Diary of a FEMEN


By Michel Dufranne & Severine Lefebvre, translated by Allison M. Charette (Europe Comics)
No ISBN digital-only edition ASIN B0C1JG2L7L

Women everywhere have been deprived of functional equality in all areas of their own lives for millennia: eternally reduced to prized-but-dehumanised sectional aspects by males even when they profess to be onside and supportive. Female human beings are conditioned to be commodities with a mild, non-argumentative disposition, perhaps a degree of money-making potential or just being good at housekeeping. For most of that time, whether males have instituted liberal or repressive socio-cultural diktats regarding nudity, the ruling gender have always enjoyed looking at their tits and bums.

Countries like Great Britain have long mastered the art of exploiting both wickedly wrong and socially nice naked bodies in our mass entertainments…

In 2008 a group of Ukrainian activists weaponised and utilised that male proclivity for glimpsing a bit of skin by forming the FEMEN movement. The initial thrust was to irresistibly capture male media attention and focus it on the nation’s reputation for sexual exploitation and human trafficking.

These “radical feminists” declared war on the Patriarchy and “dictatorship of religion”, especially targeting the sex industry, Pro-Life groups, Marriage Agencies (selling “mail order brides” abroad), FGM, Sharia Law and all opposition to gay marriage. Their official website mission statement read “FEMEN – is sextremism serving to protect women’s rights, democracy watchdogs attacking patriarchy, in all its forms: the dictatorship, the church, the sex industry”.

They really started making waves and getting airtime across all media (and arrested) after instituting the policy of protesting topless…

Ukraine back then was one of those repressive states that reacted hard to public female nudity and repeated rounds of protests and arrests led to FEMEN co-founder Inna Shevchenko being deported. With the movement very visibly swelling and taking hold internationally, she sought asylum elsewhere, eventually setting up shop in France where the movement’s exploits and activities enthralled many.

Among the avid followers were open-minded bande dessinée creators Michel Dufranne (Dracula L’Immortel, O.D.E.S.S.A.) & Severine Lefebvre (Les Aventures de Huckelberry Finn, L’Ami colocataire) who were moved to craft a fictionalised account of one young woman who joined that ever-growing movement. The result of that collaboration was first published in 2014 as Journal d’une Femen and, as Belgian-born writer Dufranne explains in his Foreword, is designed to explore what the term FEMEN and the international movement it defines really means to individual women navigating a world where the enemy has all the power – hard, soft, political, financial and emotional…

Following the 2016 Wikipedia definition of what FEMEN is, our tale begins with Appoline enduring the daily gauntlet of unwanted male attention as she rushes to work. Late again, and alternately ignored, gaslit and sidelined (by colleagues and superiors) all day, the nadir comes when the boss orders her to show a little cleavage for a client and afterwards rebukes her for not buttoning up fast enough once he’s left…

Her return home is just as filled with scary, entitled intruders encroaching on her peace of mind and when she meets the family for an event, her mother is right on her for letting her looks go, not having a boyfriend, better job or kids like her perfect “Stepford Wives” sister. Fully fed up Appoline retaliates with a lie: telling the grandchild-hungry maternally bullying bigot that she’s birthed a lesbian…

Fuming and isolated, Appoline retreats to watch some late night TV, catching a late report about bare-chested women arrested outside an embassy. She’d heard of them before but thought they were fools. Now she starts to really listen and thinks again. After more days just like or worse than the first, Apolline goes online and downloads a membership application…

What follows is a fascinating tale of awakening, renewal and acceptance of personal power. She joins the French group, undergoing the rigorous training necessary to stand in front of screaming dangerous men and equally vituperative women whilst non-violently making your voice heard and/or your point seen…

Illustrated in a stylish, fashion-conscious line with a restricted colour palette and vivid verve, this clever rite of passage tale gouges deep into societal hypocrisies to expose how giving men what they think they want can work to actually get some attention and make real changes, whilst also showing that the dangers of Fighting the Power never go away and can have lasting effects, consequences… and repercussions.
© 2016 – LE LOMBARD – by Dufranne & Lefebvre. All rights reserved.

The Emotional Load and Other Invisible Stuff


By Emma, translated by Una Dimitrijevic (Seven Stories Press)
ISBN: 978-1-60980-956-0 (TPB) eISBN: 978-160980-957-7

It has never been a fair world, although it’s a concept we all apparently aspire to create – at least in public. In recent years, many people have sought to address imbalances between the roles and burdens of men and women in a civil cohesive society, but the first problem they all hit was simply how to state the problems in terms all sides could understand and would accept. We have a lot more names and concepts to utilise now in discourse, but none of the difficulties seem to have diminished…

In 2018, software engineer, cartoonist and columnist Emma crafted a book of strips reflecting upon social issues particularly affecting women and dissecting The Mental Load – all the unacknowledged, unavoidable unpaid invisible crap that makes up and comes with almost all modern relationships and revealing how most of that overwhelming, burdensome life-tonnage inescapably settles on one side of the bed in most households…

The book – and the strips from it published in The Guardian – caused quite a commotion and as much whiny, pseudo-scientific, apologist and – let’s be frank and use a pejorative term – bitchy trollish kickback as you’d expect from all the old familiar places, so she came back with further explanations and revelations in searingly brilliant follow-up The Emotional Load and Other Invisible Stuff.

