Category: European Classics

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Lucky Luke volume 48: Dick Digger’s Gold Mine


By Morris, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-208-9 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Lucky Luke was created in 1946 by Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (AKA “Morris”). For years we believed it was for Le Journal de Spirou Christmas Annual (L’Almanach Spirou 1947), before being launched into his first weekly adventure ‘Arizona 1880’ on December 7th 1946. However, eventually it came to light that the strip actually debuted in the multinational weekly comic mid-year, but sans a title banner and only in the French-language edition.

Doughty, rangy, and dashingly dependable, the cowboy is an implacably even-tempered do-gooder who can “draw faster than his own shadow”, amiably ambling around the mythic, cinematically realised Old West, enjoying light-hearted adventures on his petulant, stingingly sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. Ever since that natal moment, his exploits in Le Journal de Spirou – and, from 1967, in rival periodical Pilote – have made the sharpshooter a legend of stories across all media and monument of merchandising.

Working solo with occasional script assistance from his brother Louis, Morris produced 10 albums worth of affectionate and thrilling sagebrush parody before formally uniting with René Goscinny, who became regular wordslinger with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie), which commenced in LJdS on August 25th 1955.

They literarily rode together on another 44 albums whilst Luke attained dizzying heights of superstardom. The partnership continued when the six-gun straight-shooter switched teams, transferring to Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote with La Diligence (The Stagecoach). When Goscinny died, Morris continued both singly and with fresh collaborators. The dream team’s last ride was 1986’s La Ballade des Dalton et autres histoires/The Ballad Of The Daltons and Other Stories.

Morris briefly went solo again before inviting an inspiring passel of legacy creators to step in: luminaries like Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, who all took their own shots at the lovable lone rider. Morris died in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus an assortment of sidebar and spin-off sagebrush sagas. Since 2016 Julien Berjeaut, AKA Jul (Silex and the City) has handled the tall tale telling…

Lucky is one of the top-ranked comic characters in the world, having generated 94 albums (if you count spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, and artist’s specials) with sales well north of 300 million in 33 languages. That renown has translated into a mountain of merchandise, toys, games, animated cartoons, TV shows and live-action movies and even commemorative exhibitions. No theme park yet, but you never know…

Our taciturn trailblazer’s travails draw on western history as much as movie mythology and regularly interact with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk as he re-explores and refines key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions and interpretations. As previously hinted, the happy wanderer is not averse to being a figure of political change and Weapon of Mass Satire… but not in this primal, heavily cartoon-short-influenced outing…

We Brits first encountered Lucky Luke in the late 1950s, syndicated to weekly comic Film Fun, and again in 1967 in Giggle, where he blazed trails as Buck Bingo. In all these venues – as well as in numerous attempts to capitalise on the English-language success of Tintin and Asterix albums from Brockhampton and Knight Books – Luke had his trademark cigarette hanging insouciantly from his lip, but in 1983 Morris – no doubt amidst both pained howls and muted mutterings of political correctness gone mad – substituted a piece of straw for the much-travelled dog-end, which garnered him an official tip of the hat from the World Health Organization. However, in this restored remastered but still prototypical collection, Lucky doesn’t smoke at all although violence and booze consumption are pretty constant. If that’s a problem, stop here and seek out another, later Lucky lark…

This collection re-presents the contents of the first album, released in 1949 as La Mine d’or de Dick Digger/Dick Digger’s Gold Mine. Gathering strips from Spirou #478-502) the serial unrolls in a riotous concatenation of fast-paced, rollercoaster rapid gag sequences like the screwball US animated features that inspired it, as Lucky helps recover the much-coveted map to a lost payload, causing great grief to the eponymous miner until our hero returns it to the true owner.

The album also includes a second serial romp. Le Journal de Spirou #505 (18th December 1947) began the third adventure, by which time the Lonesome Cowboy was clearly here to stay. Running until #527 (May 20th 1948) ‘Lucky Luke’s Double’ completed that landmark first compiled album: another riotous slapstick chase and comedy of errors as our hero is constantly mistaken for deadly desperado Mad Jim, much to the profit of minor crooks Stan Strand and Tiny Charley Chick. After much rowdy behaviour and larcenous hijinks, thanks to Jolly Jumper, justice and decency triumph in the end…

These youthful, prototypical and formative forays of an indomitable hero offer grand joys in the wry tradition of near-contemporary cinema classics like Destry Rides Again or Laurel & Hardy’s Way Out West – perfectly understandable as Morris was a devout fan of the immortal bumblers and their gentle but astonishingly imaginative action-slapstick capers. Superbly executed by a master storyteller these tales are a wonderful introduction to a unique genre for modern kids who might have missed the allure of a Wild West that never was…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2014 Cinebook Ltd.

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Lucky Luke volume 47: Outlaws


By Morris, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-201-0 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Doughty, rangy,and dashingly dependable cowboy Lucky Luke is an implacably even-tempered do-gooder who can “draw faster than his own shadow”. He amiably ambles around the mythic, cinematically realised Old West, having light-hearted adventures on his petulant and stingingly sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. Over nine decades, his exploits in Le Journal de Spirou (and from 1967, in rival periodica Pilote) have made the sharp shooter a legend of stories across all media and monument of merchandising.

Working solo with occasional script assistance from his brother Louis, Morris – AKA Maurice de Bévère – produced 10 albums worth of affectionate and thrilling sagebrush parody before formally uniting with René Goscinny, who became regular wordslinger with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie), which commenced in Le Journal de Spirou on August 25th 1955.

They literarily rode together on another 44 albums as Luke attained the dizzying heights of superstardom. The partnership continued when the six-gun straight-shooter switched teams, transferring to Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote with La Diligence (The Stagecoach). After Goscinny died, Morris continued both singly and with fresh collaborators. The dream team’s last ride was 1986’s La Ballade des Dalton et autres histoires/The Ballad Of The Daltons and Other Stories.

Morris worked alone again before inviting an inspiring passel of legacy creators to step in. These included Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and others, who all took their own shots at the lovable lone rider. Morris died in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus many sidebar and spin-off sagebrush sagas. Since 2016 Julien Berjeaut, AKA Jul (Silex and the City) has handled the tall tale telling…

Lucky is one of the top-ranked comic characters in the world, having generated 94 albums (if you count spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, and artist’s specials) with sales totalling north of 300 million in 33 languages. That renown has translated into a mountain of merchandise, toys, games, animated cartoons, TV shows and live-action movies and even commemorative exhibitions. No theme park yet, but you never know…

Our taciturn trailblazer’s travails draw on western history as much as movie mythology and regularly interacts with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk re-exploring and refining key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions and interpretations. As previously hinted, the happy wanderer is not averse to being a figure of political change and Weapon of Mass Satire… but not this time…

We Brits first encountered Lucky Luke in the late 1950s, syndicated to weekly comic Film Fun, and again in 1967 in Giggle where he blazed trails as Buck Bingo. In all these venues – as well as numerous attempts to capitalise on  the English-language success of Tintin and Asterix albums from Brockhampton and Knight Books – Luke had his trademark cigarette hanging insouciantly from his lip, but in 1983 Morris – no doubt amidst both pained howls and muted mutterings of political correctness gone mad – substituted a piece of straw for the much-travelled dog-end, which garnered him an official tip of the hat from the World Health Organization. In this restored remastered edition, the dogend is restored, so if that’s a problem, stop here and seek out another, later Lucky lark…

First published continentally in December 1954, Hors-la-loi was the 6th European album and an all Morris affaire comprising two short serials. Eponymous lead strip ‘Outlaws’ originally ran in LJdS #701-731 from September 20th 1951 to April 17th 1952, with our hero hired by the railroad companies to end the depredations of Emmett Bill, Grat and Bob Dalton: real life badmen who plagued the region during the 1890s, imported into the strip and given a comedic, but still vicious spin.

A cat & mouse chase across the wildest of wests sees Luke constantly frustrated by close calls and narrow escapes in superbly gripping movie set-pieces until, inevitably, justice claims the killers. At the close of this yarn, Morris had Lucky end the gang forever, but they and the story itself were insanely popular with fans. The villains were comedy gold and ideal foils for Lucky, so eventually they returned in the form of their own cousins, but we’ll tell that tale another time and place.

