Category: European Classics

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Gomer Goof volume 12: Twenty-One Goof Salute!


By Franquin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-161-3 (PB Album/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times and some used for dramatic and comedic effect.

Born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3rd 1924, André Franquin began his astounding career in the golden age of European cartooning. In 1946, as assistant to Joseph “Jijé” Gillain on top strip Spirou, he inherited sole control of the keynote feature, going on to create countless unforgettable characters like Fantasio and The Marsupilami. Over two decades Franquin made the strip purely his, expanding its scope and horizons, as co-stars Spirou & Fantasio – with hairy Greek Chorus Spip the squirrel – became globetrotting troubleshooters visiting exotic places, exposing crimes, exploring the incredible and clashing with bizarre, eccentric arch-enemies. Throughout all that, Fantasio remained a full-fledged – albeit entirely fictional – reporter for Le Journal de Spirou, popping back to base between assignments. Regrettably, ensconced there like a splinter under a fingernail was an arrogant, accident-prone office junior tasked with minor jobs and general dogs-bodying. He was Gaston Lagaffe; Franquin’s other immortal – or peut-être unkillable? – conception…

There’s a hoary tradition of comics personalising fictitiously back-office creatives and the arcane processes they indulge in, whether it’s Marvel’s Bullpen or DC Thomson’s lugubrious Editor and underlings at The Beano and Dandy; it’s a truly international practise. Somehow though, after debuting in LJdS #985 (February 28th 1957), the affable dimwit grew – like one of his own monstrous DIY projects – beyond control. Whether guesting in Spirou’s romps or his own strips/faux reports on the editorial pages Lagaffe became one of the most popular and ubiquitous components of the comic he was supposed to paste up.

In initial cameos or occasional asides on text pages, the well-meaning foul-up and ostensible studio gofer Gaston lurked and lounged amidst a crowd of diligent toilers until the workshy slacker employed as a general assistant at LJdS’s head office became a solid immovable fixture. Ultimately the scruffy bit-player inevitably stumbled into his own star feature…

In terms of schtick and delivery, older readers will recognise favourite beats and elements of well-intentioned helpfulness wedded to irrepressible self-delusion as seen in Benny Hill or Jacques Tati vehicles and recognise recurring riffs from Only Fools and Horses and Mr Bean. It’s blunt-force slapstick, using paralysing puns, fantastic ingenuity and inspired invention to mug smugness, puncture pomposity, lampoon the status quoi? (and that’s British punning, see?) and ensure no good deed goes noticed, rewarded or unpunished…

As previously stated, Gaston/Gomer can be seen (if you’re very quick or extremely patient) toiling at Le Journal de Spirou’s editorial offices. At first he reported to Fantasio, but as pressure of work took the hero away, the Goof instead complicated the lives of office manager Léon Prunelle and other harassed and bewildered staffers, all whilst effectively ignoring any tasks he’s paid to actually handle. These notionally include page paste-up, posting packages, filing, clean-up, collecting stuff inbound from off-site and editing readers’ letters – the reason why fans’ requests and suggestions are never acknowledged or answered…

Gomer is lazy, hyperkinetic, opinionated, ever-ravenous, impetuous, underfed, forgetful and eternally hungry: a passionate sports fan, self-proclaimed musician maestro and animal lover whose most manic moments all stem from cutting work corners, stashing or consuming contraband nosh in the office or inventing the Next Big Thing. This situation leads to constant clashes with colleagues and draws in notionally unaffiliated bystanders like increasingly manic traffic cop Longsnoot and fireman Captain Morwater, plus ordinary passers-by who should know by now to keep away from this street.

Through it all, the obtuse office oaf remains affable, easy-going and incorrigible. Only three questions matter: why everyone keeps giving him one last chance, what does gentle, lovelorn Miss Jeanne see in the self-opinionated idiot, and will perpetually-outraged and accidentally abused capitalist financier De Mesmaeker ever get his perennial, pestiferous contracts signed?

Gathering material created between 1980-1982, Gaston – La saga des gaffe became the 14th European album, and the last to use originated material solely by the increasingly troubled genius. Released in translation, it’s Cinebook 12th compilation, offering non-stop, all-Franquin gags and wry observations in formats ranging from single tier and half pagers to extended multi-page yarns.