Because a large proportion of privileged humans who won the genital lottery don’t really give a damn about other people’s woes – especially if the food keeps coming and the appropriate drawers magically refill with clean clothes and groceries – I fear there’s a segment of truly needful folk who won’t benefit from Emma’s treatises, anecdotes, statistics and life-changing stories, but since many guys are honestly clueless and baffled but say they’re willing to adapt, maybe enough of us will give pause and thought a chance.

Best of all, most women reading this will realise it’s not just them feeling the way they do and might risk starting a conversation with their significant others, or at the very least, talk to other women and organise together…

Working in the manner of the very best observational stand-up comedy, Emma forensically identifies an issue prior to dissecting it: offering advice, suggestions and a wearily humorous perspective. Here that’s subdivided into chapters opening with personally autobiographical essay ‘It’s Not Right, But…’, wittily exploring the concept of consent for women and revealing how, at age 8, Emma first learned it was regarded as perfectly normal for men to bother girls…

That debate over sexual independence and autonomy in established relationships is then expanded in ‘A Role to Play’ before seemingly diverging off topic (but don’t be fooled) with ‘The Story of a Guardian of the Peace’. This cartoon saga traces the life of honest cop Eric and how he fared over years of trying to treat suspects and villains as fellow human beings in a system expressly created to suppress all forms of dissent and disagreement.

The oppressive demarcation of family duties and necessary efforts are then dissected into Productive and Reproductive Labor roles via the salutary example of Wife & Mother ‘Michelle’

‘The Power of Love’ deftly explores how women are implicitly expected to police the emotional wellbeing of all those around them, and the crushing affect that unasked-for burden has on mental wellbeing before the irrelevant and shabbily sanctimonious “not all men” defence resurfaces – and is potently sent packing – in ‘Consequences’, with a frankly chilling reckoning of the so-different mental preparations needed for men and women to go about their daily, ordinary lives…

As previously stated The Mental Load caused many ructions when it first gained popular attention and ‘It’s All in Your Head’ deftly summarises reactions, repercussions, defanging, belittlement, dismissal and ultimate sidelining of those revelations – particularly in relation to sexual choice and autonomy – with a barrage of damning quotes from France’s political and industrial elites. ‘Sunday Evenings’ then traces the history of work by oppressed underclasses – like women – and the gaslighting head games employed to keep all toilers off-balance, miserable and guilt-crushed and comfortably, beneficially oppressed.

These hopefully life-altering cartoon lectures conclude with an exposé of the most insidious form of social oppression as ‘Just Being Nice’ outlines tactics and effects of sneakily debilitating Benevolent Sexism; and yes, old gits from my generation – including me – thought it was okay to do it if we called it “chivalry” or “gallantry”…

Reinforced and backed up by a copious ‘Bibliography’ for further research (and probably fuelling some more carping niggles from unrepentant buttheads) and packed with telling examples from sociological and anthropological studies as well as buckets of irrefutable statistics, The Emotional Load is a smart, subversively clever examination of the roles women have been grudgingly awarded or allowed by a still overtly male-centric society, but amidst the many moments that will have any decent human weeping in empathy or raging in impotent fury, there are decisive points where a little knowledge and a smattering of honest willingness to listen and change could work bloody miracles…

Buy this book, pay attention and learn some stuff. Be better, and to all the women and girls, please accept my earnest apologies on behalf of myself, my generation, its offspring and probably my entire gender.
© 2018, 2020 by Emma. English translation © 2020 by Una Dimitrijevic. All rights reserved.

