Category: European Classics

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Yoko Tsuno volume 17: The Exiles of Kifa


By Roger Leloup, coloured by Studio Leonardo & translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-065-4 (Album PB)

In 1970, indomitable intellectual adventurer and “electronics engineer” Yoko Tsuno began her career in Le Journal de Spirou. She is still delighting readers and making new fans to this day in astonishing, action-packed, astoundingly accessible adventures which are amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created. The globe-girdling mysteries and space-&-time-spanning epics were devised by multitalented Belgian maestro Roger Leloup who – from 1953 – truly started his own solo career after working as a studio assistant and technical artist on Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin.

Compellingly told, superbly imaginative and – no matter how implausible the premise of any individual yarn may seem – always firmly grounded in hyper-realistic settings underpinned by authentic, unshakably believable technology and scientific principles, Leloup’s illustrated escapades were at the vanguard of a wave of strips revolutionising European comics.

That long-overdue sea-change heralded the rise of competent, clever, brave and formidably capable female protagonists taking their rightful places as heroic ideals and not romantic lures; elevating Continental comics in the process. Such endeavours are as engaging and empowering now as they ever were, none more so than the exploits of Miss Tsuno.

Her first outings (the STILL unavailable Hold-up en hi-fi, La belle et la bête and Cap 351) were mere introductory vignettes in a more cartoonish style before authenticism took hold in 1971 and the unflappable troubleshooter met valiant but lesser male comrades Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen and properly hit her stride in premier full-length saga Le trio de l’étrange (beginning in Le Journal de Spirou’s May 13th edition). From that point Yoko’s cases would include explosive exploits in exotic corners of our world, sinister deep-space sagas and even time-travelling jaunts. There are 30 European albums to date but only 19 translated into English thus far (ironically, none of them digitally).

First serialised in LJdS #2736-2760, Les Exilés de Kifa was crafted in 1990: a tense race against time and hidden agendas far across the universe where our terrestrial trouble-shooters toil beside the disaster-prone lethally pragmatic alien colonists of planet Vinea. Their most trusted ally is Khany: a competent, commanding single mother combing parenting her toddler Poky with saving worlds, leading her people, averting continual cosmic catastrophe and – with Yoko – trying to restore some kind of moral compass to those ancient survivors ruthlessly rebuilding their fallen civilisation and permanently undermining and gaslighting the upstarts who slept out the apocalypse on another planet…

In their initial adventure together, Yoko, Vic and Pol had discovered an enclave of dormant aliens hibernating for eons in the depths of the Earth. After saving the sleepers from robotic/AI subjugation, the humans occasionally helped the refugees (who had fled their planet two million years previously) to rebuild their lost sciences. Ultimately, they accompanied the Vineans when they returned to their own star system and presumed long-dead homeworld. In the years Vineans slept, their primary civilisation collapsed, and the world they have begun to reclaim is much changed, with isolated pockets of the former inhabitants evolved beyond recognition…

They are constantly hostile to their returned descendants. As the re-migrants gradually restore the decadent, much-debased civilisation and culture, the human trio become regular guests and helpers against sabotage and skulduggery…

On a previous visit (The Archangels of Vinea) Yoko had established a unique psychic link with robotic intelligence Queen Hegora: one granting her certain technophilic abilities. On this excursion, the humans – including Tsuno’s adopted daughter Morning Dew (The Dragon of Hong Kong) are exploring another region of the recovering orb: the non-rotating planet’s frozen northern hemisphere where they briefly encounter a derelict space probe before it is (mostly) destroyed under mysterious circumstances…

As Khany investigates a space laser planetary defence station, Yoko receives a vision from Hegora revealing the crashing probe carried a passenger who needs the humans’ help. Guided into high orbit and the upper limits of Khany’s spacecraft, they retrieve a sentient toy robot instants before station commander Balky blasts the probe remnants.

Khany reveals how its kind were constant companions to children until the parents abruptly deemed them too smart and dangerous, subsequently banishing them to distant asteroid Kifa. Needing to know more, Yoko returns to the subsea Archangel City over her human allies’ strident warnings, where the presumed-defunct Queen secretly repairs the adorable toy creature – “Myna” – who reveals Kifa holds many more like her, and has been diverted from its orbit to crash into Vinea. The evil mastermind behind the impending cataclysm is Gobol: the ancient genius who caused so many of primordial Vinea’s woes by granting independence and sentience to robots and computing systems…

As the conference ends, Hegora also gives Yoko her own hyper-advanced deep space ship…

As Myna begs for help, her new friends learn Kifa is Balky’s next target for obliteration and her rapid response sees humans and Vineans blast off for Kifa, with betrayal, incredible scientific secrets, terror, tragedy and malign immortal intelligence Gobol awaiting them…

Once more, however, overwhelming digital malevolence proves inadequate in the face of Yoko Tsuno’s passionate humanity, bold imagination and quick thinking, but her ultimate success comes at great cost and cannot be called a triumph…

Rocket-paced, deviously twisted and terrifying plausible, this race against time and battle with bigotry is superbly mesmerising, proving once more how smarts and combat savvy are pointless without compassion. As always, the most potent asset of these edgy outer space dramas is the astonishingly authentic settings, as ever benefitting from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail.

The Exiles of Kifa is a magnificently wide-screen thriller, tense and compelling, and surely appealing to any fan of blockbuster action fantasy or breathtaking derring-do.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1991 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2022 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Horizontal Collaboration


By Navie & Carole Maurel, translated by Margaret Morrison (Korero Press)
ISBN: 978-1-91274-001-7 (HB)

With its world-shaking reordering of society and all the consequent, still-felt repercussions World War II remains very much in people’s minds. This translated European tale is a potent counterpoint to the usual commemorative bombast, devoting much-delayed attention to the ever-dwindling last of “The Few”. Here, as well as the valiant men, we see acknowledgment of the nigh-universally disregarded contributions of women caught up in the conflict, not to mention unsung heroes of all nations who were drawn into the horror.