Actually, lets do some of it right now…

A certified Christmas must-have item, Lucky Luke album Outlaws also carried ‘Return of the Dalton Brothers’ – as first seen in LJdS #755-764 (October 2nd – December 4th 1952). Here, fraudster Bill Boney campaigns to become sheriff of a prosperous frontier town by claiming to be the killer of those infamous owlhoots. He is an absolute “wrong ‘un” but seems utterly unstoppable… until Lucky orchestrates a brief and equally fake resurrection of the bandit brothers. A little rampage and faux lynching and Boney learns a lesson that the townsfolk will never forget…

From the response to that tale eventually came the aforementioned revival, as Goscinny’s third collaboration introduced Les Cousins Dalton in issues #992-1013 (1957) of Le Journal de Spirou. When this iteration of the appalling Dalton Brothers – Averell, Jack, William and devious, slyly psychotic, tyrannical diminutive brother Joe showed up, the course of the strip altered forever…

These youthful forays of an indomitable hero offer grand joys in the wry tradition of Destry Rides Again and Support Your Local Sheriff, superbly executed by a master storyteller: a wonderful introduction to a unique genre for modern kids who might well have missed the romantic allure of the Wild West that never was…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2014 Cinebook Ltd.

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The Scorpion volume 1: The Devil’s Mark


By Stephen Desberg & Enrico Marini, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-62-5 (Album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

It’s Easter. Fancy a bit of biblical epic-ness doused with saucy irreverance?

We in the English-speaking world will have to work long and hard to come anywhere near the astonishing breadth of genres present in European comics. Both in scenario and narrative content, our continental cousins have seemingly explored every aspect of time and place to tell tales ranging from comedy to tragedy, drama to farce and most especially encompassing the broad, treasure-laden churches of adventure and romance. Le Scorpion is a graphic series which embraces and accommodates all of these and more…

Belgian writer Stephen Desberg is one of the most popular and bestselling comics authors in the business. Born in Brussels, he is the son of an American lawyer (European distribution agent for Metro-Goldwyn Mayer) who married a French woman. He began studying law at Université Libre de Bruxelles, but dropped out to follow a winding path into the bande dessinée biz.

It began with plots – and eventually scripts – for Willy Maltaite – AKA “Will” – on Tif et Tondu in Le Journal de Spirou, as he grew into a reliable jobbing creator on established strips for younger readers. He ultimately launched his own with Billy the Cat (a funny-animal strip drawn by Stéphane Colman, not DC Thomson’s be-whiskered boy superhero). In quick succession came 421 with Eric Maltaite, Arkel (with Marc Hardy), Jimmy Tousseul (Daniel Desorgher) and many, many more. Throughout the 1980s, Desberg gradually redirected his efforts into material for older readerships (like The Garden of Desire and, in 1999 he originated contemporary thriller IR$, with today’s historical fantasy joining his catalogue of major hits one year later.

Enrico Marini attended the School of Fine Arts in Basle before starting his creative career. Drawn since childhood to comics and manga, he began selling his artistic skills as the 1980s ended. A stint on junior adventure strip Oliver Varèse led to Gypsy (1993-1996), after which he began collaborating with Desberg on western L’Etoile du Desert. Contiguously crafting detective serial Rapaces with Jean Dufaux, Marini teamed again with Desberg in 2000 on Le Scorpion. In 2007, the illustrator added writing to his repertoire with historical drama Les Aigles de Rome and latterly Batman saga Dark Prince Charming.

A complex historical romp in the movie style of Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers and – if you squint right – Dangerous Liaisons and Pirates of the Caribbean, The Scorpion is a devious rollercoaster of sumptuous epic intrigue laced together with cunning factual underpinnings fuelling the frantic fantasy and chilling conspiracy. This first expansive English-language Cinebook translation is available in album-sized paperback and eBook formats, bundling together the first two European tomes – La marque du diable and Le secret du pape as released in October 2000 and October 2001 – into one grand bulging behemoth of literary and pictorial gold.

The fun starts in The Devil’s Mark, opening with a fulsome flashback to the most critical moment in the mighty Roman Empire’s long and bloody history. At a place and time when nine families secretly own and rule everything, a pact is made placing all their resources – if not actual Faith – in the coming thing: an intriguing new religion to be called Christianity. The families will remain in charge and in control, but now the official face and might of Rome will not be short-lived Caesars, but rather divinely guided Popes…

Tumbling forward to the early 18th century, we see roguish conman, historian, tomb-robber and relic retailer Armando Catalano – and capable but constantly carping assistant Hussard – deftly swiping the bones of long-lost Saint Alastor. These affable scoundrels are blithely unaware that elsewhere, malign forces within the Church are mobilising to change the way the world runs, with especial significance for freewheeling faith-exploiting entrepreneurs like themselves…

The current Pope is a well-meaning, unconventional commoner set on a path of reform, but that doesn’t matter to sinister advisor Monsignor Trebaldi. Even though doctrine should make the Pope infallible – literally God’s hand and word on Earth – the militant cleric gives his allegiance to an older belief than Christianity…

“Cardinal Eagle” has decided to reinstate the direct influence of the nine families using the papacy as his tool of statecraft. That means somehow first reuniting the varied clans who have drifted into isolation and bitter rivalry over centuries. The first step has already been accomplished. Cosmopolitan Rome is now heavily policed by the Order of the Knights of Christianity: warrior monks who are the Eagle’s own paramilitary zealots and a militant faction gaining in strength despite every effort of the incumbent Pontiff to reign them in…

Devil-may-care Armando is the son of Magdalena Catalan, an infamous witch burned after “seducing a high-ranking priest away from the one true faith”. As sign and proof of his ill-begotten origins, their son bears upon his shoulder a birthmark of the devil: a scorpion signalling his diabolical origins. The brand has not stopped him becoming well-known to every rich patron desperate to possess holy relics, but now, inexplicably, it makes him Trebaldi’s personal obsession. However, after the Cardinal despatches seductive “gypsy” Mejai to assassinate Armando, her repeated attempts all fail. It is as if her target has the luck of the devil on his side…

Alerted and affronted, Armando retaliates, even breaking into an inviolable palace to have a discussion with the Pontiff, only to discover a previously-hidden connection between Trebaldi and his own long-dead mother, and that an even greater scandal and mystery have been draped around the circumstances of his birth! The war of wills escalates rapidly, and the Scorpion finally confronts the Cardinal… seemingly paying the ultimate price for his indiscretions…

The drama expands and tensions mount in The Pope’s Secret with an hallucinogenic flashback offering even more clues into the astoundingly long-planned conspiracy, via a glimpse at Armando’s early life following Magdalena’s incendiary execution. This ends abruptly as faithful Hussard rouses him from the death-like coma caused by Mejai’s latest attempt to kill them. With the Romi assassin their prisoner, our shabby heroes seek further information regarding which high-ranking churchman was Armando’s debauched father by boldly infiltrating the Eagle’s citadel. They instead discover the Cardinal has appropriated the Secret Files of the Vatican, and plans to kill the Pope and replace him…

The outlaws are horrified at this travesty and assault on reality. They frantically race back to

Rome to halt the abomination.

They almost make it…

To Be Continued…

Effortlessly blending devious plots and beguiling historical conspiracies with riotous swashbuckling adventure and non-stop, breathtaking action, this blistering, bombastic and exotically engaging period thriller gives Game of Thrones, The Name of the Rose and even frothier romps like Da Vinci’s Demons a real run for their money. The twelfth and latest volume – Le Mauvais Augure – arrived in 2019 after far too long a hiatus, so there’s plenty for fans of the genre to catch-up to and adore…
Le Marque du diable & Le Secret du pape © Dargaud Benelux (Dargaud-Lombard SA) 2000, 2001 by Desberg & Marini. All rights reserved. English translation © 2008 Cinebook.

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Bluecoats volume 18: Duel in the Channel


By Willy Lambil & Raoul Cauvin, with Leonardo & translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-152-1 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times but also emphasised for dramatic effect.