Phoolan Devi: Rebel Queen


By Claire Fauvel, translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-251-9 (HB/Digital edition)

Born in 1988, award-winning graphic novelist Claire Fauvel (À la recherche d’Alvaro Dolor; Sur les pas de Teresa, la religieuse de Calcutta [w/Marie-Noëlle Pichard]; Une Saison en Egypte; Catherine’s War [w/Julia Billet]) studied illustration at Paris’ L’Ecole Estienne and animation at L’Ecole des Gobelins before beginning an illustrious career in bande dessinée. She’s particularly adroit and adept with female historical figures…

Phoolan Devi: Rebel Queen is that rare event, a history that has all the energy and impetus of a great action adventure and pioneering, political tract. Despite being a factual graphic biography, this is the stuff of legend and grand drama, detailing the astounding, appalling, tragic and triumphant life of a woman who bucked India’s ancient, all-pervasive caste system and paid the seemingly inescapable price the nation’s women seem doomed to. A victim of poverty and inequality from birth, she sought change through bloody deeds and – and as is so often the case – ultimately via political action, in a country where prejudice is institutionalised and baked in: expressed via gender- and caste-based violence, and fostering for millennia a tyrannical social system of inherent, inbuilt corruption where gods and birth status forever dictate one’s position in life by denying all possibility of advancement or change…

Phoolan suffered a double blow at birth: born both destitute and female. Never educated, she remained illiterate all her life. Her innate burden of being shunned and in grinding poverty was further exacerbated when she was married off at age 11: beginning a harrowing pattern of slavery and sexual abuse that lasted until she was rescued by a troop of legendary bandits infesting Uttar Pradesh at the time. They were actually more decent – and fundamentally more heroic – than most respectable citizens (for which read Men), civil authorities and police officers of the region. Becoming lover to one of the gang, she suffered even greater abuse when he was murdered by a rival from a different caste.

Surviving all these assaults, Phoolan organised an infamous vengeance massacre at the village of Behmai. That slaughter was picked up by the press, who recast her as a rebel queen and her lover as a martyr. The public began using the honorific “Devi” about her and, after a mythic career, she surrendered to authorities in 1983. Over 11 years of imprisonment, 48 capital charges including murder, plunder, arson and kidnapping were incrementally dropped before a trial that never came. In 1994, the state government led by Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party withdrew all charges and she walked free. Joining that political group, she was elected to national office twice, becoming a powerful advocate for radical change in the caste system and the patriarchal treatment of women. Regarded as the “voice of the oppressed”, on 26th July 2001 her past caught up with her when she was assassinated by relatives of the bandits killed at Behmai.

Fauvel took her inspiration from acclaimed 1996 autobiography Moi, Phoolan Devi, reine des bandits by Phoolan Devi & Marie-Thérese Cuny, and although not all of those events are included in this stunning and uncompromising account, the supremely enticing and engaging art succeeds in mixing some few moments of hopeful aspiration, happy romance and family unity to offset the revolting iniquities Phoolan and other women had to survive on a daily basis. Many still do.

This brilliant tale is grim and unflinching in the portrayal of the constant assaults and abuses she endured, so you’d best gird yourself for plenty of righteous indignation and outright anger at the catalogue of venality and casual intolerance civilised folk still seem capable of…

Potent, unmissable, and primed to continue the fight, this is a book you must read.
© 2018 Casterman. © 2020 NBM for the English translation.

Marie Curie – The Radium Fairy


By Chantal Montellier & Renaud Huynh translated by Lara Vergnaud (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital-only publication

I’ve waited ages (well, since March 2017, but I’m old and joyless and my days are clearly pretty limited now) for this superb book to be picked up by a print publisher, but now I’m just going to plug it again it anyway and assume that as you’re reading this on a computer, you can make the leap to seeing comics that way too.

And yes, I know all about the smell and feel of proper books. I feel that way too, but we’re killing more trees than we need to. Just think of it as portable fun you can’t crumple or rip…

Originally released across Europe in 2011, Marie Curie La Fée du Radium was produced in collaboration with the Curie Museum and the Cité des sciences et del ’industrie (part of Universcience), with educator, illustrator and bande dessinée creator Chantal Montellier (Odile et les crocodiles, Les Damnés de Nantes).

The book summarises and dramatizes via graphic narrative a most astounding life, prior to research scientist, educator and museum curator Renaud Huynh’s (La fantastique histoire du radium) extensive and copious Timeline which traces the triumphs, tribulations and legacy of Marie Sklodowska-Curie (1867-1934): thus far the only woman to win two Nobel Prizes.

The critical comics component kicks off in Stockholm on September 4th as aging Marie Curie works on a speech; preparing to receive that second cherished accolade. Thinking back, she pictures her departed husband Pierre Curie. Their joint isolation of the element they named Polonium after her place of birth was a grand achievement but doesn’t make up for her years of struggle for acceptance or his tragic accidental death so early in their marriage…

And so, briefly, concisely and sans fanfare unfolds a true tale of brilliance applied, adversity overcome and persistence rewarded. Today, Curie is credited with adding two elements to the Periodic Table – Radium was the other one – and venerated for her unceasing researches. She was also the first woman allowed to teach at the prestigious Sorbonne, but for much of her life had to overcome entrenched patriarchal attitudes and oppression whilst being vilified in the media and by wider society for her “scandalous” personal life… and generally just for being an uppity female who didn’t know her place.

