specific aspect of jazz history.  Playin’ is a hommage to legendary trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie, presented as a series of letters to Dizzy, written to him on key moments in his life by people who were important to him. Smilin’, a short Paquet solo, is a bitter-sweet story about how man kills the things he loves, but finds redemption nevertheless. Fightin’, the longest story of the four, tells (or at least pretends to tell) how the legendary album, Jazz At Massey Hall (featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and Charles Mingus) came to be.  And finally, Cookin‘ explains why Miles Davis gave the equally legendary album of his Quintet specifically that name.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFIG-2Grclg

Although they are presented as four different booklets, the stories do form a certain unity -- not only thanks to their theme or subject matter, or even because they’re all drawn in Paquet’s cool, happy-go-lucky style.  There’s an atmosphere of hope in the stories, of the joy of the new that is so predominant in the great jazz of the decades after the war.

Even if you don’t read Dutch, the packaging of this book makes its purpose worthwile.  It’s presented as a classic 10 inch double EP, with a fold-out sleeve that contains four independent brochures, one with each story.  The pretense of it being an actual jazz record is maintained to the minutest detail : the stories are called “sides”, the four creators are presented as a real quartet, and publisher Ria Schulpen is listed as the producer of the record, “digitally remastered directly from the original analog master tapes”.

Thank God this country has a body like the Flemish Literary Fund which makes feats like these possible.  Now all we need is a translation…

Paquet, Gilliom, Vendaux & Daniel -- Playin’/Smilin’/Fightin’/Cookin’, published by the good people at Bries, 2010.  ISBN 978-90-76708-97-3 -- 19,50 euros (order)

When I was in Angouleme last year I met a very friendly elderly gentleman at the booth of Akileos, one of the smaller publishers that try to get a piece of the French mainstream comics pie.  His name was Chris Flamand, and although he was a cartoonist in his own right, he was there to promote a book that he wrote based on his memories from his youth, and the holidays he spent with his family in the French countryside.  Rather than drawing this book, which he called Vacances à Saint-Prix, himself, he asked his son Julien to do it.  This had the interesting effect that the story was rendered with a lot more detachment than Chris would have been able to do, while at the same time the story suddenly spanned one more generation, giving it a lot more gravity than just a childhood memory.

The book must have been somewhat of a succes (it won the Audience Award at the Longvic Festival in 2009), and this year Flamand Père et Fils present their second collaboration, Quand je Serais Grand… (When I Grow Up…).  Even though it’s not really explicitly promoted as such, it is really the sequel to St-Prix.  This time it’s 1965, the year when young Chris sees Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in the cinema and decides he wants to become a “dessinateur”.  Everybody thinks he’s talking about technical drawings, plans and stuff, but no : Chris wants to do the stories he devours in Mickey Magazine every week.  It’s not a professional choice that’s in high regard, but his parents at least don’t ridicule his childish attempts at creating a comic.  Chris reads everything he can find, and develops a quite elaborate vocabulary, that he also learns to use correctly, albeit with all the necessary bumps along the way.

The story is not a classic thematic “how I became” story though – young Chris has many other interests besides comics, not in the least music, chemistry and… girls !  but when he receives his report card, and gets to choose between a carreer in the Postal Service, or a quite uncertain future as a comics artist, his mind is made up.  He will spend his life giving life to his characters, telling stories, being read and leaving a trace of his existence.

That is precisely what makes this book so special.  Again, a large number of childhood memories are stringed and intertwined into one narrative, but this time the thematic structure has a goal.  The Flamands don’t just want to commit memories of old times to paper so as not to forget them, they want to tell the story of how Father (and Son) became what they are.   As with all stories, that is not a straightforward one, which should not be told in a straightforward way.

The art of Flamand Fils has matured since the last book – it would seem that he has mastered a graphic language that his quite his own, and that threads a thin line between caricature and bitter-sweet childlike drawings.  The colouring greatly helps in setting the mood and in keeping the nested stories readable.

Quand Je Serais Grand is a book that will doubtlessly appeal to many, and the fact that it is profoundly French may even add an exotic je-ne-sais-quoi to that appeal.  Children are able to read the book, but in order to fully appreciate it, you should already have left your childhood behind, while keeping your inner child alive…

Flamand Père et Fils – Quand Je Serais Grand. Published by  Akileos, 2010. ISBN 978-2-35574-048-0

What do you get if you combine the best cliches of the hard-boiled detective genre with puss-in-boots ?  You get Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guardino’s excellent Blacksad series, about the adventures of a private eye trying hard to stay on the straight and narrow, while all around him the sleazeballs and no-goods are trying to get their wicked ways.  Except that John Blacksad is a cat, and a black one at that; he does everything a detective does : falling in love with the wrong women, getting harrassed by the law and by rich suspects’ enforcers, and in the end, he quite often fails to get paid as well.

