Category: European Classics

By Griffo & Marcus (Deligne)
ISBN: 2-87135-023-X

Here’s another oddity from the experimental 1980s when a number of European publishing houses had a concerted go at cracking the highly resistant US comicbook market. The Bob Wilson in question is not the revered Arsenal and England goalkeeper, nor the character in the Fatal Fury videogame, but rather a two-fisted adventurer and Soldier of Fortune.

The series debuted in 1982, in Le Journal Illustré le Plus Grand du Monde as ‘L’Ordre du Dragon Noir’, written by Marcus (nom de plume for Danny de Laet) and drawn by the esteemed Werner “Griffo” Goelen, whose works include ‘Modeste et Pompon’, ‘S.O.S. Bonheur’, ‘Munro’ and, with Jean Dufaux, ‘Béatifica Blues’, ‘Samba Bugatti’ and ‘Giacomo C’ as well as many others, all of which really should be available in a language I’m actually conversant with or fluent in.

Bob Wilson is a period thriller, and this volume, set during the days of Prohibition, follows him and his pal Dashiel Hammett as they battle the Chinatown Tongs to thwart the plans of the insidious oriental mastermind Black Dragon, before the hero sets out to track the villain all the way back to his lair in war-torn, civil-war China.

Wilson sports a grand line of brothers-in-arms as his protracted war takes him across the globe alongside such historical figures as Aristotle Onassis, John Flanders (one of many pen-names for Belgian writer Jean Ray) and Chiang Kai-shek, as well as the odd fictional character such as Buddy Longway (a popular continental Western hero).

It’s an infectious blend of all-action, gritty adult pulp-fiction, highly cinematic, fabulously exotic and very, very stylish in the manner those darned Europeans have made all their own, and I would dearly love to see the publishers give it another go in these days of global, not national, market-places…
© 1885 Editions Michel Deligne S.A. and Griffo & Marcus. All Rights Reserved.

By Hubert & Kerascoet, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)
ISBN:  978-1-56163-544-3

This slim tone contains a superb period murder mystery from creators probably best known in the English speaking world for working on Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim’s Dungeon series of fantasy books. Here fin de siècle Paris is being plagued by its very own Jack the Ripper – a knife wielding maniac dubbed “the Butcher of the Dances” because he picks his victims from the lower class girls who frequent suburban Tea-dances where young people gather.

Blanche is a maid in a fine house; pious, repressed and solitary, but her sister Agatha, also a maid in service in the same residence is fun-loving and vivacious. Together they share the attic room at the top of the house. When Blanche sees “the Butcher” at his bloody work through a crack in the wall, he also sees her. A few nights later she to finds Agatha dead, as if by her own hand, but Blanche knows what must really have happened…

Anxious to avoid scandal the mistress of the house dismisses her. Forced to fend for herself on the inhospitable streets, by a combination of detective enquiry and sheer luck Blanche finds a lead to the killer and secures a position in The Pompadour, one of the most exclusive brothels in the city. Catering to the rich and powerful elite, here she will find the Butcher and exact her revenge…

Originally published in France as La Vierge du Bordel and Du Sang sur le Mains this witty, knowing and hugely engaging adult murder-mystery cleverly reveals its layered secrets as our heroine finds a way to turn her virginal state and overwhelming frustration to her advantage amidst the decadent rich and sexually bored of Paris. She maintains her virtue against all odds, discovers the other side to a world she previously despised and valiantly achieves her goal even though it threatens to topple two empires…

Feeling much like an adult version of Frances Hodgson Burnett‘s 1905 novel A Little Princess, this is a saucy confection from writer/colorist Hubert and delightfully realized with great panache by Kerascoet which will delight a wide variety of grown-up readers.
© 2007 Dargaud by Kerascoet & Hubert. All Rights Reserved. Translation © 2007 NBM

By Jean-Michel Charlier & Francis Bergése (Amusement International Limited)
No ISBN

In advance of the imminent release of a fully translated series from Cinebooks I’m highlighting this brave oddity from the late 1980s; one of many attempts to bring the fabulous wealth and variety of European comics to the infamously resistant New World.

The strip was actually created by Georges Troisfontaines and drawn by drawn by Victor Hubinon (who worked on it until his death in 1978) before being handed to Jean-Michel Charlier, then working as a junior artist. Troisfontaines was director of the Belgian publisher World Press Agency. Charlier’s fascination with human-scale drama and rugged realism had been seen in such strips as L’Agonie du Bismark (‘The Agony of the Bismark’), a “true-war” tale published in Spirou in 1946.