There’s a preponderance of bitter and bizarre clashes with hard-pressed, long suffering traffic cop Longsnoot (AKA Joseph Longtarin in European editions) that has become known as the “Parking Meter War”, as their protracted clash of ideologies and nerves seemingly reflected Franquin’s mounting ecological concerns and increasingly fraught emotional state and declining mental health.

Here, many strips indulge that struggle via clashes with forces of authority, revealed via encounters with polluters, open support of Greenpeace, advocacy of urban “greening” projects and even anti-military, pro “Save the Whales” episodes, which never forget to be funny as well as trenchant.

The simmering duel with the rulers of the road peaks over many car-based clashes as a cold war involving the million-&-one things that can be done with (and to) parking meters goes into overdrive. This all culminates in the Goof’s invention of mobile dummy replicas of the despised coin collecting taxation-tools, programable roving units and prophetically realistic wandering self-driving robots like those terrorising us all right now…

Other riffs revisited include rare moments of paradise with inexplicably besotted paramour Miss Jeanne, more nigh-deadly diversions with his menagerie (Cheese the mouse, goldfish Bubelle, an adopted feral cat and a black-headed gull) and Gomer’s growing tendency to insomnia or nightmares with real world consequences…

As ever, the forward-looking Goof is blind to the problems his antiquated automobile causes, despite numerous attempts to soup up, cleanse, modify and mollify the motorised atrocity he calls his. The decrepit, dilapidated Fiat 509 is only fit for assisted dying, and here the ultimate improvements are beta-tested, as the boy genius trials super-elastic seat belts and his electric, (barely) roadworthy mobile bedstead – to the shock, awe and horror of all that see it…

Naturally, many moments of chaos still occur at work (if and when he gets there): incidents involving “improved” fire suppression systems, coatracks, photocopiers, recycling schemes and especially the untapped potential of the studio’s new computers…

Our well-meaning, overconfident, overly-helpful know-it-all hindrance invents more stuff making office life unnecessarily dangerous, and continues his pioneering and perilous attempts to befriend and boost fauna and flora alike and improve the modern mechanised world, but this doesn’t leave much time for recreation. Still, there’s time to “master” kitchen bicycle trials and haul out the truly terrifying old Brontosaurophone/Goofophone, and Gomer does make a new enemy after a protracted dispute with the office plumber – an old lag who knows a blowhard meddler when he sees one…

At least lovely Miss Jeanne and forever faithful pal/accomplice Jules-from-Smith’s-across-the-street are still keenly appreciative of his efforts to improve the world, even if it seems at the cost of a few paltry lives, much municipal and private property, the wellbeing of long-suffering Prunelle and eternally frustrated De Mesmaeker …

Dipped in dark mordant wit, but still the funniest French comic ever, isn’t it time you quit being so serious and started Goofing around?
© Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 2009 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2025 Cinebook Ltd.

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Spirou in Berlin


By Flix, coloured by Marvin Clifford with Ralf Marczinczik, & translated by Michael Waaler (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital only

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic and humorous effect.

Although I’ve never for a moment considered history dry or dull, I can readily appreciate the constant urge to personalise characters or humanise events and movements, especially when that job is undertaken with care, respect, diligence and a healthy amount of bravado. An excellent case in point is this superb, digital-only (still!) romp from 2018, compellingly riffing on major geopolitical events that still feel relevant right now, through the somewhat suborned antics of two of Europe’s – if not the world’s – biggest comics stars.

In case you were one of those who were asleep, surreptitiously ogling a classmate who wouldn’t even acknowledge your existence, or just carving your name into a desk or body part: on November 9th 1989, a very physical symbol of ideological separation and political gamesmanship was torn down by the “inconsequential” prisoners stuck on either side of it. Now you can be told just how that might have happened, all comfortingly translated into a compelling, lively and lovely digital edition thanks to the benevolence of collective imprint Europe Comics…

For most English-speaking comic fans and collectors, Spirou is probably Europe’s biggest secret. The character is a rough contemporary of – and crassly calculated commercial response to – Hergé’s iconic Tintin, whilst the comic he has headlined for decades is only beaten in sheer longevity and manic creativity by our own Beano and the USA’s Detective Comics.