Horizontal Collaboration is not about heroes. It deals with people: civilians and fugitives, women and invading occupiers: the ones who are seldom celebrated but who also confronted the triumph of global darkness, all in their own small, unnoticed way…

France was taken by the Nazi war machine in 1940: occupied and partitioned on June 22nd, with the Germans holding the industrial north and central regions whilst Marshal Philippe Pétain’s puppet protectorate Régime de Vichy was allowed to govern the south and pacified colonies such as Algeria. When France was liberated in September 1944, a wave of retaliation began against those who “cooperated” with the conquerors in all ways great and small.

A sordid time of scores (real, imagined or fabricated) settled and cruel abuses arbitrarily inflicted on guilty and innocent alike plagued France for years afterwards. The most telling indignities were perpetrated upon women – wives, mothers, sisters or strangers – accused of fraternising with or giving comfort to the enemy. Such liaisons were called “Collaboration Horizontale” and even the most nebulous or unfounded accusation carried a heavy and immediate price…

Just about now, a grandmother listens to her granddaughter unload about her current amour and her mind drifts back to the war and a secret she has never shared with anyone…

In 1942, a large apartment house on Passage de la Bonne-Graine is filled with families, all dealing with the German conquerors in their own way. Despite the change in their fortunes, they have not found any way to overcome the petty grudges and ingrained social difficulties that have always kept them at odds with each other… even before war broke out.

Surly aged crone Madame Flament is rude to everyone. She spends all her time complaining or disappearing into the cellars to feed her cats. What secret is she really hiding?

Old Camille is deemed the man of the house, but he is gentle, ineffectual and blind: blithely letting life go on around him and apparently noticing nothing. His wife is the building’s concierge. Brusque matron Martine Andrae is a snooping busybody loudly championing decency and family values, but her home life is nothing to envy and her sharp tongue scores points off family, friends and foes indiscriminately. She despises the younger women and their families in the building, especially pretty Joséphine Borgeon who makes ends meet through her theatre act. Surely, everybody knows what she really does to survive?

Also viewed with suspicion is young mother Rose. Her husband Raymond has been taken away to work for the Nazis, so his friend and neighbour Leon – a gendarme – has been keeping a “friendly” eye on her, even though his own pregnant wife Judith keeps clumsily falling and hurting herself and certainly needs proper supervision…

Strangely boyish artist Simone keeps to herself as much as she can and – originally – there was also a Jewess called Sarah Ansburg and her little son. They somehow disappeared before the Germans could find them. That must be the reason Abwehr intelligence officer Mark Dinklebauer spends so much time in the building. It couldn’t possibly be that he has fallen in love with one of the occupants, or that this most forbidden of passions is dangerously, illegally reciprocated, can it?

Crafted with deft incisiveness by media writer and historian (Mademoiselle) Navie and rendered in a beguiling style (powerfully reminiscent of Will Eisner in his later years) by seasoned illustrator/author Carole Maurel (Luisa: Now & Then, Waves, L’apocalypse selon Magda), this is a meditative but uncompromising glance at ordinary lives under relentless pressure: an ensemble piece of human drama taking as its heart and centre point an unlikely flowering of true but doomed love…

Moving, beguiling and evocatively rewarding, Horizontal Collaboration is a beautiful tragedy and potent reminder that love takes no prisoners while enslaving all it touches.
© Editions Delcourt – 2017. All rights reserved.

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The Cabbie volume 1


By Marti, with an introduction by Art Spiegelman (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-4504 (HB/Fantagraphics) 978-0874160420 (Album PB Catalan Communications)

Although out of print since 1987, in 2011 Fantagraphics rescued from relative obscurity one of the darkest yet most grimly illuminating classics of European cartooning in this remastered and augmented reissue of The Cabbie: a stylish, nightmarish psycho-sexual noir thriller that has as much seedy kick now as it had when first translated by Catalan Communications…

Now as the macabre maestro has died, my conscience prompts me to pay for neglecting such wonderful comics and it’s only right we should pause to revisit his greatest achievement. Maybe some publisher will endeavour to bring some of his other dark wonders – like Doctor Vertigo, Propaganda Moderna, crime fantasy-thriller Calvario Hills, Cien dibujos por la libertad de Prensa or Terrorista – to a wider international audience.

Marti Riera Ferrer (1955 – 19th January 2024) was born in Barcelona during the heyday of fascist rule. He studied at the Massana School of Arts and Crafts where his efforts coincided with the Generalissimo’s death, and from 1975 to 1979 a liberalisation saw “Marti” creating comics for alterative magazines like Rock COMIC and Star.

From its launch in 1979 he also began contributing to apocalyptic iconoclast El Vibora: short stories and series such as Tony Nuevaola and – with Rodolfo – Lola Lista contra los Nada. These efforts brought international interest and Marti began appearing in Raw and Drawn & Quarterly. Il Taxista – The Cabbie – began in 1982 and he episodically added to the canon over succeeding years, and although semi-retired from the early Nineties he continued generating other material at his own pace for the magazine Makoki and Tobalina. These tales varied from erotic fiction to general illustrated fare.

Dick Tracy is one of the most well-known strips on Earth and the super-cop’s 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 – or overexposure – 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 had held Spain in a fascistic time-warp from his victory in April 1939 until his death in November 1975) opened up and liberalised all aspects of Spanish life. When Marti saw the strip he was changed for 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 labelled the “Me Generation.””

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

Driving around the seediest part of town our hero picks up a high-rolling gambler who’s just won big, but the driver’s 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.

Our protagonist is 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, the ingrate immediately begins a grim campaign of retribution against the Cabbie that creates a maelstrom of tragedy, degradation and despair.

This is a harsh, uncompromising tale of escalating crime and uncaring punishments: blackly cynical, existentially scary 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 mature devotee of comics should be conversant with Marti’s superb work, and with a second volume out there and the hope of digital editions (One bloody Day!), hopefully we soon all will be…
The Cabbie (Taxista) © 2011 Marti. Introduction © 2011 Art Spiegelman. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books.