As well as going on together to create Tarawa Atoll Sanglant (‘Tarawa, Bloody Atoll’ 1948-1949), Charlier devised such landmark features as ‘Tanguy and Laverdure’ (with Uderzo and later Jijé), ‘Barbe-Rouge’ (with Hubinon) and ‘Jacques le Gall’ (with MiTacq).

With fellow master-storytellers Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny, he formed the Édifrance Agency, which promoted and specialised in communication arts and comics strips. Charlier and Goscinny were edited Pistolin magazine (1955 to 1958) and created Pilote magazine in 1959.

His greatest triumph is the iconic Western series Blueberry (created in 1963 with Jean Giraud/Moebius). Four years before his death in 1989 Charlier expanded the feature by developing with artist Colin Wilson ‘La Jeunesse de Blueberry’ which explored the boyhood of Europe’s most memorable cowboy. He wrote Buck Danny until his death whereupon his artistic collaborator Francis Bergése (who had replaced Hubinon in 1978) took sole charge of the adventures of the American Air Ace.

Buck Danny premiered in the legendary magazine Spirou in January 1947 and continues to this day. The strip describes the improbably long and historically pivotal career of the eponymous US Navy pilot and his two comrades Sonny Tuckson and Jerry Tumbler. It is one of the world’s last aviation strips and a series which has always closely wedded itself to current affairs such as The Korean War, Bosnia and even Afghanistan.

Operation ‘Apocalypse’ (the first of two parts – although I’m unsure if the second was ever published in English) is a fast-paced yarn of terrorism and intrigue with a fiendish plan initiated to use hijacked atom bombs and a flight of stolen Grumman F-14 Tomcats to destroy Western Civilisation. Like all the Danny tales it is awesomely authentic: a breezy and compelling action thriller and although this particular edition suffers from a rushed and ill-favoured translation and poor hand lettering the vivacity and power of the artwork is quite stunning.

Hopefully the new edition from Cinebooks will correct all these minor glitches, bur since Operation ‘Apocalypse’ is the 40^th of the 51 albums published to date it may be awhile before we see it in restored glory even if the company starts from the present and works its way back to WWII…
© 1988 Novedi, Brussels. All Rights Reserved.

By Marti Riera (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 0-87416-042-1

Dick Tracy is one of the most well-known strips in the world and his contributions to the art form are many and indisputable. They occurred over many decades and the medium of graphic narrative grew up with it. Imagine the effect instant exposure – almost over exposure – to such an uncompromising, bombastic, iconic property on the artists of a nation where free-expression and creative autonomy was suppressed for generations.

That’s what happened when the death of General Franco (who held Spain in a fascistic time-warp from his victory in October 1936 until his death in November 1975) instantly opened-up and liberalized all aspects of Spanish life. As Art Spiegelman says in his introduction ‘decades of political and social repression gave way to a glorious eruption of creativity that allowed a full-fledged counterculture to come to life at just about the same time that America’s “Love Generation” gave way to what Tom Wolfe labeled the “Me Generation.”’

How odd yet fitting then that an American symbol of “the Establishment” so enchanted and captivated the young cartoonist Marti Riera that he assimilated every line and nuance to create this dark and angry homage concerning the tribulations of a seedy, desperate taxi-driver trapped in a vanished past and prey to a world at once free and dangerous, ungoverned and chaotic.

Driving the seedy part of town our hero picks up a high-rolling gambler who’s just won big, but his night goes horribly wrong when a knife-wielding thief hijacks the cab and robs his passenger. Luckily the Cabbie can handle himself and he quickly, brutally subdues the thug.

He’s a decent, hard-working man who lives with his ailing mother, humouring her talk of a mysterious inheritance, and allowing her to keep the embalmed cadaver of his father in the spare bedroom, but he’s tragically unaware that his citizen’s arrest will have terrible repercussions for them both.

When the son of the thief he captured is released from prison he immediately begins a grim campaign of retribution against the Cabbie that creates a maelstrom of tragedy, degradation and despair.

This is a harsh and uncompromising tale of escalating crime and uncaring punishments: bleakly cynical and populated with a cast of battered, desolate characters of increasingly degenerate desperation. Even the monsters are victims. But for all that the Cabbie is an incredibly compelling drama with strong allegorical overtones and brutally mesmerizing visuals. Any adult follower of the art form should be conversant with this superb work and hopefully a complete translated edition will emerge one day…
© 1987 Marti Riera. Introduction © 1987 Art Spiegleman. English language edition © 1987 Catalan Communications. All Rights Reserved.