Devised by Louis “Salvé” Salvérius & Raoul Cauvin – who scripted the first 64 volumes until retirement in 2020 – Les Tuniques Bleues (or Dutch iteration De Blauwbloezen) began as the 1960s ended: created to soften the blow of losing Lucky Luke when that mild-mannered maverick megastar defected from Le Journal de Spirou to arch-rival periodical Pilote. From the start, the substitute strip was popular: swiftly becoming one of the most-read bande dessinée series in Europe. Following stints by the Jose-Luis Munuera and BeKa writing partnership it is now scribed by Kris and up to 68 volumes…

Salvé was a cartoonist in the Gallic big-foot/big-nose humour manner, and after his sudden death in 1972, successor Willy “Lambil” Lambillotte gradually moved towards a more realistic – but still overtly comedic – tone and look. Born in 1936, Lambil is Belgian and, after studying Fine Art in college, joined publishing giant Dupuis in 1952 as a letterer. Arriving on Earth two years later, scripter Cauvin was also Belgian and – prior to entering Dupuis’ animation department in 1960 – studied Lithography. He soon discovered his true calling was comedy and began a glittering, prolific writing career at Le Journal de Spirou. In addition, he scripted dozens of long-running, award winning series including Cédric, Les Femmes en Blanc and Agent 212: clocking up more than 240 separate albums. Les Tuniques Bleues alone has sold over 15 million copies… and counting. Cauvin died on August 19th 2021, but his vast legacy of barbed laughter remains and – as of ten minutes ago – Lambril, at 87, is still drawing the Boys in Blue…

The Bluecoats are long-suffering protagonists Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield and Corporal Blutch: worthy, honest fools in the manner of Laurel & Hardy; ill-starred US cavalrymen defending a vision of a unified America during the War Between the States – well, at least one of them is…

The original format offered single-page gags set around an Indian-plagued Wild West fort, but from second volume Du Nord au Sud, the sad-sack soldiers were situated back East, perpetually fighting in the American Civil War. Subsequent exploits are set within the scant timeframe of the Secession conflict, but – like today’s tale – occasionally range far beyond the traditional environs of the sundered USA, dipping into and embracing actual events (also like today’s tale), tackling genuine, thoroughly researched moments of history…

Blutch is an everyday, whinging little-man-in-the street: work-shy, mouthy, devious and ferociously critical of the army and its inept orchestrators and commanders. Ducking, diving, deserting at every opportunity, he’s you or me – except at his core he’s smart, principled, loyal and even heroic… if no easier option presents itself. Chesterfield is a big, burly professional fighting man: a proud career soldier of the 22nd Cavalry who devoutly believes in patriotism and esprit-de-corps of The Army. Brave, bold, never shirking his duty and hungry to be a medal-wearing hero, he’s quite naïve and also loves his cynical little pal. Naturally, they quarrel like a married couple, fight like brothers and simply cannot agree on the point and purpose of the horrendous war they are trapped in. That situation again stretches their friendship to breaking point in this cunningly conceived instalment, in which both find themselves pretty much fish out of water…

Coloured by Vittorio Leonardo, Les Tuniques Bleues Duel ans la Manche was serialised continentally in Le Journal de Spirou #2967-2976, before becoming the 37th album in 1995, and Cinebook’s 18th translated Bluecoats book. Once more it diverges from the majority of tales, which tread a fine line between comedy and righteous anger, so if you share these books with younger kids, read it first. However the trenchant wit and sardonic comedy are unleashedly full bore as the tale explores a triumphant maritime moment in US history with the lads hapless witnesses.

It begins in the port of Amsterdam on June 10th 1864, where Blutch and Chesterfield have just debarked from US navy vessel USS Kearsarge. However, unlike the rest of their crewmates, shore leave holds no joy for them. They – even Blutch – would much rather be back in the army, but that’s currently impossible.

Following a disastrous attack by new commander General McLellan, the northern land forces were responsible for the deaths and wounding of many of their own troops and, seeking scapegoats, the big boss arbitrarily blamed it all on the boys…

Disgusted by the whole face-saving process, their immediate superior General Alexander secretly arranges for their transfer to the sea borne services and, after a period stoking boilers and hating water, they fetch up in the beguiling city of a thousand pleasures. Chesterfield wants none of it and yearns to be on a horse of the 22nd Cavalry, charging into fusillades of hot lead, but his little pal can see the upside, even as they both fall foul of sharpers, merchants and good time girls who don’t even speak English let alone what these Yankee louts are spouting…

Unluckily for them the Kearsarge is in the midst of a vendetta with Confederate Navy ship CSS Alabama: a seagoing marauder that has already sunk many Union vessels. Captain John Ancrum Winslow has sworn to sink the Alabama and has trailed her to Cherbourg where she is undergoing repairs. Winslow has sworn to destroy her or not return. Everywhere it seems is filled with madmen resolved to cause Blutch’s doom…

Of course, the odd couple are well-versed in making enemies too, and it’s almost a relief when the recall comes and the rowdy crew are mustered to go into battle again. Nevertheless, when they reboard the Kearsarge, an alarmingly determined Dutch vendor follows them…

Battle is joined on June 19th but by then Blutch and Chesterfield have so incensed the Captain that when the cataclysmic clash occurs they are chained to the floor of the brig with no chance of escape if their despised ship sinks…

Somehow surviving the historic victory, the boys are soon on burial duty and ready to make more trouble when word comes from America that they can return… if they want to…

Again highlighting not only divisions and disparities of officers and enlisted men but also of the American class structure – particularly the inherent racism driving the rich and poor players on all sides – Duel in the Channel is another edgy epic based on a true incident, but if you can refrain from looking up the history until you finish, it will be to your benefit.

Devastatingly exploiting history to make a point, Duel in the Channel proves how much stranger than fiction is truth and reveals how war costs everybody, but only profits a few of the very worst, by making moments of shocking verity doubly powerful and hard-hitting. Funny, thrilling, beautifully realised and eminently readable, Bluecoats is the best kind of war-story and Western: appealing to the best, not worst, of the human spirit. And this one is really, really sad…
© Dupuis 1995 by Lambil & Cauvin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2024 Cinebook Ltd.

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Clifton volume 5: Jade


By Rodrigue & de Groot, translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-52-6 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

An infallible agent of Her Majesty’s assorted security forces, Clifton was originally created by Raymond Macherot (Chaminou, Les croquillards, Chlorophylle, Sibylline) for Le Journal de Tintin. This Gallic-tinged doughty exemplar of Albion debuted in December 1959, just as a filmic 007 was about to set the world ablaze and get everyone hooked on spycraft. After three albums worth of strip material – all compiled and released in 1959-1960 – Macherot left Tintin for arch-rival Le Journal de Spirou, and his bombastic True Brit buffoon was benched.

Courtesy of Jo-El Azaza & Greg (AKA Michel Régnier), Le Journal de Tintin revived Cliftonat the height of the Swinging London scene and aforementioned spy-boom. Those strips were subsequently collected as Les lutins diaboliques in French and De duivelse dwergen for Dutch-speakers in 1969. Then it was back into retirement until 1971 when Greg, with artist Joseph Loeckx, took their shot, toiling on the feature until 1973 when Bob De Groot & illustrator Philippe “Turk” Liegeois fully regenerated the be-whiskered wonder.

They produced ten more tales after which, from 1984 on, artist Bernard Dumont (AKA Bédu) limned de Groot’s scripts before eventually assuming writing chores as well. The series concluded in 1995.

… But Never Say Never Again…

In keeping with its rather haphazard Modus Operandi and indomitably undying nature, the Clifton file reopened yet again in 2003, with De Groot & Michel Rodrigue handling four further adventures. Although the humorous visual vein was still heavily mined in these tales, the emphasis subtly shifted and action/adventure components were strongly emphasised…

Originally released in 2003, Jade was Rodrigue & De Groot’s first collaboration, signalling a fresh start with fans’ fave bits augmented by a stunning new partner for the old war-horse…

Bob de Groot was born in Brussels in 1941, to French and Dutch parents. As a young man he became art assistant to Maurice Tillieux on Félix, before creating his own short works for Pilote. A rising star in the 1960s, he drew spy serial 4×8 = 32 L’Agent Caméléon, where he encountered Philippe “Turk” Liegeois, and consequently began a slow transition from artist to writer. Together they created Archimède, Robin Dubois, and Léonard before eventually inheriting Macherot’s moribund Clifton.

In 1989 de Groot – with Jacques Landrain – devised Digitaline, a strong contender for the first comic created entirely on a computer, and co-created Doggyguard with Michel Rodrigue, even whilst prolifically working with the legendary Morris on both Lucky Luke and its canine comedy spin-off Rantanplan. He was still going strong with Léonard in Eppo, Pere Noël & Fils and Le Bar des acariens (both published by Glénat) until his death on 7th November 2023.

Michel Rodrigue really, really likes Rugby – the highly painful and exhilarating sport for boys and girls of all ages, not the market town in eastern Warwickshire. He was born in Lyon in 1961 and eventually pursued higher education at the National School of Fine Arts, where he also studied medieval archaeology. From 1983-85 he was part of the French Rugby team and in 1987 designed France’s mascot for the World Cup. He made his comics debut in 1984 with sports (guess which one) strip Mézydugnac in Midi Olympique. After illustrating an adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac in 1986, he and collaborator Jean-Claude Vruble produced a volume of La Révolution Française, scripted by Patrick Cothias.