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Tamba, Child Soldier


By Marion Achard & Yann Dégruel & various; translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-236-6 (album HB/Digital edition)

It may be a wonderful world but modern Earth is far too often a terrible place, especially if you’re weak and powerless. The global scandal and shame of children forcibly co-opted into paramilitary and terrorist groups is not a new phenomenon. Throughout our history boys and girls have fought in adult wars. Comic books are full of them, but there’s two big differences: they all “volunteer” without being groomed by cruel, power-obsessed scum and THEY’RE NOT REAL.

So prevalent and pernicious was the practise of African and Asian militias, religious groups and other factions (even governments), that in 2000 the civilised world agreed to an Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in Armed Conflict. The OPAC accord restricts armed forces recruitment to adults of 18 years or over and has become known as the Straight 18 standard. It was a good start but hasn’t stopped ambitious war-criminals and monsters raiding villages for kids, who they drug, beat, starve and program; enslaving and constantly brutalising them to use as cannon fodder and shock troops in hope of securing their own evil ends.

Rather than concentrate on any specific case or example (there are so damned many) this stunning oversized full-colour hardback (216 x 279mm and also in digital format) synthesises many verified incidents into the dramatised testimony of Tamba Cisso: taken aged eight from his African village along with all of his young friends – and forced into a scavenging band of killers.

The specifics of the tragically documented events he participated in – and the unhappier fates of his fellow abductees – are revealed through his later testimony to an initially hostile crowd at a Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. Tamba’s account of everyday life as an indentured warrior for a jumped-up rebel warlord is no less harrowing for being one step removed from our own world’s actual atrocities…

Astutely examining the overall effect of mass kidnappings on generations of citizens, Young Adults author Marion Achard (Je veux un chat et des parents normaux, Pourquoi je suis devenu une fille) brings bitterness, barely harnessed anger, righteous indignation and potent empathy to an appalling subject. Tamba, l’enfant soldat is her first graphic novel – rendered with vivid virtuosity and great subtlety by artist/animator Yann Dégruel (Saba, Genz Gys Khan, Sans Famille).

Augmenting their visual narrative is Achard’s text essay Child Soldiers: describing what happens to these shunned victims of violence, resharing some extremely disturbing facts and figures, all augmented by features on Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and Professor Laure Borgomano’s (Department of Defense, NATO) breakdown of the purpose and functions of The UN High Commission for Refugees: UNHCR.

Compellingly engaging and boldly, beautifully illustrated, this is a chilling, sobering yet ultimately encouraging reading experience everyone with a stake in a less toxic future must seek out and share.
© 2018 Edition Delcourt. © 2019 NBM for the English translation.

For more information on other great and challenging comics see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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Glorious Summers volume 2: The Calanque 1969


By Zidrou & Jordi Lafebre, with additional colour by Mado Peña, translated by Lara Vergnaud (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: Digital edition only

It’s close (OMG! LESS THAN A WEEK!) to the most stressful and commercialised event of the singleton calendar for unattached people who wish they weren’t, so let’s look at what all that amorous manoeuvring and romantic strategizing is supposed to lead to as perfectly depicted in a sublime and delightful family feast of “Happy Ever Afters”…

Until comparatively recently, comics in the English-speaking world mostly countenanced comedic or numerous adventure sub-genres (crime, superhero, horror, sci fi), with only a small but vital niche of “mundane world” ventures, usually depicted via graphic biographies and autobiographies like They Called Us Enemy, Breakwater, Love on the Isle of Dogs, Wage Slaves or Sour Pickles offering a different feel and flavour. Even historical sagas were treated as extraordinary moments with larger-than-life characters whenever possible.

What we have never had – and still largely don’t – is a comics equivalent to general fiction, drama and melodrama. That’s not so in Japan, South Korea or Europe, where a literal “anything goes” attitude has always accommodated and nurtured human-scaled, slice-of-life tales depicting ordinary people in as many quiet as extraordinary moments. Surely it can’t be that hard to tell engaging stories in pedestrian, recognisably ordinary settings? Medical traumas, love stories, school tales and family tragedies about common folk seem to play well on various-sized screens around the world, so why not in English language comics? The closest we seem to get are comedies like John Allison’s superb Giant Days (which I really must review soon)…

People being people is more than enough for Europeans. There apparently is an insatiable appetite for everyday events aimed at properly “mature readers”, joyfully sans vampires, aliens or men in tights. These even have sub-genres of their own. For example, there’s a wealth of superb material just about going on holiday. So, since our own Government-in-Absentia have ensured that it’s now all-but-impossible for any UK-based citizens to pop across and have une petite vacances in Europe, let’s stare & glare covetously at them having a good time. After all, over there holidays are an inalienable right, and they have some simply fabulous tales about a simple break. This one is probably amongst the best you’ll ever see…

An absolute exemplar of fantasy vacations made real, Glorious Summers: Southbound! (1973) was a nostalgia-drenched confection by Zidrou and regular collaborator Jordi Lafebre: a sublime example of idyllic group memory made into graphic sorcery in an everyday account utterly unafraid to temper humorous sweetness and light with real-world tragedy and suspense.

Perhaps some context is in order. Summer holidays – “Midi” – are a big deal in France and Belgium. The French divide into two tribes over the annual rest period, which generally lasts an entire month. Juilletistes only vacation in July, wielding dogmatic facts like rapiers to prove why it’s the only way to take a break. They are eternally opposed, heart, soul, and suntan lotion, by majority faction the Aoûtiens, who recharge their batteries in August whilst fully reciprocating the suspicion, disdain and baffled scorn of the early-leavers. Many European sociologists claim the greatest social division today is not race, religion, gender, political affiliation or whether to open boiled eggs from the top or the bottom, but when summer holidays begin and end…

Les Beaux Étés 1: Cap au Sud! was first in a string of family visits that began in 2015 courtesy of scripter Benoît “Zidrou” Drousie and Spanish illustrator Jordi Lafebre. Drousie is Belgian, Brussels-born in 1962 and was a school teacher prior to quitting marking books in 1990 to begin making them. His main successes include school dunce series L’Elève Ducobu, Petit Dagobert, Scott Zombi, La Ribambelle, Le Montreur d’histoires, the revival of Ric Hochet, African Trilogy, Léonardo, Shi and many more. His most celebrated and beloved stories are this memorable sequence and 2010’s Lydie, both illustrated by Lafebre.