Conceived at Belgian Printing House by Jean Dupuis in 1936, an anthological magazine targeting a juvenile audience debuted on April 21st 1938; neatly bracketed by DC Thomson’s The Dandy which launched on 4th December 1937 and The Beano on July 30th 1938. Edited by Charles Dupuis (a mere tadpole, only 19 years old, himself) it took its name from the lead feature, recounting improbable adventures of the plucky Bellboy/lift operator employed by the Moustique Hotel – a sly reference to the publisher’s premier periodical Le Moustique.

Joined from June 8th 1939 by pet squirrel, Spip (the longest running character in the strip after Spirou himself), the series was realised by French artist Robert Velter (who signed himself Rob-Vel). Dutch language edition Robbedoes debuted some weeks later, running more-or-less in tandem with the French parent comic until its cancellation in 2005.

The bulk of the periodical was taken up with cheap US imports (but no tariffs!) like Fred Harman’s Red Ryder, William Ritt & Clarence Gray’s Brick Bradford and Siegel & Shuster’s landmark Superman – although home-grown product crept in too. Most prominent were Tif et Tondu by Fernand Dineur (which ran under assorted creators until the1990s) and L’Epervier Blue by Sirius (Max Mayeu), latterly accompanied by work from comic strip wunderkind Joseph Gillain – AKA Jijé. Legendarily, during World War II Jijé singlehandedly drew the entire comic, including home grown versions of banned US imports, simultaneously assuming production of the Spirou strip and creating current co-star and partner Fantasio.

Except for a brief period when the Nazis closed the comic down (September 1943 – October 1944) Le Journal de Spirou and its boyish star – now a globe-trotting journalist – have continued their exploits in unbroken four-colour glory. Among other major features that began within those hallowed pages are Jean Valhardi (by Jean Doisy & Jije), Blondin et Cirage (Victor Hubinon), Buck Danny, Jerry Spring, Les Schtroumpfs (The Smurfs to you and me), Gaston Lagaffe/Gomer Goof and Lucky Luke.

Spirou the character (whose name translates as both “squirrel” and “mischievous”) has helmed the magazine in perpetuity, evolving under numerous creators into an urbane yet raucous fantasy/adventure hero heavily wedded to light humour. With comrade/rival Fantasio and crackpot inventor the Count of Champignac (created by Andre Franquin) Spirou voyages to exotic locales, foiling crimes, revealing the fantastic and garnering a coterie of exotic arch-enemies.

When Velter went off to fight in WWII, his wife Blanche Dumoulin took over the strip. As “Davine” and assisted by Luc Lafnet she handled everything until publisher Dupuis assumed control of and all rights to the strip in 1943, assigning it to Jijé who handed it to his assistant Franquin in 1946. It was the start of a golden age. Among Franquin’s innovations were archvillains Zorglub and Zantafio, the aforementioned Champignac and one of the first strong female characters in European comics, rival journalist Seccotine (renamed Cellophine for Cinebook’s English translations. However, his greatest creation – and one he retained on his final departure in 1969 – was incredible magic animal Marsupilami. The miracle beast had debuted in Spirou et les héritiers (1952), and is now a star of screen, plush toy store, console and albums.

From 1959, writer Greg and background artist Jidéhem assisted Franquin, but by 1969 the artist had reached his Spirou limit and resigned, taking his mystic yellow monkey with him. He was succeeded by Jean-Claude Fournier, who updated the feature over the course of 9 rousing yarns tapping into the rebellious, relevant zeitgeist of the times, telling tales of environmental concern, nuclear energy, drug cartels and repressive regimes. By the 1980s, the series seemed stalled: three different creative teams alternated on the serial: Raoul Cauvin & Nic Broca, Yves Chaland and Philippe Vandevelde (writing as Tome) and illustrator Jean-Richard Geurts AKA Janry. These last adapted and referenced the still-beloved Franquin era and revived the feature’s fortunes, producing 14 wonderful albums between 1984-1998. Since their departure, Lewis Trondheim and the teams of Jean-Davide Morvan & Jose-Luis Munuera and Fabien Vehlmann & Yoann brought the official album count to 55. In 2022, scripters Sophie Guerrive & Benjamin Abitan united with artist and Olivier Schwartz on La Mort de Spirou). There have also been dozens of specials, spin-offs series and one-shots, official and otherwise. This review concerns one of those…