Rodrigue then joined Roger Brunel on Rugby en B.D., Du Monde dans la Coupe!, Concept, Le Rugby en Coupe and La Foot par la Bande. For Le Journal de Tintin, he drew Bom’s Les Conspirateurs and produced Rugbyman, official monthly of the French Rugby Federation, amongst a scrum of other strips. Along the way, he began scripting too, and after working with de Groot on Doggyguard joined him on the resurrected Clifton.

Rodrigue also remains astonishingly creatively occupied, working on Ly-Noock with André Chéret, Brèves de Rugby, La Grande Trambouille des Fées for René Hausmann, Les Damnés de la Route, Triple Galop, L’Équipe de Rêve, Futurama comics, Cubitus and spinoff Bidule (with Pierre Aucaigne), and many more…

Pompous, irascible Colonel Sir Harold Wilberforce Clifton is ex-RAF, a former officer with the Metropolitan Police Constabulary and recently retired from MI5. He has a great deal of difficulty dealing with being put out to pasture in rural Puddington and takes every opportunity to get back in the saddle, assisting the shambles in Government or needy individuals as an amateur sleuth whenever opportunity arises. He occupies his idle hours with as many good deeds as befit a man of his standing and service…

In his revived incarnation the balance between satirical comedy, blistering adventure and sinister intrigue is carefully judged and this re-introductory tale opens with the old soldier and his contentiously fiery, multi-talented housekeeper Mrs. Partridge preparing for a camping trip. Clifton is taking a local scout troop to Wales, but some last-minute minor catastrophes are testing his patience and turning the air blue with extremely imaginative invective. Unflappable Mrs. P is able to offset them all thanks to a family connection in the army surplus business, and soon the Colonel is ready to roll but plans change at the very last minute when a shadowy figure leaves a letter. That enigmatic messenger is painfully unaware that they are being carefully observed by another…

The message is in code, but once again la Partridge is up to the task, and Clifton adapts his plans. When the scouts board the lorry the colonel has secured, they learn that they are now heading for Devon…

Arriving at scenic Snooze-on-Pillow, Clifton gets his lads to set up camp, but is soon accosted by an unctuous stranger who takes him to meet an old enemy fallen upon ignominious times. Otto von Kartoffeln was one of Hitler’s greatest assets in the war, but now is a feeble wreck in an old folks’ home bullied by a monster of a nurse. He doesn’t just want to talk over old times, however. The shrunken but still repugnant old remnant wants to share the secret location of a submarine full of Nazi treasure.

Over tea, served by a rather attractive young lady, the old soldiers’ minds go back to their earliest encounters. The tale unfolds of a U-Boat once commanded by Kartoffeln which sank off Scotland at the end of the war. He would happily have left it there forever, if not for the fact that a gang of neo-Nazis are trying to recover it and start up the Fuhrer’s madness all over again…

The old men have no conception that their teapot is bugged and avid young ears are listening with shock and awe and something else…

All too soon, our restless old warrior hurtles northward: dodging bombs and ducking bullets beside an unlikely new partner. Determined on scotching a sinister plot, scuppering a vast submarine base and stopping the rise of the Fourth Reich, Clifton is aware that – as always – there are plots within plots, and amidst the frenetic death-defying action he has to keep one eye on his deadly foes and another on the people claiming to be allies…

Still, with nothing to lose and civilisation to save, Clifton naturally does his utmost…

Funny, fast and furiously action-packed, Jade gives our Old Soldier a subtle overhaul and fresh start in a cunningly-conceived adventure romp in the grandly daft Get Smart! and Austin Powers manner (with a smidge of Bullet Train in there for kids who won’t watch old stuff), sufficient to astound and delight blockbuster addicts whilst supplying a solid line in goofy gags for laughter-addicts of every age to enjoy.
Original edition © Les Editions du Lombard (Dargaud-Lombard SA) 2003 by Rodrigue & De Groot. English translation © 2008 Cinebook Ltd.

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Young, Talented… Exploited!


By Yatuu, translated by FNIC (Sloth Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-908830-02-9 (TPB)

Much as we’d like to think otherwise, the world of work is pretty similar everywhere now and no longer possessed of purely national characteristics. These days we all slave under a universal system that sidesteps borders in the name of global corporate philosophy; it might even be ideology now! Thus, this stunning and still so very germane glimpse of one French woman’s frustrated struggle against modern employment practise is one that’s being repeated all over the planet every day. In this case however, Capitalism picked on the wrong person. Yatuu (Sasha, Génération mal logée!, Pas mon genre) has enough spark, gumption and talent to fight back and eventually turned a strident cartoon objection into a sparkling comics career…

When Cyndi Barbero graduated from college and began looking for a job, all she was offered were unpaid internships. Eventually, she took one, still believing the mantra everyone with a job repeated: “if you work hard enough they may offer a permanent position”…

The work-placement role ran its legally-mandated course and she was promptly replaced by another sucker. After the third time it happened she began to blog (www.yatuu.fr/en) about and sharing her experiences, venting her opinions on such a manifestly unfair system and derive a soupçon of justifiable payback…

Just in case you’re unaware: An Intern takes a position in a company to learn the ropes, develop good working habits and establish contacts that will make them more employable. The system used to work even though most kids ended up doing scut-work and never really learned anything useful. Such positions are unpaid and eventually most employers realised that they could get free low-grade temporary labourers and thereby cut their own running costs. Using, abusing and discarding the seemingly endless supply of optimistic hopefuls has become an accepted expense-control measure at most large businesses. Even employers who originally played fair had to change at some stage, because the exploitative tactics gave business rivals an unfair financial advantage…

In almost 45 years of fairly successful freelancing I met lots of interns – good, bad, indifferent and uncommitted – but after 1990 encountered only one large company where interns were paid – and that’s only because the old-fashioned, old-school CEO put his foot down and insisted. When he retired and the company was sold, the intern program quickly shifted to the new normal…

This subtly understated, over-the-top manga-styled, savagely comedic exposé tracks one exhilarated graduate’s progress from college to the world of no work through ‘At the End of the First Internship’ via ‘At the End of the Second Internship’ to ‘At the End of the Third Internship’ when even she began to smell a rat. Even that didn’t daunt her (much) and, after much soul-searching, she took her dream job at a major Ad Agency. At least it would have been, were she not the latest addition to a small army of interns expending their creative energies for insane zero hours, zero thanks, or acknowledgement and at their own financial expense.

From ‘Some Words Get Instant Reactions at Interviews’ through her ‘First Day’ – via vivid and memorable digressions on expected behaviour and hilariously familiar vignettes of types (I was an advertising freelancer and have actually gone drinking with many of these guys’ British cousins…) – to the accepted 7-days-a-week grind of ‘This Place is Great Because You Learn to Laugh on Cue’ and ‘Nothing Out of the Ordinary’, Yatuu grew accustomed to her voluntary slavery… although her barely-suppressed sense of rebellion was unquenchable.

Amongst so many short, pithy lessons compiled here we see and sympathise with ‘Intensive Training’, observe ‘The Pleasure of Feeling Useful’ and realise there’s ‘Nothing to Lose’, before an intriguing game of office ‘Dilemma’ explores whether to have lunch with the Employees or Interns and what to do if asked to do ‘Overtime’...

As much diary as educational alarm call, this beguiling collection reveals how the hapless ever-hopeful victim developed survival strategies – like finding a long-suffering workmate prepared to lend a floor, couch or bed for those frequent nights when the last train leaves before you do…

Mostly however, this addictive collection deals with the author’s personal responses to an untenable but inescapable situation for far too many young people: revealing insane episodes of exhaustion, despondency and work (but, tellingly not Job)-related stress, such as too many scary midnight cab rides home, constant nightmares and grinding daily insecurity.

What’s amazing is that it’s done with style, bravery and an astonishing degree of good-natured humour – especially when dealing with ‘The Idea Thief’, planning ‘Retaliation’ or perfecting ‘The Ultimate Revenge Technique!!!’…

Originally collected as Moi, 20 ans, diplômée, motivée… exploitée!, Yatuu’s trenchant cartoon retaliations were published in English some years ago (so we’re long overdue for a new edition) and makes for fascinating reading. Although it really should be, you probably won’t find Young, Talented, Exploited! discussed in any school Careers lessons or part of any college Job seminar and it’s almost certainly banned from every employers’ Orientation and Training package, but that’s just a sign of how good it is.