Isn’t it great how much everything has changed since then? (I am of course waiting for my own Nobel for the isolation of Sarcastium…)

This small but powerful digital-only tome concludes with that large and detailed Timeline. Huynh’s pictorial essay is packed with photographic illustrations, cartoons and clippings combining to encapsulate and clarify Curie’s life and achievements. It is all deconstructed and précised in chapters entitled 1867/1895 Warsaw-Paris’, ‘1896/1905 A Scientific Dream’, ‘1906/1911 Hardships and Success’, ‘1912/1921 The Radium Institute’ and ‘1922/1934: An International Figure’, before concluding with an ‘Epilogue’ revealing how 60 years after her death, Marie Curie’s ashes were transferred to the Pantheon (resting place of the nation’s greatest citizens). She was the first woman to be accorded this honour based solely on her own merits…

Making learning fun, Marie Curie – The Radium Fairy is a potent and powerful inspiration, venerating one of history’s most dedicated scientists: one every youngster of any age should know.
© 2016 – DUPUIS – Chantal Montellier & Renaud Huynh. All rights reserved.

Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance


By EFA & Rubio, translated by Edward Gauvin (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-324-0 (Album HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-325-7

NBM’s line of graphic biographies never fails to delight, and this oversized luxury hardcover (also available digitally) is one of the most fascinating thus far: exploring one of painting’s greatest yet least understood masters and – deducing by inference – one of the most occluded, protracted and certainly frustrated romances in history…

Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance reunites award-winning screenwriter, historian and novelist Salva Rubio (Max, The Photographer of Mauthausen) with animator/illustrator Ricard Fenandez AKA “Efa” (Les Icariades, Rodriguez, Le Soldat, L’Ãme du Vin: L’ail et l’huile). Their previous collaborations are also beautiful biographies – Monet: Itinerant of Light and Django, Hand on Fire: The Great Django Reinhardt.

First released in France, the translated Degas: La danse de la solitude is preceded by mood-setting quotes from Baudelaire and Shakespeare and closes with a detailed Bibliography of suggestions for further study and appreciation. Between those points is a compelling exploration of one of the most turbulent periods in European and Art history, as impacted upon and partially shaped by a controversial, conflicted, contradictory and misunderstood master of line, colour and form…

This pictorial conjecture gently deconstructs enigmatic Edgar Degas is rendered by EFA in the manner of the pastel crayon drawings so beloved and powerfully utilised by Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas (July 19th 1834 – September 27th 1917). It affords a mistily miasmic uncertainty which never obscures detail whilst shaping a mystery to confound and unsettle readers. The stunning confection of painterly images traces – via flashback and supposition – the life of a troubled artistic genius raised almost completely by male relatives to covet success, scorn women and criticise himself mercilessly.

In Paris during the 1870s, a graciously-barbed, polite war of wills and conception began. The creative world was formalised and controlled by a hidebound elite – “The Salon” – dictating what could and could not be ART. The convention-constricted organisation even dictated form, method and content until that stultifying impasse was challenged by a haphazard band of free thinkers who would become derisively dubbed “The Impressionists”.

Among their most outspoken and headstrong proponents were Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Sisley, Bazille and others, but they only really started making waves once staid, bellicose and unfathomable Degas began associating with them. He bemused and bewildered his fellow outriders and the Bohemian set they congregated with, but never felt himself part of the group… or any human affiliation.

His story is seen from its conclusion as ‘1: Solitude’ opens on Saturday, 29th September 1917 with an elderly lady staring at a crypt in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. She is American painter Mary Cassatt who probably knew Degas better than any other person. On visiting his empty studio, sentiment swallows her as she opens his abandoned notebooks, thinks back and wonders…

In ‘2: Monsieur Degas’ the odd bourgeois’ formative days are selectively reviewed and his misanthropic, misogynistic, chauvinistic and racist stances are quizzed through his problems with his own output. Degas’ work does not and has never satisfied him and he can only find inspiration in places no decent person belongs. It seems the austere bookish elitist cannot open up to his peers but is addicted to being an anonymous, masked and untouchable patron of brothels, bawdy houses and ballet… where only the most degraded – or poverty stricken – go.

As his renown grows a meeting with an art dealer from the USA leads to a possibility of a different life in ‘3: Miss Cassatt’, but the voluntary hermit’s true genius appears to be self-sabotage. Even as the impressionists gradually destroy the influence of The Salon, Degas finally starts generating work worthy of his talent whilst sinking deeper into isolation and pushing away all those who could be friends… or perhaps more…

The story ends with ‘4: The Dance’, allowing some fanciful elaboration on the biographers’ part as the elderly artist confronts his muse and inhibitions in a kind of Happy Ever After that concludes with Rubio’s prose rumination ‘Did Monsieur Degas ever find peace?’