That gifted, empathically sensitive illustrator and art teacher was born in Barcelona in 1979 and has created comics professionally since 2001, first for magazines like Mister K, where he limned Toni Font’s El Mundo de Judy. He found regular work at Le Journal de Spirou, creating the romance Always Never and collaborated with Zidrou on La vieille dame qui n’avait jamais joué au tennis et autres nouvelles qui font du bien, Lydie, and La Mondaine.

A combination of feel-good fable and powerful comedy drama, Glorious Summers depicts memories of an aging couple recalling their grandest family moments, beginning with a momentous vacation in 1973 where their four kids nearly lost their parents….

Here however, second volume The Calanque focuses on August 1969 as pregnant Maddie Faldérault (soon to deliver precociously hyperactive Paulette AKA Peaches) tries to amuse her three impatient kids whilst hubby Pierre frantically puts finishing touches to his latest comic strip. It’s a regular ritual before his month off, but this time less annoying as it’s also his first work as a named creator rather than an anonymous ghost artist for others. Apparently the world is finally ready for a four-armed cowboy gunfighter…

Their kids are immune to bedtimes and indulge in time-honoured holiday rituals like shouting, fighting and singing odd songs, before Pierre downs his brushes. Now the annual Faldérault escape from gloomy Brussels for a month in sun-drenched France can start.

Only… on the way they need to see his dad. Pépé Buelo moved to Brussels when General Franco took over Spain. He made a good life as bricklayer and husband, but now he’s on his own and a little lonely…

Eventually, the family set off with introspective toddler Louis reading, drawing and constantly sharing his far from limited knowledge of where babies come from, even as self-conscious oldest girl Jolly-Julie anxiously ponders life without bathrooms and in-betweener Nicole tells everyone they meet that mummy is going to be a mummy again. As they motor south in the dark – they left really, really late – they play their annual game of deciding where they’re going by solving riddles because planned destinations and pre-booked rooms are for wimps…

True free spirits, they pick up a hippie hitchhiker and scare him witless with their laid back attitudes – especially teasing Jolly-Julie’s reticence to use nature as a restroom. When he drops out they resume southern roaming and finally decide to camp in a shady wood for the night. In the morning the family Faldérault realise their error as elderly French couple Rufus and Ramona discover they have Belgians in the back garden…

After a few lovely days as guests who can’t politely escape, Pierre and Maddie learn that Rufus knows the perfect spot for travellers to enjoy their break, directing them to a hidden cove on the sea coast. It’s beautiful: an idyllic cliff-screened rustic paradise with a ramshackle fishing hut just ready to be temporarily occupied. Rufus even provides a guide in the form of his exuberant older brother – aging fisherman Marius.

What follows is timeless weeks of wonder and unforgettable explorations on endlessly sunny days, with local villagers taking the wanderers to heart and welcoming them to a taste of rustic heaven. Even the Americans landing on the moon or the Tour de France victory of Belgian Eddie Merckx can’t compare…

Ultimately the real world calls them back and the holidaymakers pack up for home. Awaiting them is bad news for Pierre, a new job for Maddie and a rainy grey hometown. One clear sign of normality resuming comes as they find a dog abandoned by the roadside, but brilliantly and boldly they turn that traumatic event into a lasting positive…

This tale is another beautifully rendered and realised basket of memories stitched seamlessly together. It’s funny, sweet and charming whilst delivering painful blows you never see coming. There aren’t any spectacular events and shocking crises and that’s the whole point…

If you’re British – and old enough – this series (six translated albums thus far, plus a French omnibus edition) will echo revered family sitcoms like Bless This House or Butterflies and generational ads starring the “Oxo Family”. (If that description doesn’t fit you, I pity your browsing history if you look up any of that…). The rest of you in need of an opening (but unfair) comparator could break out the Calvin and Hobbes collections and re-examine the bits with his embattled parents when the kid’s out of the picture…

Lyrical, laconic, engagingly demure, and debilitatingly nostalgic, this holiday romance is sheer visual perfection wrapped in sharp dialogue and a superbly anarchic sense of mischief. Vacations are built of moments and might-have-beens, packaged here in compelling clips making the mundane marvellous.
© 2018 -DARGAUD BENELUX (Dargaud-Lombard s.a.) – ZIDROU & LEFEBRE, LLC. All rights reserved.

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The Bugle Boy


By Alexandre Clérisse, translated by Edward Gauvin (Europe Comics)
No ISBN – digital only edition

The dead don’t care what we do, but how we treat and remember them defines who we are as a culture and species. Inspired by a true story, Trompe la mort was first published in 2009, offering a humorous, whimsical tone to what must have been a pretty depressing situation…

Translated by digital-only Europe Comics and apparently now only available digitally, The Bugle Boy is a story of debts paid and brothers-in-arms honoured, which begins as an ageing veteran decides to settle some long outstanding affairs…

Marcel is a surviving participant of WWII, and as a surly bugger of 85-years, is inexplicably moved by an impending notion to sort out unfinished business before he joins the rest of his generation in the boneyard.

Back in the war, he was a dashing young company bugler and is now increasingly unsettled at the events which forced him to bury his beloved instrument on a battlefield. As memories of those fraught, often humiliating days keep coming to him, the gritty old sod, with his feisty and unwillingly dutiful granddaughter Andrea, embark on an unpleasant, cross-country bus trek to the distant rural region where – in 1940 – he and his comrades fought their first and last battle…

Before being captured, the idealistic lad he was buried that war horn before it could be employed as it should, and now all he can think of is getting it back.