Best get your own copy and be ready for the worst scams, indignities and excesses that the Exploiters and Bosses will try to spring on you. At least once you’ve paid for it you can be assured that it will deliver on its promise…
© 2013 Yatuu & 12bis. English translation and layout © 2013 Sloth Publishing, Ltd.

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Madwoman of the Sacred Heart


By Jodorowsky & Moebius, translated by Natacha Ruck & Ken Grobe (Humanoids/Sloth Publishing UK)
ISBN: 978-1-908830-01-2 (Sloth HB 2011), 978-1-59465-046-8 (Humanoids HB 2013),

978-1643379548 (Jodorowsky Library vol. 6, 2023)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Here’s a modern masterpiece of comics creativity, one of the most intriguing and engaging works by two creative legends of sequential narrative. To some people however, this superb piece of thought-provoking fiction might be shocking or blasphemous, so if you hold strong views on sex or religion – particularly Christianity – stop right now, spare yourself some outrage and come back tomorrow.

Born in Tocopilla, Chile in 1929, Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky is a filmmaker, author, playwright, actor, comics writer, world traveller, philosopher and spiritual guru. He is most widely known for films like Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Sante Sangre, The Rainbow Thief and the like, as well as a vast comics output, including Anibal 5, (created whilst living in Mexico) Le Lama blanc, Aliot, The Meta-Barons, Borgia and so much more, co-created with some of South America and Europe’s greatest artists. His nigh decade-long collaboration with Möebius on the Tarot-inspired adventure The Incal (1981-1989) completely redefined and reinvented what comics could aspire to and achieve.

Best known for violently surreal avant-garde films, loaded with highly-charged, inspired imagery blending mysticism and “religious provocation” and his spiritually informed fantasy and science fiction comics, Jodorowsky is also fascinated by the inner realms and has devised his own culture of therapeutic healing: Psychomagic, Psychogenealogy and Initiatic massage. He still remains fully engaged and active in all these creative areas today.

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in the suburbs of Paris in 1938 and raised by his grandparents. In 1955 he attended the Institut des Arts Appliqués where he became friends with Jean-Claude Mézières who, at 17, was already selling strips and illustrations to magazines such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Le Journal de Spirou. Giraud apparently spent most of his time drawing cowboy comics and left college after a year. In 1956 he travelled to Mexico, staying with his mother for eight months, before returning to France and a full-time career in comics: mostly westerns such as Frank et Jeremie for Far West and King of the Buffalo, A Giant with the Hurons and others in Coeurs Valliants, all in a style based on French comics legend Joseph “Jijé” Gillain.

Between 1959 and 1960, Giraud spent his National Service in Algeria, where he worked on military service magazine 5/5 Forces Françaises. On returning to civilian life, he became Jijé’s assistant in 1961, working on the master’s long-running (1954-1977) western epic Jerry Spring. A year later, Giraud and Belgian writer Jean-Michel Charlier launched the serial Fort Navajo in Pilote #210, and soon its disreputable, anti-hero lead character Lieutenant Blueberry was one of the most popular European strips of modern times. In 1963-1964, Giraud produced strips for satire periodical Hara-Kiri and – keen to distinguish and separate this material from his serious day job – first coined his pen-name “Möebius”.

He didn’t use it again until 1975 when he joined Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Philippe Druillet – all rabid science fiction fans – as co-founders of a revolution in narrative graphic arts: Les Humanoïdes associés. Their groundbreaking adult fantasy magazine Métal Hurlant utterly enraptured the comics-buying public and Giraud again wanted to utilise a discrete creative persona for the lyrical, experimental, soul-searching material he was crafting: series such as The Airtight Garage, The Incal (with Jodorosky) and mystical, dream-world flights of sheer fantasy contained in Arzach…

To further separate his creative bipolarity, Giraud worked in inks with a brush whilst the futurist Möebius rendered with pens. Both of him passed away on March 10th 2012.

Jodorowsky & Möebius’ second groundbreaking co-creation was originally released as 3 albums from Les Humanoïdes associés – La Folle du Sacree Coeur (1992), Le piège de l’irrationnel (1993) and Le Fou de la Sorbonne (1998) – before the saga was initially collected into one massive, ecstatic and revolutionary volume in 2004. The company’s American arm Humanoids, Inc. translated it into English in 2006, and it’s resurfaced on occasion ever since.

Professor Alan Mangel is a world-renowned aesthete, deep thinker and chief lecturer at the Sorbonne. As such he is the focus of much student attention – particularly female – but none as fervent as that of insular, fanatically, deeply disturbed bible-bashing Christian Elisabeth.

When the educator’s shrewish wife Myra denounces, shames and impoverishes him at the moment of his greatest triumph, the arrogantly cerebral, proudly austere, violently chaste and determinedly sexually-abstinent Mangel loses the awed respect of his once-doting students and disciples. They now shun his once overcrowded classes, mock and even assault him.

Only Elisabeth remains devoted to him, but she has designs both carnal and divine on the aging, flabby, secular, lapsed and born-again Jew. To make matters worse, when she throws herself at him and is repulsed, this awakens the philosopher’s own lustful youthful libido which takes form as a gadfly ghost constantly urging him to indulge in acts of vile debauchery and rampant lust. Eventually the pressure is too great and Mangel agrees to meet Elisabeth at the Church of the Sacred Heart. The journey there is awful: even the universe seems set against him as rude taxi-drivers, a mad old lady tramp and even dogs further humiliate the broken old man.

In the holiest part of the church Elisabeth again attempts to seduce the long sterile and wilfully impotent Alan, explaining that her researches have revealed him to be the biblical Zacharias reborn, destined to impregnate her with a son: the Prophet John who would in turn herald the rebirth of Jesus…

Again the rational scientist baulks at her words but Elisabeth promises a miracle and when Mangel’s horny, ghostly other self “possesses” him the dotard loses control and finally gives the mad girl what she’s been begging for…

Plagued with shame, despondent with remorse, still tormented by his inner letch and so very broke, Mangel resumes lecturing, gradually rebuilding his reputation until one day Elisabeth returns, her nude body declaring her to be forever the property of Alan Zacharias Mangel. She is three months pregnant with the sterile man’s baby and has already recruited a “St. Joseph” who will help them fulfil their sacred mission…

The divinely-dispatched protector, a drug addict and petty criminal previously called Muhammad, already has a line on “The Mary”: she’s his girlfriend Rosaura, currently imprisoned in a secure mental hospital. She’s also in a coma.

Dragged against the will he no longer seems capable of exerting, Mangel experiences his latest ongoing tribulation when St. Joseph breaks The Mary out with the aid of a gun and his distressed guts give way to what will be, for all of the chosen ones, an uncomfortable and prolonged period of stress-related explosive diarrhoea. Against all his rational protests and worries, things just seem to keep falling into place for the pilgrims. Rosura is no longer comatose, and they get away without a single problem… if you don’t count the olfactory punishment the Professor’s rebellious innards are repeatedly inflicting upon them all…

“Mary” is the most ravishing creature he has ever seen, but just as crazy as her friends. When she cavorts naked in a field during a midnight thunderstorm, frantically imploring God to impregnate her with the second Jesus, Mangel’s lustful ghost again overtakes him and he surreptitiously copulates with the wildly-bucking “lascivious loon”. One day later reality hits hard when the lecturer reads of two nurses executed when the comatose daughter of an infamous Columbian drug baron was abducted from a certain institution…

The second chapter opens with the four fugitives hiding out in a lavish seaside house and Mangel – as always – arguing with both his priapic phantom and rationalist conscience. His so impossibly, imperturbably persuasive companions are untroubled: they are simply passing the days until the birth of John the Baptist and imminently impending Second Coming of Christ.

The next crisis is pecuniary as the lavish spending of the trio soon exhausts the Professor’s funds and they are reduced to their last 100 franc note…

Elisabeth is unconcerned and simply places a bet with it. Operating under divine guidance the horse race wins the quartet 3.5 million Francs, but before the reeling rationalist can grasp that, there’s another insane development as The Mary/Rosaura declares herself to be the Androgynous Christ – both male and female – reborn and made manifest to save us all…

She still looks devastatingly all-woman however, and when she kisses the old fool and sends him back to the Church of the Sacred Heart to “obtain” a vial of holy Baptismal oil, he goes despite himself, arguing all the way with his imaginary sex-obsessed younger self. It’s all another humiliating and deranged debacle. The famous house of worship is hosting an ecumenical convention of argumentative theologians of all religions and that self-same crazy woman is still there, claiming to be God and challenging them all. After driving them away she even tries to have sex with the utterly bemused and bewildered fallen philosopher who barely escapes with the stolen oil.