Enchanting, thought-provoking and supremely enthralling, Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance is a soft-focus voyage of illicit discovery no lover of unforgettable pictures can be without.
© EFA/RUBIO/ ÉDITIONS DU LOMBARD (DARGAUD- LOMBARD S.A.) 2021. All rights reserved.

Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance will be published on March 12th 2024 and is available for pre-order. For more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

Highlands Books 1 & 2 (of 2)


By Philippe Aymond, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-110-1 (Album PB/Digital edition Bk 1) 978-1-80044-111-8 (Album PB/Digital edition Bk 2)

Robert Burns was born on January 25th 1759 in Alloway. His father was a farmer who went to great lengths to ensure his children were properly educated. Schooled in Classics, French and Latin, Robert began his creative writing at age 15. He led a successful, tempestuous life – particularly favouring boozy carousing and roistering escapades with the ladies – and died in 1796 aged 37. As well as dialectical and vernacular poetry, Burns preserved traditional Scottish songs and folklore and is more popular today than he has ever been. He is the only poet in history to have his own globally celebrated holiday, with his birth anniversary an affair universally honoured by food, drink, recitations and well-loved scary stories.

Of course, he’s just the tip of a vast iceberg of Scots raconteurs who have used their cultural and historical heritage to tell astounding stories: ranging from Walter Scott and John Buchan to Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. Their collective efforts have created an Hibernian meta-reality inspiring countless others…

One such is the epic historical drama under review today…

Born in Paris on February 3rd 1968 Philippe Aymond studied visual arts at the University of Paris. In 1989, after taking a Master’s Degree, he was pushed by comics veteran Alexandre-Nicholas Coutellis (Goimbax, le VRP Masqué, La dame de Singapour, Chuck Dougherty, le Privé, Tanguy et Laverdure, Le Vagabond des Limbes, Man, Super-héros Polyvalent, Bienvenue à Welcome Land) toward a career in bande dessinée.

Aymond met Jean-Claude Mézières (Valerian, Bill le Sheriff, Valerian et Laureline, Les Aventures de Latex, Lady Polaris, and Valerian!!) who offered him a place in the studio he shared with Pierre Christin (who also did the world-changing Valerian and so much more). Aymond worked with Hughes Labiano, Philippe Chapelle & Christin on Canal Choc until 1992 and two years later he & Christin co-created L’Homme qui Fait le Tour du Monde, following up in 1997 with Le Voleurs de Villes and adventure series Les 4X4.

He teamed with Laurent-Frédéric Bollée on Apocalypse Mania from 2001-2010, all the while supplementing his illustration career as colourist on other features and one-offs. Aymond has drawn political thriller Lady S since 2005 and graduated to writing with this historical drama in 2012. He has since expanded his oeuvre by adding to the canon of continental legend with Les Nouvelles Aventures de Bruno Brazil and his own creation Black Program (tomes 1 & 2 released in 2019 and 2020 respectively).

Written drawn and coloured by Aymond, Highlands Book 1: The Portrait of Amelia plunges head-on into epic romance territory as a young artist freshly back from Italy is hired by Gordon Menmuir, Duke of Paxton. Joseph Callandar is in fact returning to his Highlands home, but his abrupt arrival stirs up long-stewing animosities amongst powerful clan lords.

Menmuir of Clan Grant is politely genteel but adamantly neutral politically, whilst generally in opposition to powerful, violently pro-English laird Robert MacTallan. It is the summer of 1743 and the clans are in turmoil: split between support of Jacobite Pretender “Bonnie Prince Charlie” and obeisance to King George II of England, sovereign of a Kingdom officially United since the Act of Union in 1707.

As Paxton’s artist in residence had joined King George’s Court in London, MacTallan planned to plant his own son Angus as a replacement at the Duke’s castle, gaining an advantageous position to glean secrets. Instead Paxton belatedly and covertly dragooned Callandar for the post, with his new position at Blackwater Castle delaying exposure of Paxton’s son-&-heir William as a passionate Jacobite activist. There reluctantly at best, Joseph meets Menmuir’s daughter Amelia and his life is forever changed…

The commoner is a gifted artist who has come home concealing secrets of his own, and as he reacquaints himself with old friends – like former patron Dr Murdoch – he can’t help but feel the tense undercurrent of rebellion festering in the beautiful hills and Lochside villages. When he stumbles into Amelia being kidnapped he becomes an inadvertent hero by rescuing her… and then drawing a portrait/wanted poster of the perpetrator.