Sadly but typically, once all the tedious and painful travails of the journey are done, Marcel is left with a still-more difficult problem to solve. The instrument has been already found and turned by the Mayor into a tourist-trap badge of French patriotism. It’s grandly installed in the local town museum – which is now dedicated to bugles of all kinds – as the heart and soul of the town’s rebirth. With elections coming, the wily civic demagogue is planning on exploiting it and the glorious – if comfortably mis-defined – past, as the clarion symbols of his re-election campaign. He has no intention of returning it to its rightful owner.

… Not if Marcel and Andrea have anything to say about it…

Writer/artist Alexandre Clérisse was born in 1980 and began seriously making comics in 1999 through a series of experimental fanzines. In 2002, he graduated from EESI school of Visual Arts in Angoulême and began releasing such superbly readable Bande Dessinee as Jazz Club, Souvenir de l’empire de l’atome (seen in English as IDW’s Atomic Empire) and all-ages Seek-&-Find book Now Playing…

Heartwarming and irreverent, poignant and deeply funny, The Bugle Boy has all the impact and gently subversive wit of classic Dad’s Army episodes and cannot fail to hit home with any reader possessing any empathy at all or even just grandparents who remember and kids who wonder what war is really like…
© 2019 – Dargaud – Clérisse. All rights reserved.

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Lucky Luke volume 40 – Phil Wire


By Morris, translated by Erica Jeffrey (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-155-6 (Album PB/Digital edition)

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, enjoying light-hearted adventures on his petulant and rather sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. Over nine decades, his exploits have made him one of the top-ranking comic characters in the world, generating upwards of 85 individual albums and many, many spin-off series (like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan), with sales thus far totalling in excess 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…

Originally the brainchild of Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (“Morris”) and first officially seen in Le Journal de Spirou’s seasonal Annual L’Almanach Spirou 1947, Luke actually sprang to (un-titled) laconic life in mid-1946, before inevitably ambling into his first weekly adventure ‘Arizona 1880’ on December 7th 1946. Morris was one of “la Bande des quatre”– The Gang of Four – comprising Jijé, Will and Franquin: leading proponents of a fresh, loosely free-wheeling artistic style known as the “Marcinelle School”. It came to dominate Le Journal de Spirou in aesthetic contention with the “Ligne Claire” style favoured by Hergé, E.P. Jacobs and other artists in Le Journal de Tintin.

In 1948 said Gang (all but Will) visited America, meeting US creators and sightseeing. Morris stayed for six years, encountered Goscinny, scored work at newly-formed EC sensation Mad and constantly, copiously noted and sketched a swiftly vanishing Old West.

Working solo until 1955 (with early script assistance from his brother Louis De Bevere), Morris produced nine initial albums – of which today’s was #8 – of affectionate sagebrush spoofery before teaming with old pal and fellow trans-American émigré René Goscinny. With him as his regular wordsmith, Luke attained dizzying, legendary, heights starting with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie) which began serialisation on August 25th 1955. In 1967, the six-gun straight-shooter switched sides, joining Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote in La Diligence (The Stagecoach). Goscinny co-created 45 albums with Morris before his untimely death, whereupon Morris soldiered on both singly and with other collaborators. He went to the Last Roundup in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus numerous sidebar sagebrush sagas crafted with Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, all taking their own shot at the venerable vigilante.

Lucky Luke has a long history in Britain, having first pseudonymously amused and enthralled young readers during the late 1950s, syndicated to weekly anthology Film Fun. He later rode back into comics-town in 1967 for comedy paper Giggle, using nom de plume Buck Bingo. And that’s not counting the many attempts to establish him as a book star starting with Brockhampton Press in 1972 and continuing via Knight Books, Hodder Dargaud UK, Ravette Books and Glo’Worm, until Cinebook finally and thankfully found the right path in 2006.

As Lucky Luke contre Phil Defer (Lucky Luke: Phil Wire in Britain) this classic collection comprises a brace of tales taken from the company’s general entertainment periodical Le Moustique. The saga of deadly gunslinger Phil Wire -“The Spider” is visually based on the early western works of based on legendary cinematic bad man Jack Palance in a strip taken from issues #1464-1494 (14th February-12th September 1954) of the celebrated periodical.

It begins in the booze-soaked Badlands when Phil Defer – LE FAUCHEUX sells his lethal talents to sinister saloon owner O’Sullivan. He’s looking to remove a rival entrepreneur…

Fate – or perhaps the gods of comedy – instead decree that another tall guy extremely good with guns gets to Bottleneck Gulch first, where he’s naturally mistaken for the rather idiosyncratic, notoriously superstitious killer for hire. You know, the tall guy…

Lucky and Wire have already clashed once before and – despite all the hero’s efforts to deter O’Sullivan – meet once more after all “the Spider’s” schemes to remove rival barkeep O’Hara are foiled. Ultimately, as ever, it comes down to a showdown on main street with only one tall man walking away…

The album also features a second but shorter serial from Le Moustique #1508-1516 (19th December 1954 to 13th February 1955): originally entitled Lucky Luke et Pilule. As Lucky Luke and The Pill, it here details a campfire tale told by our rangy wanderer, relating how a short-sighted, diminutive hypochondriac tenderfoot with no discernible fighting ability or action acumen became a true gun-toting town-tamer…

Ideal for older kids with a bit of historical perspective and social understanding – although the action and slapstick situations are no more contentious than any Laurel and Hardy film, Chuckle Brothers skit and whatever TikTok clip the waifs of the coming generation (Gen Eric?) titter to – these early exploits are a grand old hoot in the tradition of Destry Rides Again or Support Your Local Sheriff, superbly executed by a master storyteller, and 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…
© Dupuis 1956 by Morris. © Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2013 Cinebook Ltd.