Earlier this month, Dark Horse published the first three episodes of this series in a handsome, hardcover collected edition (what the French would call an Intégrale).   This volume collects all stories that have been published so far.   In the first one, Somewhere Within The Shadows, we are introduced to detective John Blacksad, who lives and operates in New York in the 1950′s, or at least a city that’s very much like the New York of the crime stories of that era.  Blacksad investigates the death of Leon Kronski, a movie writer and his  last known lover who disappeared. He gets arrested by the police, but  Smirnov, the police commissioner, explains that because of ‘pressure upstairs’ he himself cannot investigate the matter any further. Blacksad takes matters in his own hands and follows the money all the way to the top.

The second story, Arctic Nation, further develops the theme of racism and racial segregation in Blacksad’s world, a theme that had already been hinted upon in the first story.  Blacksad accepts a job from an elderly elementary school teacher who wants him to find a young bear girl who has been kidnapped, probably by the Arctic Nation, a racist political and terrorist organisation.    All kinds of intrigues unravel around the case, involving social injustice, extortion and interracial love affairs.  The story ends in a quite violent climax which is supposed to solve everything, but in fact only leaves a sour taste.  This story also introduces Weekly, the Ebony White to Blacksad’s Spirit.

In the third and final story, Red Soul, the cold war is raging in all its ugliness.  Blacksad finds himself in the middle of a web of intrigues and plots again, this time involving anti-communist movements, nuclear physicians and survivors of the Holocaust.  This story turns out to be Blacksad’s Tintin et Les Picaros, as his own naive and limited view on things turns out to be insufficient to solve problems that rage on a global scale, such as the nuclear arms race or the aftermath of the second World War.  He is also confronted with memories from his own youth, when one of his mentors turns out to have quite a lot to hide…

The appeal of this series is, in my opinion, twofold.  To begin with, Guardino’s art is magnificent.  His cityscapes are as menacing as they come, and his action scenes are as close as you can get to actually filming them.  His past as an animator at Disney is apparent in his portrayal of his animal characters, whom he gives facial expressions and movements that are as lifelike as can be.  One of the main problems when transposing your characters with animals, is that animals tend to vary in size more than humans do, and you need to be very careful in picking the right kind of animal, lest your art becomes farcical.  In the first book, the occasional oversize mouse or frog does turn up, but later on all characters have their natural sizes, and this greatly contributes to the book’s verisimilitude.  On a similar note, the age-old conundrum of the man-animals vs the animal-animals is solved by not paying too much attention to it : fish are fish, and nothing more.

The second great quality of the books is that they are not just (very well-wrought) detective stories that so happen to be played by animals.  For each of the characters, the right type of animal has been carefully chosen.  An older schoolteacher is a doe, and a crime boss’ bodyguards are (naturally) rhinos.  But it goes further than that.  Certain animal treats are exploited quite cunningly in the story : criminals are quite often lizards or amphibians since they are, well, cold-blooded.  And finally, in the Blacksad’s, an innate race division exists between animals with fur (who are higher in status) and animals wihtout.  Later, in Arctic Nation, this is rendered even more explicit when a white power movement is introduced that puts animals with white fur above animals with a colored fur.  And Blacksad suddenly is outed as a Shaft-like black machoman.

And while I was re-reading the Blacksad books for this piece, Flemish comics blog Strip Turnhout reports that after five years, Guardino and Canales have completed a fourth album in the series.  L’enfer, Le Silence will be available on September 17th, and will once more delve deeper into Blacksad’s personal history, as he is confronted with the dead body of Natalia Wilford, an actress he once spent the happiest days of his life with.

Canales & Guardino : Blacksad.  Dark Horse, 2010.  ISBN 978-1-59582-393-9.  Instore and also available at the FPI webstore.

(cover art for Lydie by and (c)  Zidrou and Jordi Lafebre, published by Dargaud)

The story – Lydie is not a story of high-strung emotions, or swooping global events. It’s situated in a dead end street somewhere among the outskirts of a big city in France, called Moustache Baby Close. It’s named after an old advertising mural featuring a baby, on which some Banksy avant-la-lettre painted a moustache a long time ago, and the people who live there are the Moustachios. One of them, a train conductor everybody calls Daddy Choo-choo, lives alone with his daughter, Camille, who’s “not very bright”. She gets pregnant (but nobody knows who the father is), but her baby is still-born. Stricken with grief the young mother turns to the statue of the Holy Mother, which watches over the Close from an alcove in one of the houses (although, mind you, “I’m only a statue”). And lo and behold – her baby returns. Except for the small fact that nobody can actually see her. Still, out of compassion with Camille, everybody decides to play along, and Lydie becomes the newest Moustachio. After a while, though, it would seem that Lydie is more real than everybody thought, and she starts to play an important part in everybody’s life.