The worst of it all is that, based on recent evidence, Mangel can’t even say with any certainty that the vile-smelling harridan isn’t telling the truth…

Driving back through the fleshpots of the city with his ghost tempting him every inch of the way, the weary savant is dragged back to appalling reality by a newspaper headline declaring that the police have a witness in the murder/abduction of Rosaura Molinares, daughter of the most wanted drug trafficker on Earth. However, when the nigh-unhinged thinker reaches his sanctuary from reason, the true believers already know. They taped the TV news and show him the witness describing a completely different killer: El Perro, chief hitman of Pedro Molinares’ Medellin Cartel…

With the last foundations of precious logic crumbling, Mangel reaches an emotional tipping point and when The Androgynous Christ demands he make love to her, the old fool submits to stress – and his ever-horny spectral alter ego – by surrendering to his lusts. Before long he is in the throes of a bizarre, eye-opening, life-altering four-way love session with all the mad people he has wronged in his head and heart. The epiphanic moment is rather spoiled when the wall explodes and a cadre of mercenaries working for a rival cartel burst in, seeking Rosaura’s dad. They’re followed by the Columbian Secret Service, also hunting the drug lord and quite prepared to kill everybody to find him.

… And they in turn are ambushed by American DEA agents who slaughter everybody in their sights in their desperation to capture Molinares’ daughter and her weirdo friends. The illegally operating Yanks drag their captives to a submarine waiting offshore just as French police hit the beach and El Perro attacks the sub, spectacularly rescuing the quartet and transporting them to safety by helicopter and cargo plane…

The concluding chapter of the blasphemous, ever-escalating cosmic farce opens with all of France astonished by the kidnapping of its most beloved thinker even as, in a Columbian Garden of Eden, a newly-enlightened and happy Mangel and his heavily pregnant Elisabeth prepare for the birth of The Child. The Androgynous Christ too has changed and grown, easily converting the hard-bitten drug gangsters into a holy army of believers in the redeemer Jesusa…

Top dog Pedro Molinares is dying from cancer and his devoted army are fully, fanatically in tune with Jesusa’s plans, especially after an impossible blood miracle seemingly proves their new leader’s earthbound divinity. Equally astounded, Mangel too reaches a spiritual crisis as he accompanies Elisabeth deep into the jungle to give birth.

Mangel’s journey and ultimate transformation at the hands of rainforest shaman Doña Paz then lead to even more astonishing revelations, changes and shocks that I’m just not prepared to spoil for you…

After years of exile by exclusion the tale was translated for English readers in 2004, and has since been seen many times, such as the sterling UK edition published by Sloth Comics, and most recently in 2023, when it was rereleased under the prestigious Jodorowsky Library imprint (specifically as Book Six: Madwoman of the Sacred Heart • Twisted Tales) paired with “Selected Stories” and mindbending short Twisted Tales…

Controversial, shocking, challenging, fanciful, enchanting and incredibly cruelly funny in an Armando Iannucci manner, this a parable you must read and will always remember.
™ & © Les Humanoïdes associés, SAS, Paris. English version © 2011 Humanoids, Inc., Los Angeles. All rights reserved.

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Lucky Luke Volume 8 Calamity Jane


By Morris & Goscinny, translated by Pablo Vela (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-25-0 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Doughty, dashing and dependable cowboy “good guy” Lucky Luke is a rangy, implacably even-tempered do-gooder able to “draw faster than his own shadow”. He amiably ambles around the mythic Old West, having light-hearted adventures on his petulant and stingingly sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. Over nine decades, his exploits have made him one of the top-ranking comic characters in the world, generating nearly 90 individual albums and spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, with sales totalling upwards of 300 million in 30 languages. That renown has translated into a mountain of merchandise, toys, games, animated cartoons, TV shows and live-action movies and even commemorative exhibitions. No theme park yet, but you never know…

The brainchild of Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (AKA “Morris”), Lucky only truly expanded to global dominance via his 45-volume collaboration with superstar scripter René Goscinny (from Des rails sur la Prairie/Rails on the Prairie beginning August 25th 1955 to La Ballade des Dalton et autres histoires/The Ballad Of The Daltons And Other Stories in 1986).

On Goscinny’s death, Morris worked alone again and with others, inspiring a passel of legacy creators including Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, all taking their own shots at the affable lone rider. Morris soldiered on both singly and with these successors before his passing in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus numerous sidebar and spin-off sagebrush sagas.

Our taciturn trailblazer’s tales draw on western history as much as movie mythology and regularly interacts with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk in tales drawn from key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions, and interpretations. As previously hinted, the sagebrush star is not averse to being a figure of political change and Weapon of Mass Satire… like this one…

Lucky Luke is a rangy, good-natured, lightning-fast quick-draw cowboy at home in any crisis; and generally unflappable. He’s probably the most popular Western star in the world today, but occasionally he meets someone even more confident than he.

First published continentally in 1967, Calamity Jane was the 30th European album and Goscinny’s 21st collaboration with Morris. It’s one of the team’s better tales, blending historical personages with the wandering hero’s action-comedy exploits and as such it’s a slice of Horrible Histories-tinged Americana you won’t want to miss. It all begins with our hero taking a welcome bath in a quiet river, only to be ambushed by Apaches spoiling for a fight. Their murderous plans are ruined by a bombastic lone rider who explosively drives off the raiders in a hail of gunfire before stopping to laugh at the embarrassed Luke. His cool, confidant rescuer is tough, bellicose, foul-mouthed, tobacco-chewing and infamous: born Martha Jane Cannery, apparently most folk just call her Calamity Jane…

She’s becomes more amenable after learning who Luke is, and, over coffee and a scratch meal, mutual respect develops into real friendship. Recounting her (remarkably well-researched) history, Cannery learns in return why Luke is in the region: someone has been supplying the Indians with guns just like the ones that almost killed him earlier…

Keen to help, Calamity joins Lucky and they ride into frontier town El Plomo and another minor crisis. The saloon prefers not to serve ladies – until Jane convinces them to change the policy in her own unique manner.

The glitzy dive is owned and operated by unctuous, sleazily sinister August Oyster who instantly suspects legendary lawman Luke is there because of his own underhand, under-the-counter activities…

As the cowboy heads off to check in with the sheriff, Calamity indulges in games of chance and skill with the sleazy Oyster and his hulking henchman Baby Sam, swiftly causing an upset by winning his hotel and saloon. Happily, Lucky is back on the scene by the time the grudging grouse has to officially hand over his money-making venture. Flushed with success, the new proprietor starts making changes and no man cares to object to the Calamity Jane Saloon and Tearoom (Reserved for Ladies). They’ll happily buy her beer and whiskey too, but not even at gunpoint will they eat her crumpets…

Oyster and Baby Sam, however, are utterly frantic. The saloon was crucial to their side business selling guns to renegades and they have to get it back before the increasingly impatient Chief Gomino takes matters into his own bloodstained hands. Still hunting for the gunrunners and pretty certain who’s behind the scheme, Luke is constantly distracted by petty acts of sabotage and even arson plaguing Calamity, but even as he finds his first piece of concrete proof, Oyster instigates his greatest distraction yet: organising the haughtily strait-laced Ladies Guild of El Plomo to close down the insalubrious saloon and run its new owner out of town…

Never daunted, Luke eventually pacifies and placates his tack-spitting pal down before deftly counterattacking by sending for an etiquette teacher to polish rough diamond Jane enough to be accepted by the ferociously militant guildswomen. It is the greatest challenge urbane, effete Professor Robert Gainsborough (an outrageously slick caricature of British actor David Niven) has undertaken. His eventual (but only partial) success leaves him a changed and broken man.

Stymied at every turn, increasingly panicked August Oyster is soon caught red-handed by the vigilant vigilante, but it’s too late. Frustrated and impatient, Gomino has opted to raid the town in broad daylight and seize his long-promised guns and ammo from their hiding place. The marauders have not, however, reckoned on the steely fighting prowess of Lucky Luke and the devil woman they superstitiously call “Bang! Bang!”…

Cleverly barbed, wickedly witty and spectacularly playing with key tropes of classic sagebrush sagas, this raucous romp is a grand escapade in the comedic tradition of Destry Rides Again, Cat Ballou and Support Your Local Sheriff, superbly executed by master storytellers as a wonderful introduction to a venerable genre for today’s kids who might well have missed the romantic allure of an all-pervasive Wild West that never was…

Also included is a photo pin-up of the actual Martha Jane Cannery in her gun-toting prime and, in case you’re worried, even though the interior art still has our hero drawin’ on his ol’ roll-ups, there’s very little chance of any reader craving a quick snout (or crumpets wild west style), but quite a strong likelihood that they’ll be addicted to Lucky Luke albums.
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Goscinny & Morris. © Lucky Comics.