By January 1744, Callandar is fully ensconced at Blackwater Castle, working on Paxton’s official portrait, but blithely unaware that more than one of the close family retinue has dark plans for him. By May, myriad tensions build as petty plots spiral and converge after Amelia makes amorous overtures to the painter but can’t get past his tragic secret grief. When William shames and endangers the whole family by declaring his Jacobin loyalties at a Royal party, “below stairs” a loyal retainer sets in motion a scheme that will see both Joseph Callandar and Lady Amelia face trial for sedition, seduction and treason with horrific consequences for all concerned…

Highlands Book 2: The Survivors of Blackwater

After a shocking cliffhanging denouement, the end of the saga opens at Loch Lochy on March 22nd 1745. English troops are on the move through the Highlands and death trails in their wake. William Menmuir leads a band of rebel/outlaws and prepares for the imminent landing of “The King across the water”. Dr Murdoch dutifully attends Lady Amelia, as she languishes in a cell at St Andrews’ Hospital in Glasgow. She has been alternately violent or silent and semi-catatonic since she was publicly shamed as a wanton during the trial.

Everyone believes Joseph Callandar was killed that day by her brother William, but as the Highlanders plans to liberate Scotland proceed and the English fortify and advance into clan heartlands, that proves to be merely another fallacy. As the fateful summer unfolds and the liberation war falters and crashes to doom, a dead man goes out, having at last deduced how he was framed and who mut pay for the cruel manipulation and betrayal of poor Amelia…

Packed with intrigue and passion, epic action and intimate confrontations play out against a backdrop of nigh-mythic scenarios where love and vengeance drive the tale to a shattering climax on April 16th 1746, at a sodden field called Culloden…

Life goes on, however, and for Joseph and Amelia, the aftermath affords them not just final payments of debts due in moments of quiet justice, but also a fresh start in a New World…

Bold in scope and classical in delivery, Aymond’s story of love and death in war and peace is subtly engaging and crafted with powerful authenticity and visual veracity: a properly tasty scotch broth of gallic verve and panache.
© Dargaud 2012, 2013 by Aymond. All rights reserved. English translations © 2023 Cinebook Ltd.

Nina Simone in Comics


By Sophie Adriansen; with Antoane, Romain Brun, Domenico Carbone, Gabriele Di Caro, Mademoiselle Caroline, Samuel Figuiére, Dario Formisani, Sandrine Fourrier, François Foyard, Christian Galli, Chadia Loueslati, Walter Pax, Isa Python, Benjamin Reiss, Riccardo Randazzo, Adrien Roche, Anne Royant, Cynthia Thiéry, Mayeul Vigouroux, Lysandre Vanhoutvenne, Sara Colella, François Renaud & various (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-326-4 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-327-1

Nina Simone was a mighty voice dedicated to freedom of expression and emancipation of body and soul. This powerful collaborative visual investigation probes her troubled life, failures and achievements, and highlights a life-long war between family pressures, her own frustrated desires, search for autonomy and the spurious divide between classical music and The Blues.

Another stunning musical biography, this book was released continentally in 2023 and is certain to appeal to readers all over the English-speaking world. Nina Simone in Comics joins NBM’s superb and sublime graphic narrative sub-strand, probing the history of a globally significant performer and musical phenomenon whose works and deeds shook the planet and changed society…

Following a full ‘Discography’ (mirroring a ‘Further Reading and viewing’ section at the end of the book) we have context-providing, photo-packed prose essays augmenting stylish individual comics snippets. Both educative articles and chronological character-confirming visual vignettes are penned by French author, biographer and journalist Sophie Adriansen (La menace des fantômes & Musiques diaboliques [Scooby-Doo], Grace Kelly – D’Hollywood à Monaco, le roman d’une légende, Le Syndrome de la vitre étoilée) who steers a coterie of cartoonists and illustrators dramatising the history and demystifying the myths for us. Each combined chapter opens with a quote from the star or close associates…

Anne Royant opens the show with ‘Music As Company’ detailing early days of a musical prodigy born into a strict Christian “negro” household in proudly segregated Tryon, North Carolina. It’s 1935 and Eunice Kathleen Waymon is growing up in a blanketing swathe of religious music, and utterly unable to keep her little hands off her mother’s beloved pedal organ. Eunice is barely three and plays it better than her astounded mother Mary Kate

Textual assessment ‘In the Beginning’ sees how the family moved socially upwards thanks to Eunice’s gifts, before Christian Galli reveals in images how the toddler decided ‘I’m Going To Be A Classical Pianist When I Grow Up’. Prose supplement ‘Two Pivotal Figures in her Life’ reveals the influence of Mary Kate’s employer Mrs Miller – who sponsored music lessons for the maid’s kid and organised a fund fuelled by Eunice’s recitals that made enough money to carry the child to music college. The other founding spirit was English music teacher Muriel “Miz Mazy” Massinovitch who taught the wonder girl poise, erudition and Bach: inculcating a love of “real music” that carried Eunice to the top of the world but also tainted her life with bitter disappointment…