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The U-Ray (Before Blake and Mortimer vol. 1)


By Edgar P. Jacobs, coloured by Bruno Tatti, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBNs: 978-1-80044-105-7 (album PB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Once Upon A Time… 9/10

Belgian Edgard Félix Pierre Jacobs (1904-1987) is rightly considered one of the founding fathers of the European comics industry. Although his output is relatively meagre when compared to some of his contemporaries, his iconic works formed the basis and backbone of the art form across post-war Europe and far beyond. As a world rebuilt, his splendidly adroit, roguish and impeccably British adventurers Blake and Mortimer – created for the first issue of Le Journal de Tintin in 1946 – became a staple of Continental kids’ life just as Dan Dare did in Britain starting four years later.

E.P. Jacobs was born in Brussels, a precocious child who began feverishly drawing from an early age but was even more obsessed with music and the performing arts – especially opera. He attended a commercial school but – resolved never to work in an office – pursued art and drama following his graduation in 1919. A succession of odd jobs at opera-houses – scene-painting, set decoration, acting, singing as an Extra – supplemented his private performance studies. In 1929, Jacobs won a Government award for classical singing, but his dream career as an opera singer was thwarted by the Great Depression, as the art funding and performances nosedived following the stock market crash.

Picking up whatever stage work was to be had – including singing and performing – Jacobs finally switched streams to commercial illustration in 1940 and found regular employment at magazine Bravo. While illustrating short stories and novels, he famously took over the syndicated Flash Gordon strip after the occupying German authorities banned Alex Raymond’s quintessentially All-American Hero, leaving the publishers desperately seeking someone to satisfactorily complete the saga.

Jacob’s Stormer Gordon lasted less than a month before being similarly sanctioned by the Nazis, after which Jacobs created his own epic science-fantasy feature – Le Rayon U: a weekly comics milestone in both Belgian comics and science fiction adventure…

The U Ray was a huge hit in 1943 and scored big all over again a generation later when Jacobs reformatted the original and traditional “text-block & picture” material to incorporate speech balloons before re-running the entire series in Le Journal de Tintin in 1973. It was subsequently released as graphic albums beginning in 1974.

There are conflicting accounts of how Jacobs and Tintin creator Hergé formed their infamous partnership together – and why they parted ways professionally, if not socially – but as to the whys and wherefores of the split, I frankly don’t care.

What is known is this: whilst creating U Ray, one of Jacob’s other jobs was scene-painting, and during the staging of a theatrical version of Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh Hergé and Jacobs met and became friends. If the comics maestro was unaware of Jacob’s comics output before then, he was certainly made aware of it after.

Jacobs started working on Tintin, colouring the originally monochrome strips of The Shooting Star from newspaper Le Soir for a forthcoming album collection. By 1944, he was performing similar service for Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America, King Ottokar’s Sceptre and The Blue Lotus. Jacobs also contributed to the illustration on extended epic The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun. His love of opera made it into the feature as Hergé, (who loathed it) teasingly created bombastic Bianca Castafiore as a comedy foil while basing a number of bit players (such as Jacobini in The Calculus Affair) on his long-suffering assistant.

After war and liberation, publisher Raymond Leblanc convinced Hergé, Jacobs and other creatives to work for his new venture. Launching publishing house Le Lombard, Leblanc also started Le Journal de Tintin: an anthology comic edited by Hergé with editions in Belgium, France and Holland starring the intrepid boy reporter and a host of newer heroes.

Beside Hergé, Jacobs and writer Jacques van Melkebeke, the weekly comic featured Paul Cuvelier’s Corentin and Jacques Laudy’s ‘The Legend of the Four Aymon Brothers’. Laudy had been a friend of Jacobs’ since they worked together on Bravo and became a model for some of his characters.

The first instalment of epic serial Le secret de l’Espadon (which eventually ran from #1, 26th September 1946 to 8th September 1949) cemented Jacobs’ status as a star in his own right: offering a wide variety of perils and menaces in stunning action thrillers blending science fiction, detective mysteries and supernatural thrillers in the timeless, universally engaging Ligne Claire style which had done so much to make intrepid boy reporter Tintin a global sensation.

In 1950, with the first 18 pages slightly redrawn, Le secret de l’espladon V1 (The Secret of the Swordfish) became Le Lombard’s first album release, with a concluding volume published three years later. These were reprinted nine more times between 1955 and 1982, with an additional single complete deluxe edition released in 1964. The epic romp featured a distinguished duo of Scientific Adventurers: a bluff, gruff Scots/British scientist and English Military Intelligence officer (closely modelled on his comics colleague Laudy): Professor Philip Mortimer and Captain Francis Blake. They and archfoe Olrik (based on Jacobs himself) were a thematic and visual evolution of characters Jacobs created for The U Ray…

After decades of old farts like me whining, the lost gem was finally released in English translation this year – recently followed by sequel La Flèche Ardente courtesy of Jean Van Hamme, Christian Cailleaux & Etienne Shréder – and it was worth all that waiting…

In 1943 the Nazis may have banned the strikingly Aryan Flash Gordon but there was no denying the public appetite for his kind of action and so Jacobs’ next project dipped deep from that established well of romanticism and fantasy as well as borrowing heavily from US movie serial chapterplays.

In another place and time, the nations of Norlandia and Austradia are at war. The former’s chief scientist Professor Marduk has devised an ultimate weapon capable of ending the conflict but lacks the fuel source to power his mighty “U ray”. He believes the Uradium he needs can be found on the unexplored lost continent and organises an expedition to locate and secure some of the miracle ore. His prototypical party of archetypes includes his assistant Sylvia Hollis, heroic Major Walton, Lord Calder, Captain Dagon, Sergeant MacDuff and “Asiatic” manservant Adji at the head of sturdy crew, but the desperate mission to the Black Isle Archipelago is doomed from the start thanks to a spy hidden in their ranks…

After many fraught moments and sabotage attempts, the expedition finally lands in the forbidding jungles of a lost world teeming with uncanny primal beasts and savage humanoids. Soon, however, sheer misfortune, invading Austradians, deadly natural hazards and tragedy reap a heavy harvest as they trek inlands to where Marduk’s machines and charts say Uradium can be found. Thankfully, Major Walton is there to constantly counter peril of every description.