The message – If there’s one reason why this book deserves wider attention, it’s because of its warm plea for human kindness and compassion. Rather than confront Camille with her loss, the people around her play along with her game. After all, what have they got to lose for it ? And after a while, nobody seems to be able to imagine Lydie not being there. Even when Camille is not around, Lydie keeps being real in that everybody continues with the charade. Which leas to the second main theme : what is real and what is imagination ? Do we humans really need to be restricted by that boringly fixed given that is the real world ? Or, to put it otherwise, if you really ache for something else and one day decide that what you wish for is real, and what’s actually real isn’t, who’s to say your reality doesn’t count ? Thanks to their kindness for Camille, the whole community of the Close chooses her reality over the horrors of the physical world, and their world becomes kinder and more magical through it.

(the moustache baby in Lydie by Jordi Lafebre and Zidrou, published Dargaud)

The magic – there is a lot in this book that “couldn’t happen”. The boundaries between what’s real and what’s imagined are vague to say the least. The collective imagination of the people in the close brings about a change in the factual world, in the way science would be powerless to accomplish. When Lydie’s schoolmates are asked to draw a portrait of their best friend for homework, several of them draw a picture of Lydie. And they all draw a similar child, with similar hair and similar clothes. Just like the statue of the Virgin Mary receives a new child (made of wood), the Close gets a new child too, whose life becomes intertwined with theirs like a normal person’s. But that magic is never threatening, and it is not explained either. It’s just there, as a fact of life, like the statue of the Virgin.

The art – this is the first book by Jordi Lafebre, but every page is just perfect. His characters are larger than life, but thanks to their exaggerated features, they are immediately recognisable and identifiable. Lafebre’s “camera” sweeps through the scenery and puts you at once right in the middle of the action, only to later focus on a detail that puts everything in perspective. Also the use of color reminded me of that other chronicle of daily life and magic, Régis Loisel and Jean-Louis Tripp’s Magasin Général.

In short – get this book. Learn French, or bribe a francophone friend to read it aloud for you. You will not regret it.

Jordi Lafebre & Zidrou : Lydie. Published by Dargaud, 2010. ISBN 987-2-5050-0808-8

Wim Lockefeer lives in Belgium and delights in sharing the better European comics with the rest of the world; you can read more of his comics musings on The Ephemerist blog

(cover to Scherven – Shards -  by and (c) Erik De Graaf, published Oog & Blik)

I think I mentioned my good friend and clear line purist Erik De Graaf’s new book, Scherven (Shards) before.  A couple of days ago, Erik send me an email to announce that the book finally had been published by Oog & Blik/De Bezige Bij, and it had grown to become quite a hefty tome (check out this picture from the presentation at Yendor).  Scherven is the story of two ordinary people in the Second World War.  Victor and Esther, two lovers before the war, lose touch during the War.  Esther, a young Jewish women, is forced by her father to go in hiding, whereas Victor is sent to the front to fight as a Dutch soldier.  Only in 1946 they meet again, in a cemetery, a place that neatly ties up the main theme of the book: loss – the loss of lovers, of youth, dreams, ideals, innocence, etc.

(pages from Scherven showing the different colouring approaches taken to denote different time periods from pre-war, during the war and post-war, all art by and (c) Erik De Graaf, published Oog & Blik)

This rather sombre theme is in sharp contrast with the light, almost schematic style that De Graaf developed during his earlier books, and which he has now perfected.  Everything in De Graaf’s art is reduced to its essences, as if he is a poet who is chiseling away at his work, only to leave in the purest, naked form.

In Erik’s earlier books he liked to experiment with colour, and the way it can induce meaning in a page of comic art.  In Scherven, he’s become quite methodical in inferring the period in which a certain scene takes place by dedicating a certain palette to that period. All scenes that take place before the War have been colored in greys, during the War is sepia, and everything happening after the War is rendered in full colour, albeit toned down.

I truly think this book deserves a wider audience than just the Dutch-speaking world, not only for its subject matter, but also for its quite unique style.  As they say, “Translation, Please !”

Wim Lockefeer lives in Belgium and is always looking for fascinating new comics work which he believes is worthy of translation for a wider world readership; you can read more of his comics musings on The Ephemerist blog