As heroic Everymen, Spirou & Fantasio inhabit a broad swathe of recent history in tales ranging from wild comedic fantasy to edgy, trenchant satires. In 2018, German publisher Carlsen Verlag sought to celebrate 80 years of Spirou in a new tale by a German creator: one that would be inaugurally released in German before Dupuis published French and Dutch editions. Their choice was beloved and much-admired comics creator/children’s book author Flix (Faust, Don Quijote, Münchhausen – Die Wahrheit übers Lügen, held, Schöne Töchter, Glückskind, Der Swimmingpool des kleinen Mannes, Verflixt!).

As Felix Görmann, he was born in Münster – about 45 miles from the German-Dutch border – on 16th October 1976. He grew up with the Berlin Wall very much a part of life and reading loads of comics, particularly Franquin, Peyo, Morris and the best of Le Journal de Spirou. Drawn to humour by inclination, he experienced a major system reset at age 16 after seeing Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

Görmann resolved to be a comics creator and to that end studied Communication Design at Saarbrücken’s Saar College of Fine Arts before attending the Escola Massana in Barcelona. His rise was meteoric and his output prolific. Citing influences as diverse as Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes), Will Eisner (The Spirit, A Contract With God) and Craig Thompson (Blankets, Ginseng Roots) as well as Euro-stars from Christophe Blain (Socrate le Demi-Chien, Isaac Le Pirate) and Guy Delisle (Inspecteur Moroni, Shenzen, Pyongyang – A journey in North Korea) to countrymen Ralf König (Bullenklöten, The Killer Condom, Down to the Bone) and “Mawil”/Markus Witzel (Teufel & Pistolen, Hitman, Supa-Hasi, Lucky Luke), Flix was ultimately the first German to create new adventures for Spirou & Fantasio. It was such a well-received affair that in 2019 Spirou in Berlin won the Peng! Münchner Comicpreis. In 2022, Flix created a similarly Spirou-inspired notional follow-up. Set in 1930s Berlin, the Das Humboldt-tier sees a little girl befriend a Marsupilami kept at the Museum of Natural History. Hopefully we’ll see that someday soon…

Here however, is a glorious edgy, gleefully barbed take on past events as, at the most precarious and tumultuous moment of the 44-years-long Cold War, East German apparatchiks and master manipulators starved of all resources but putting on a deceptive public show of affluence, activate a desperate last-ditch plan. They have a bizarre scheme to shatter the global economy and gain economic dominance, and one of the West’s craziest villains to build the kit necessary to expedite it, but still need the unique expertise of the Count de Champignac to make it work.

Sadly, their supposedly seamless abduction of the mushroom mage is rumbled by regular house guests Spirou, Fantasio and Spip, who go after their friend and break/sneak/are allowed to enter into the German Democratic Republic (GDR), utterly unaware that their interference is not only anticipated but actively required…

Of course, the machinations of the Stasi – officially the Ministry for State Security (MfS) – are constantly but quietly scotched by decent East Germans like Paul & Paula, Rainier and Momo (and her army of liberated zoo animals), all working to be free from fear, liberated from lies and out from beneath crushingly brutal oppression. The ordinary East Berliners have a crucial need for their truth to be published on the other side of the Wall, but Spirou refuses to go anywhere until Fantasio and the Count are safe (PDQ)…

Wry, thrilling and sublimely whacky, this cartoon romp is a perfect, canny codicil to the comic canon, embracing the best of all Spirou sagas by wrapping the timeless tale up in a fast-paced, rollercoaster ride of subversive messaging. Total fun with verities that have never been more worth reviewing, Spirou in Berlin is a book all grown up kids need to see.
© 2018, 2019 – CARLSSEN/DUPUIS – Flix. All rights reserved.

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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.