After heartbreaking effort a turning point comes when the survivors find a lost civilisation and encounter Prince Nazca and Princess Ica of the Underground City. These highly evolved beneficiaries give them the mineral they want but of course refuse to let their “guests” leave. With time running out and old and new enemies getting closer, it’s up to Walton to find a solution and escape plan…

Old world fun that cannot be denied or ignored, this album also includes tantalising teasers for the auteur’s later classics, a bibliography/publishing timeline and an informative article on Jacobs’1946 masterpiece of design The Swordfish.

Simplistic but effortlessly engaging, The U Ray is pure escapist joy to behold, and a book no serious fun-loving nostalgic can afford to miss.
Original edition © Editions Blake & Mortimer/Studio Jacobs (Dargaud-Lombard S.A.) 2023. All rights reserved. English translation © 2023 Cinebook Ltd.

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Yakari volume 21: Fury From the Skies


By Derib & Job, coloured by Dominique and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-019-4 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Another Kind of Wonderful Life… 9/10

In 1964 children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes was founded by Swiss journalist André Jobin, who then wrote for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later he hired fellow Franco-Swiss artist Claude de Ribaupierre AKA “Derib”. The illustrator had launched his own career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs): working on The Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Le Journal de Spirou. Thereafter, together they created the splendid Adventures of the Owl Pythagore before striking pure comics gold a few years later with their next collaboration.

Derib – equally au fait with enticing, comically dynamic “Marcinelle” cartoon style yarns and devastatingly compelling meta-realistic action illustrated action epics – went on to become one of the Continent’s most prolific and revered creators. It’s a crime such groundbreaking strips as Buddy Longway, Celui-qui-est-nà-deux-fois, Jo (first comic to deal with AIDS), Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne) haven’t been translated into English yet, but we still patiently wait in hope and anticipation…

Over decades, much of Derib’s stunning works have featured his beloved Western themes: magnificent geographical backdrops and epic landscapes. Yakari is considered by fans and critics to be the strip which led him to his deserved mega-stardom. Debuting in 1969, self-contained episodes trace the eventful, nomadic life of a young Oglala Lakota boy on the Great Plains, with stories set sometime after the introduction of horses (by colonising Conquistadores) but before the coming of modern Europeans.

The series – which also generated two separate animated TV series and a movie – is up to 42 albums thus far: a testament to its evergreen vitality and brilliance of its creators, even though originator Job moved on and Frenchman Joris Chamblain took on the writing in 2016.

Abundant with gentle whimsy and heady compassion, Yakari’s life is a largely bucolic and happy existence: at one with nature and generally free from privation or strife. For the sake of dramatic delectation however, the ever-changing seasons are punctuated with the odd crisis, generally resolved without fuss, fame or fanfare by a little lad who is smart and brave – and who can, thanks to a boon of his totem guide the Great Eagle, converse with animals…

In 1996, La fureur du ciel was the 22nd European album, but as always, the content and set-up are both stunningly simple and sublimely accessible, affording new readers total enjoyment with a minimum of familiarity or foreknowledge required…

Fury from the Skies is painfully topical as Yakari’s wandering people are moving into lands occupied by buffalo after an eventful winter. The spring sun has brought further problems with oppressive heat and tempers fray when the adults start arguing. Medicine man He-Who-Knows wants to stop and set up camp, but Yakari’s father Bold Gaze chooses to follow his wise son a little further on. The action incenses self-appointed leader Bold Crow and magnifies bad feeling in all the riders…

As Yakari’s parents ride on, the boy is unhorsed by a plague of biting bugs, but his painful embarrassment is as nothing to the distress of his former companions as they set up camp. Old pals Slow Motion and Eyes-Always-Shut have their own ways of dealing with debilitating heat and ravenous flies, but for the rest – even children Rainbow and Buffalo Seed – stress and petty bickering looks like igniting a war, and He-Who-Knows fears big trouble ahead…

Those worries are confirmed when the sky is suddenly filled with fleeing ravens ahead of a monstrous whirlwind that smashing through, devasting the camp, scattering the tribe and injuring helpless humans and their animals. By the time Yakari and his parents return to the demolished campsite, their shocked friends are in a daze with Slow Motion bewailing the disappearance into the clouds of his large lazy friend. The Medicine Man is also gone, and Bold Crow harshly decrees the search party he forms should seek the wise one, not the fat, sleepy one…

Of course, Yakari has his own ideas and – riding his sarcastic steed Little Thunder – sets off to learn what happened to Eyes-Always-Shut. The answer is astonishing and quite troublesome, but at least the lad has a still-stunned camp dog and some very helpful wild turkeys to help him solve a very tricky and potentially dangerous puzzle.

With the big guy recovered, Yakari can turn his attention to finding out what happened to He-Who-Knows, before the adults all go crazy. They had depended on the wise man for years and are beginning to panic and lash out. This task is far more difficult and requires a long journey over spectacularly-realised terrain, some assistance from the Great Eagle himself and literally changing horses in mid-stream before the boy wonder can save the shaman and his world…

Yakari is one of the most unfailingly absorbing and entertaining all-ages strips ever conceived and should be in every home, right next to Tintin, Uncle Scrooge, Asterix and The Moomins. It’s never too late to start reading something wonderful, so why not get back to nature as soon as you can?
Original edition © Derib + Job – Editions du Lombard (Dargaud – Lombard s. a.) – 2000. All rights reserved. English translation 2023 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Marsupilami volumes 7 & 8: The Gold of Boavista & The Temple of Boavista


By Yann & Batem, coloured by Cerise and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-069-2 (Album PB/Digital edition Gold)
ISBN: 978-1 80044-099-9 (Album PB/Digital edition Temple)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Mad Monkeyshines with Gallic Aplomb… 9/10

One of Europe’s most popular comic stars is an eccentrically irascible, loyally unpredictable, super-strong, rubber-limbed ball of explosive energy with a seemingly infinite elastic tail. The frantic, frenetic Marsupilami is a wonder of nature and icon of European entertainment originally spun-off from another immortal comedy adventure strip…

When Andre Franquin began crafting eponymous keystone strip Spirou for eponymous flagship publication Le Journal de Spirou, he quickly abandoned the previous format of short complete gags to pioneer longer adventure serials, and began introducing a wide and engaging cast of new characters.