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Yoko Tsuno volume 10: Message for Eternity


By Roger Leloup translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-251-5 (Album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

On 24th September 1970, indomitable intellectual adventurer and “electronics engineer” Yoko Tsuno commenced her career in Le Journal de Spirou via a cartoony “Marcinelle style” 8-page short entitled ‘Hold-up en hi-fi’. Two more followed (‘La belle et la bête’ and ‘Cap 351’), serving as precursors for her first full-length adventure, Le trio de l’étrange as serialised in proper full-sized regular LJdS beginning on May 13th 1971. She is still delighting readers and making new fans 31 albums later, in astonishing, action-packed, astoundingly accessible adventures numbering amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created.

Her globe-girdling mysteries and space-&-time-spanning epics are devised by multitalented Belgian maestro Roger Leloup who, in 1953, started his own solo career after working as a studio assistant and technical artist on Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin.

Leloup’s illustrated escapades were at the vanguard of an unstoppable wave of comics and strips revolutionising European comics. Very early in the process, he switched from loose illustration to the mesmerising nigh-photo realistic Ligne Claire style that is a series signature. The result is a compelling cannon of compellingly told, superbly imaginative and – no matter how implausible the premise of any individual yarn may seem – unswervingly grounded in hyper-realism with settings, if not scenarios, all underpinned by authentic, unshakably believable technology and scientific principles.

The long-overdue sea change in gender roles and stereotyping heralded a wave of clever, competent, brave and formidably capable female protagonists taking their rightful places as heroic ideals and not romantic lures and ornamental booby traps: elevating all Continental comics in the process. Such endeavours are as engaging and empowering now in Miss Tsuno’s 55th anniversary year as they ever were.

As already stated, her first outings (STILL unaccountably unavailable in English) were mere introductory vignettes before epic authenticism took hold in 1971 when the unflappable troubleshooter met valiant but excitable pals Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen, and properly hit her stride. Following on from that epic of extraterrestrial intrigue, Tsuno’s case books would expand to include explosive exploits and espionage affairs in exotic corners of our world, sinister deep-space sagas and even time-travelling jaunts. Of the 31 European bande dessinée albums to date, 19 have been translated into English thus far, albeit – and ironically – none of them are available in digital formats…

Message pour l’éternité was first serialised in Spirou #1882-1905 (9th May-17 October 17th 1974) and became the fifth album compilation a year later. A skilfully-conceived suspenseful mystery thriller, it reached us as Cinebook’s tenth translated chronicle. It all begins as ever-restless ferociously perfectionist Yoko masters a new hobby.

After gliding high above Brittany, she fortuitously sets down in a field adjacent to a vast telecommunications complex. Offered a tour of the space-probing facility, Yoko learns from one of the chatty scientists of a fantastic “ghost message” recently picked up by satellites: a Morse code signal from a British plane lost in 1933. Bizarrely, the signal is somehow still being regularly broadcast…

When Yoko tries to arrange to have her glider picked up and sort out her own departure, a mysterious Englishman offers her a lift in his private helicopter. Naturally, he has an ulterior motive: as an employee of the company which originally insured the lost flight, he’s looking for someone with certain precise qualifications to trace the downed craft and recover the fortune in jewels it was carrying. Her fee will be suitably astronomical too…

It transpires that his firm has known where the plane went down for some time, but logistical and geographical difficulties have prevented them from undertaking any kind of recovery mission – until now. Moreover, although they have now started the process, the petite engineer is physically superior to any of the candidates the company are currently working with. Cautiously accepting the commission, Yoko starts planning, but even before Pol & Vic can join her the following day, strange accidents and incidents begin imperilling her life…

The boys are understandably reluctant but that attitude turns to sheer frustration and terror after someone tries to shoot down Yoko as she practises in her glider, but it only makes her more determined to complete the job.

Two weeks later the trio are heading to the daunting Swiss fortress the company uses as a base when another spectacular murder attempt almost ends their lives. Tsuno remains undeterred, but not so Vic & Pol, especially after learning that two of her fellow trainees have recently died in similar “accidents” in the mountains. Carrying on regardless, she is introduced to the fantastic glider-&-launch system that will take her to the previously unattainable crash site and starts finessing her landing technique in a fantastic training simulator.

Eventually more details are provided and the real story unfolds. The Handley-Page transport they’re seeking was conveying diplomatic mail from Karachi to London in November 1933, but vanished in a storm over Afghanistan. Decades later, a satellite somehow picked up a broken radio message stating it had landed – somewhere…

The businessman the trio cheekily refer to as “Milord” identifies himself as Major Dundee, a spymaster from Britain’s Ministry of Defence, and explains how a shady American former U2 pilot approached the British government, claiming to have spotted the downed ship during a clandestine overflight of Soviet territories. He also provided purloined photos showing the plane in the centre of a vast circular crater on the Russo-Chinese border, but subsequent reconnaissance flights have revealed nothing in the hole.

Thus a decision was taken to make a physical assessment, even though the already inaccessible site is deep in hostile – if not actual – enemy territory. Since then it has become clear that an unidentified agent or group is acting against the recovery project, probably intent on retrieving the ship’s mysterious but valuable cargo for a foreign power. Events spiral out of control when a traitor in the training team attempts to kill Yoko and “Operation Albatross” is rushed to commencement before the unknown enemy can try again…

Within a day lone pilot Tsuno is transported in a most fantastic and speedy manner around the world before her space-age glider prototype is secretly deployed over the enigmatic crater. Narrowly avoiding patrolling Soviet jets, Yoko deftly manoeuvres into a mist-covered chasm and plunges into one of the most uncanny experiences of her life.

The old plane is certainly gone. The floor of the crater is oddly cracked, and at its centre stands a strangely burned and blackened monolith. There are uncharacteristic animal bones everywhere and, at one end of the vast cavity, there is a primitive but large graveyard…

When the astounded adventurer explores further she is ambushed by her treacherous fellow trainee who has raced after her by conventional means and parachuted into the bizarre basin. However, his original plans have changed drastically since arrival, and despite the machine gun he wields, he needs Yoko’s help. He’s already located the Handley-Page – somehow manually dragged under an unsuspected overhang in the crater – but is mortally afraid of what he describes as the “tiny people” infesting the terrifying impact bowl…

As the unlikely allies head towards the perfectly preserved plane, the truth of the terrifying homunculi is shockingly revealed when they meet the last human survivor of the downed Diplomatic Flight, discovering to their extreme cost the uncanny, ultimately deadly atmospheric anomaly which has kept the plane a secret for decades and turned the crater into a vast geological radio set…

When the dust settles, Yoko realises she is trapped in the subterranean anomaly. With all her escape plans rendered useless she must align herself with the bizarre sole survivor and his bestial, rebellious servants. However, she absolutely refuses to give up on the recovery mission. Of course that doesn’t mean that she has to trust anything the old relic in the hole or Major Dundee has said. With that in mind, Tsuno lays her own plans to settle matters…

As always, the most potent asset of these breathtaking dramas is the astonishingly authentic and staggeringly detailed draughtsmanship and storytelling, which superbly benefits from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail, honed through years of working on Tintin. With this sleekly beguiling tale, Yoko proved that she was a truly multifaceted hero, equally at home in all manner of dramatic milieus and able to hold her own against the likes of James Bond, Modesty Blaise, Tintin or any other genre-busting super-star: as triumphantly capable pitted against spies and crooks as alien invaders, weird science or unchecked force of nature…

This is a splendidly frenetic, tense thriller which will appeal to any fan of blockbuster action fantasy or devious espionage exploit and is a perfect introduction to a shockingly uncelebrated action star.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1973, 1979 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2015 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Quick & Flupke: Fasten Your Seatbelts & Under Full Sail


By Hergé, translated by David Radzinowicz (Egmont UK)
ISBN: 978-1-4052-4742-9 (PB Album Seatbelts)  978-1-4052-4743-6 (HB/Sail)

These books include Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Georges Prosper Remi – known to all as Hergé – created a genuine masterpiece of graphic literature with his tales of a plucky boy reporter and his entourage of iconic associates. Singly, and later with assistants including Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and other supreme stylists of the select Hergé Studio, he crafted 23 splendid volumes (originally produced in brief instalments for newspaper periodicals) which have since grown beyond their popular culture roots and attained the status of High Art.