Growing into a teen hampered by ingrained prejudice and restricted by repressive “Jim Crow” laws prompts the question ‘Do You Feel Black?’ (illustrated by Samuel Figuiére) before support feature ‘Eunice Discovers the World’ shows her dream to be a classical performer continually challenged by blinkered society, before Dario Formisani and colourist Lysandre Vanhoutvenne share heartbreaking revelations as the high school graduate’s dream of attending a prestigious music academy founders due to skin colour in ‘Early Setbacks.’ Her transition to Philadelphia and New York is explored through prose and photos in ‘Talent to Develop’

Mother Mary Kate was a hard, pious woman and when Eunice adopted a stage name to play nightclubs and earn money, her surrender to ‘The Devil’s Music’ (art by Mademoiselle Caroline) sparked years of bitter contention. That transition and its repercussions is covered in ‘Eunice Becomes Nina’ before Adrien Roche draws ‘Pivotal Figures’ and an essay follows Nina ‘Back to Atlantic City’ for a new life of overnight popularity and appreciation but utterly at odds with her childhood aspirations…

A lifetime of poor choices in men and managers is first touched upon in the Antoane-illustrated ‘We Start Recording Tomorrow’ whilst bizarre circumstances leading to ‘The First Album’ are seen, prior to François Foyard’s cartoon crescendo ‘Patience…’ detailing how Nina responded to learning her life and music were controlled by men because she never read contracts: a situation expanded upon in ‘An Underwhelming Success.’

Cynthia Thiéry shows ‘A New Star Is Born!’ after playing a landmark gig at a legendary venue, further explored in text supplement ‘The Town Hall’, after which Chadia Loueslati depicts Nina’s marriage and reasons for staying with an abusive controller whose love manifested in bouts of violence and deep remorse in ‘A Hold On Me’, and ‘A Time of Conflicts’ adds much-needed context to the mystery…

Limned by Riccardo Randazzo and fleshed out by colourist Sara Colella, ‘I’ll Be Back’ and text titbit ‘Marriage and Travel’ follow Nina – a mother with no control of her work or finances – as she visits Africa and becomes even more consumed by civil rights issues, leading to her learning ‘Your Weapon Is Music!’ (Isa Python art) whilst ‘1963’ recapitulates the state of the world. Sandrine Fourrier realises Simone’s progress ‘Towards a Music of Protest’, with a prose precis spotlighting Nina’s ‘Time to Get Involved’

Romain Brun illustrates the birth and spreading social impact of breakthrough composition ‘Young, Gifted and Black’ (co-created with black poet Weldon Irvine) as historical context comes via support feature ‘The Fight Intensifies’, before Gabriele Di Caro revisits public event ‘Human Kindness Day’ (AKA “The Summer of Soul”, and “Black Woodstock”) as a prose essay asks was that ‘The Moment It All Collapsed?’

A decade of letting men control her life and money left Nina Simone a target of the IRS and international exile, as revealed by Benjamin Reiss who draws her ‘In A Pub In Paris’ with prose synopsis ‘An Eventful Decade’ tracking a tragic decline highlighted by a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder. A monumental reversal began when a forgotten track – added as an afterthought to her very first album – was used in a perfume commercial and set the world aglow. Domenico Carbone & François Renaud light up the comeback trail in ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’, with ‘Nina’s Back’ adding detail to a career resurrection prior to declining mental health triggering a crisis. Limned by Walter Pax & Renaud, ‘That’s Enough!’ with text support ‘Tragedy at Bouc-Bel-Air’ expands on an incident that almost ended Nina’s life…

This compelling journey through oppression and injustice chooses to focus on upbeats at the close, with Nina’s presence at Nelson Mandela’s 80th birthday/third wedding in ‘Happy Birthday, Mister President’ – visualised by Mayeul Vigouroux augmented with essay ‘Swan Song’ – before Royant illustrates the world’s too-late knee-jerk approbation in ‘God Be With You Till We Meet Again’ with a pithy summation ‘Keeping the flame alive’

In so many ways, Activist Nina Simone was more important than the performer/composer, but whether her actions or her music drew you to her, this book will remind you why and make you miss her all the more. Nina Simone in Comics is an astoundingly readable and beautifully rendered treasure for narrative art and music fans alike: one to resonate with anybody who loves to listen and look. If you love pop history and crave graphic escape, this will truly feed your soul.
© 2023 Editions Petit à Petit. © 2024 NBM for the English translation.

Nina Simone in Comics is scheduled for UK release February 13th 2024 and available for pre-order now. Most NBM books are also available in digital formats. For more information and other wonderful reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

Asterix and the Griffin (volume 39)


By Jean-Yves Ferri & Didier Conrad, coloured by Thierry Mébarki, translated by Adriana Hunter (Sphere)
ISBN: 978-0-7515-8398-4 (Album HB) eISBN: 978-0-7515-8397-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Seasonal Sensations with Gallic Chill… 9/10

Whoops! Missed one!