For 1952’s Spirou et les heritiers, he then devised a beguilingly boisterous South American critter and tossed him like an elastic-arsed grenade into the mix. Thereafter – until resigning in 1969 – Franquin constantly added the bombastic little beast to Spirou’s increasingly incredible escapades…

Marsupilami popped up constantly: a phenomenally popular wonder animal who inevitably grew into a solo star of screen, toy store, console games and albums all his own. In 1955 a contractual spat with Dupuis saw Franquin sign up with publishing rivals Casterman for Le Journal de Tintin: collaborating with René Goscinny and old pal Peyo whilst creating raucous gag strip Modeste et Pompon.

Franquin and Dupuis patched things up within days, and he went back to Le Journal de Spirou. In 1957, he co-created Gaston Lagaffe, but was still legally obliged to carry on his Tintin work too. From 1959, writer Greg and background artist Jidéhem assisted, but over the next decade Franquin reached his Spirou limit. In 1969 he quit for good, taking his mystic yellow monkey with him…

Plagued by bouts of depression, Franquin passed away on January 5th 1997, but his legacy remains: a vast body of work that reshaped European comics. Moreover, having learned his lessons about publishers, Franquin retained all rights to Marsupilami and in the late 1980’s began publishing his own adventures of the rambunctious miracle-worker.

He recruited old comrade Greg as scripter and invited commercial artist/illustrator Luc Collin (AKA Batem) to collaborate on – and later monopolise – art duties for the new adventures. In recent years, the commercial world triumphed again and – since 2016 – the universes of Marsupilami and Spirou have reconnected, allowing the old firm to participate in shared exploits of a world created and populated by Franquin.

Graced with a talent for mischief, the Marsupilami is a deviously ingenious anthropoid inhabiting the rainforests of Palombia. One of the rarest animals on Earth, it speaks a language uniquely its own and has a reputation for making trouble and sparking chaos. The species is rare and is fanatically dedicated to its young. Sometimes that takes the form of “tough love”. This behaviour frequently extends to any humans it encounters and “adopts”…

The first of two books telling one tale, L’or de Boavista was released in October 1992. The seventh of 33 solo albums, it was followed a year later by concluding volume Le Temple de Boavista, combining into an edgily gripping comedy drama with much dark and scary social activism underpinning the usual hairy hijinks.

It opens in Palombian capital Chiquito, where children are going missing. No one cared when it was orphans and homeless urchins, but it’s quite different when Donald Maxwell-Trent plays truant and is abducted off the street. He’s spoiled, rich and the son of the US Ambassador…

Tragically, that means nothing to the ruthless thugs who need a constant supply of kids his size and age to work at an illegal, highly polluting goldmine in the jungle upriver. The toxic mess and mercury-made mire these Garimpeiros are creating has incensed and outraged the Marsupilami who now deems them his worst enemies ever…

After another of the yellow terror’s night attacks, overseer Solaria – a slightly older boy with an agenda of his own – helps Donald, now cruelly called “Gordito” by his malnourished comrades, to escape into the green hell. The older boy is only interested in freedom, wealth and returning to the undiscovered tribe he was stolen from, but from his cough may have waited too long to make his break…

Soon brutal gang boss Ingo is in hot pursuit, but his party’s progress is severely hampered by the stalking Marsu – whenever the golden beast isn’t clandestinely helping the fugitives. The furious furry (called by Polombians “El diablo”, and “La catestrofe amarilla”) is then instrumental in linking up the lads with an acceptable resident human…

Transplanted animal trainer Noah keeps his menagerie of friends on a river boat. Appalled by what Solario tells him, Noah resolves to stop the mining but that confrontation does not work out as planned and soon they are all fleeing for their lives up the dreaded Rio Boavista into lethal, legend-drenched “Spatoolah Territory” with dozens of killers on their collective tails…

To Be Concluded…

 

The dark drama heads into even wilder regions with The Temple of Boavista as relentless pursuit drives our heroes ever deeper into unexplored locales of the mighty tributary. Thankfully the hidden people they meet are mostly friendly, but their heightened state of fear is not ended for long. That night the jungle reverberates with horrific laughter emanating from a gargantuan edifice almost reclaimed by centuries of encroaching trees and vines…

The building is an ancient Zygomaztec temple and in its lee are some very nasty tomb robbers. Zoltan and Zorrino plan on stealing Noah’s floating zoo to carry their latest haul, but haven’t reckoned on the alliance of kids and tribal people, nor whatever is making the dire noises wracking the night with sinister sounds.

… And that’s before Ingo’s Garimpeiros and utterly fed up and furious Marsupilami get involved, or morose millionaire Harold “Buster” Stonelove and his safari guide Rhode Island Smith show up. These “ugly Americans” are looking for the secret of laughter and believe the raucous ruins can supply their answer, when they should be watching the yellow critter with the elastic tail and bad attitude…

As all the competing factions calamitously converge on the temple interior, a remarkable answer to the mirth mystery emerges and in a storm of giggling terror everybody gets jut what they deserve…

These eccentric exploits of the garrulous golden monkey are moodily macabre, furiously funny and pithily pertinent, offering engagingly riotous romps and devastating debacles for wide-eyed kids of every age all over the world. Fancy channelling your inner El Diablo and joining in the fun? It all starts with Hoobee, Hoobah Hoobah…
Marsupilami: The Gold of Boavista Original edition © Dupuis 1992, by Batem & Yann
Marsupilami: Temple of Boavista Original edition © Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 1993, by Batem & Yann, Franquin. All rights reserved. English translations © 2022 Cinebook Ltd.
© Marsu Productions 1992. All rights reserved. English translation © 2022 Cinebook Ltd.