Globally renowned for the magnificent Tintin adventures, Hergé also did much to return comics to the arena of mass entertainment, a position largely lost after once television, video-recording and computer games became household standards. However, the bold boy and his opinionated dog were by not his only landmark. In the years before the junior journalist finally assured him immortality Remi was a prodigious jobbing cartoonist, generating a minor pantheon of topical strips and features such as Tim the Squirrel in the Far West, The Amiable Mr. Mops, Tom and Millie and Popol Out West. Among the best of the rest were the tales of Jo and Zette Legrand and their chimpanzee companion Jocko – in much the same wholesome action vein as Tintin – and episodic, all-ages shenanigans of a pair of mischievous ragamuffins in pre-WWII Belgium.

In 2005 Egmont translated three escapades of Jo, Zette and Jocko into English – although many more are just sitting fallow out there, all foreign and unreadable to potential fans too lazy to learn French or any of a dozen other civilised languages. In 2009 the publisher tried again with two collections of the Master’s second most successful creation: Quick et Flupke, gamins de Bruxelles.

These rambunctiously subversive, trouble-making working-class rapscallions and scallywags were precursors and thematic contemporaries of such beloved British boy acts as The Bash Street Kids, Winker Watson, Roger the Dodger et al, and literally hundreds of continental strips, and for more than a decade (from January 1930 to May 1940) rivalled untouchable Tintin in popularity. They undoubtedly acted as a rehearsal room for the humorous graphic and slapstick elements which became so much a part of future Tintin tales.

Just over a decade ago Egmont had a brief stab at reviving the likely lads and it was only the general public’s deplorable lack of taste and good sense which stopped the kids from taking off again…

On leaving school in 1925, Hergé began working for Catholic newspaper Le XXe Siècle, falling under the influence of its Svengali-like editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. Remi produced his first strip series The Adventures of Totor for Boy Scouts of Belgium monthly magazine the following year, and by 1928 was in charge of producing the paper’s children’s weekly supplement Le Petit Vingtiéme.

He was unhappily illustrating L’Extraordinaire Aventure de Flup, Nénesse, Poussette et Cochonnet (The Extraordinary Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonette) – written by the staff sports reporter – when Abbot Wallez beseeched him to create a new adventure serial. Perhaps a young reporter who would travel the world, doing good whilst displaying solid Catholic values and virtues?

Having recently discovered the word balloon in imported newspaper strips, Remi decided to incorporate that innovation into his own work. He designed a strip both modern and action-packed – and heavily anti-communist. From January 10th 1929, weekly episodes of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared in Le Petit Vingtiéme, running until May 8th 1930. Around this time he also developed weekly 2-page gag strips starring two working-class rascals on the streets of Brussels. They played pranks, got into good-natured trouble and even ventured into the heady realms of slapstick and surrealism: the sort of antics any reader of Dennis the Menace (ours, not the Americans’) would find fascinatingly familiar.

Officially the strip launched on January 23rd, but it only featured one half of the duo and was not truly complete until the partnership was formed with the introduction of Flupke three weeks later. Thus it’s joyeux anniversaire today lads, or Gelukkige verjaardag if you’re feeling a little Flemish…

Originally a black-&-white fixture in Le Petit Vingtiéme, the lads larked about for more than a decade until the war and mounting pressures of producing Tintin meant Hergé had to let them go. They were only rediscovered in 1985, when their collected adventures ran to a dozen best-selling albums – so there’s still plenty left out there to be translated into English…

Fasten Your Seat Belts contains a sublimely riotous celebration of childish high spirits, beginning with hosepipe pranks in ‘The Big Clean’, before a rare good deed leads to strife with ‘A Poor Defenceless Woman’ and a day ‘At the Seaside’ results in another round of fisticuffs. After that, their archfoe the policeman succumbs to the irresistible temptations of a handy catapult in ‘Everyone Gets a Turn’…

Quick – the tall one in the beret – learns to his cost ‘How Music Calms the Nerves’ and discovers the drawback of ‘Pacifism’, whilst portly Flupke tries tennis and finds himself far from ‘Unbeatable’…

‘Advertising’ proves to be a dangerous game and an annoying insect meets its end in ‘Instructions for Use’, whilst ‘Quick the Clock Repairer’ fall far short of his billing, and ‘Football’ becomes just another reason for friends to fall out. Although unwelcome ‘At the Car Showroom’, some Eskimos (you’re going to have to suspend some modern sensitivities every now and again, remember) seem happy to share in ‘A Weird Story’ whist Hergé himself turns up in ‘A Serious Turn of Events’, even as the kids are disastrously ‘At Odds’ over a funny smell in their proximity. Soon after, ‘Quick the Music Lover’ deftly deals with an annoying neighbour, Flupke goes Christmas skiing in ‘That’s How It Is’ and another good turn goes bad in ‘All Innocence’, before a sibling spat is sorted through ‘Children’s Rights’ before Quick cocks up cuisine despite possessing ‘The Recipe’…

A handy ‘Yo-yo’ causes traffic chaos and a milk run goes spectacularly awry in a buttery ‘Metamorphosis’ prior to this breezy blast from the past concluding with a cleverly appealing ‘Tale Without a Tail’.

Regrettably hard to find now (and long past time for a digital edition if not paper reissue), this book and the simple, perfect gags it contains show another side to the supreme artistry of Hergé – and no connoisseur of comics can consider life complete without a well-thumbed copy of their own…

Exactly the same holds true for sequel volume Quick & Flupke: Under Full Sail. Once upon a time in Belgium and many other places, the escapades of two mischievous scallywags rivalled the irresistibly indomitable adventurer Tintin in popularity. It wasn’t that big a deal for Hergé and his publishers as Quick & Flupke was being produced by a studio team in concurrently with the dashing boy reporter. The gag strip became a test lab for humorous graphic elements, so much a part of the future world classic that the little terrors often cameoed in the major magazine vehicle…

Running from January 10th 1929 to May 8th 1930, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared in weekly instalments in Le Petit Vingtiéme, generating a huge spike in sales. Editor Wallez allowed Hergé to hire Eugène Van Nyverseel and Paul “Jam” Jamin as art assistants and naturally wanted to see a return in terms of more product. According to Remi’s later recollections  he returned from a brief, well-earned vacation to find his staff had played an office prank by announcing that he was about to launch a second weekly strip…

Briefly flummoxed, Remi rapidly concocted a strip starring a little rascal over the next few days, based largely on his own childhood and French film Les Deux Gosses (The Two Kids). The impertinent pair (or at least one of them) premiered in the January 23rd 1930 issue of Le Petit Vingtiéme. The feature became Quick & Flupke three weeks later when a pint-sized partner in peril appeared, initially answering to “Suske” before evolving into Flupke (which is Flemish for “little Phillip”)…

Unleashed weekly in 2-page monochrome exploits, two working class Brussels louts played pranks, made mischief and ventured into heady realms of slapstick and surrealism in yarns any reader of Bart Simpson would find fascinatingly familiar. Readers everywhere loved them and the strip became immensely successful, but Hergé paid it little heed, frequently only beginning each week’s episode a day or even hours before press time. The fare was rapid-fire, pun-packed, stand-alone and often fourth-wall breaking which – as eny fule kno – never gets old.

Despite being increasingly sidelined after Hergé devised The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko for Cœurs-Vaillants at the end of 1935 – so Happy 90th to them, too! – our likely lads larked about for ten years, increasingly becoming an artefact of the assistants (and latterly artist Johan de Moor) until the global war and the pressure of producing Tintin meant they had to go.

Unimpeachable urchins Quick & Flupke were rediscovered in 1985, and – after a brief TV incarnation – returned to print where their remastered, collected escapades ran to12 full-colour albums in Europe and India until 1991. As English translations, we only ever saw a couple of volumes like this oversized (221 x 295 mm) hardcover compendium: delighting us with nearly two dozen sparkling romps for laughter-starved lovers of classic comics comedy.

Hopefully, now we’ve got a burgeoning digital reading base, they will all be available for folk too lazy to learn French (or Dutch or German or…) as digital editions. These lost classics are long-overdue for rediscovery and are perfect light reading for kids of all ages.
© Hergé – Exclusivity Editions Casterman 1986, 1991. All Rights Reserved. English translation © 2009 Egmont UK Limited. All rights reserved.