As we saw a few days ago, Asterix le Gaulois has been around, amazing and amusing the planet since 1959 and become part of the fabric of French life. His exploits have touched billions of people all around the world.

For five and a half decades and for almost all of that time his astounding adventures were the sole preserve of originators René Goscinny and/or Albert Uderzo.

After nearly 15 years dissemination as weekly serials before invariably collected into book-length compilations, in 1974 the 21st saga – Asterix and Caesar’s Gift – was the first to be released as a complete, original album prior to serialisation. Thereafter each new tome was an eagerly anticipated, impatiently awaited treat for legions of devotees. The eager anxiety hadn’t diminished any when Uderzo’s handpicked replacements – scripter Jean-Yves Ferri (Fables Autonomes, La Retour à la terre) and illustrator Didier Conrad (Les Innomables, L’Avatar, Le Piège Malais, Tatum) – settled into the creative role on his retirement in 2009.

Whether an action-packed comedic romp with sneaky, bullying baddies getting their just deserts or a sly satire for older-if-no-wiser heads, these new yarns are just as engrossing as the established canon. As you already know, half of the epics take place in exotic locales throughout the Ancient World, whilst the alternating rest are set in and around Uderzo’s adored Brittany where, circa 50 BC, a little hamlet of cantankerous, proudly defiant warriors and their families resist every effort of the mighty Roman Empire to complete the conquest of Gaul. This one’s solidly of the former variety as our major cast members make it all the way to “barbaricum”: literally beyond the known world…

Although divided by its Roman conquerors into provinces Celtica, Aquitania and Armorica, the very tip of the last-named region stubbornly refuses to be properly pacified. Utterly unable to overrun this last little bastion of Gallic insouciance, the otherwise supreme Roman overlords are reduced to a pointless policy of absolute containment – even though the irksome Gauls come and go as they please…

Thus, a tiny seaside hamlet is permanently hemmed in by heavily fortified garrisons Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium, filled with veteran fighters who would rather be anywhere else on earth than there. The residents couldn’t care less: daily defying, frustrating and often terrorising the world’s greatest military machine by going about their everyday affairs, bolstered by magic potion brewed by resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits and strategic aplomb of diminutive dynamo Asterix… and his simplistic, supercharged best friend Obelix. And their dog…

In Rome, Julius Caesar is in need of a diversion for his sensation seeking subjects, so when geographer Cartographus claims to have discovered a fabled griffin, the Emperor funds a huge expedition to capture it via legions of soldiers and engineers. The beast resides far to the east in the icy Sarmatian wastes, but the scholar is convinced he can snare it as he has captured a Sarmatian Amazon woman to guide them. Terrifying and seductive, Kalashnikova only sees a chance to return home…

Meanwhile, the frozen lands under discussion have welcomed some familiar friends as Asterix, Obelix and canine wonder Dogmatix escort a very ill (no, no, it’s just a cold, really!) Getafix to the yurt of Fanciakuppov. That cheery shaman had visions of Roman invaders stealing his people’s sacred animal, so his old druid pal has brought a keg of magic potion to resist the incursion. There are, however, a couple of snags…

Firstly, the tribe is proudly matriarchal, with powerful warrior women doing all the fighting. They do it fantastically well, and don’t need help from foreigners – no matter how attractive they might be! – or magic. It’s a good thing too, as local conditions soon render the potion useless and Asterix has to rely on his brains and his giant pal’s innate brawn…

The big guy is quite distracted. Primarily by Dogmatix running away to become a wolf, but also by the obvious attentions of some of the amorous Amazons…

The Roman expedition is led by seasoned centurion Intrepidus, and Cartographus (who naturally has a secret agenda in play) has brought along famed venator (animal-fighting gladiator) Vainglorius, as a specialist to tame the griffin when they find it.

Army morale is low: the commanders squabble constantly, these lands are gloomy, frozen cold, steeped in legends and packed with people and things trying to kill them. Worst of all, when they should be building forts to secure their supply lines, the men are instead fighting each other for the right to guard the prisoner. Aloof, beautiful Kalashnikova disdains and discards them all… and they love it.

When the military monsters capture Fanciakuppov, he is forced to lead the smug raiders to the secret abode of the griffin, but thanks to the hit-&-run tactics of the Gaul-enhanced war women their numbers are so severely depleted, no one thinks they’ll make it back to sunnier climes…

The mission ends in spectacular failure but they do all get to see the fabulous beast before they die…

Packed with hilarious action, genuine chills, potent punning and cartooning delights, this tale provides plenty of pokes at fake news, current affairs, conspiracy theories, a certain global retail/delivery brand, and lands many wry jabs at all sides of the battle of the sexes and role of women in societies ancient and modern.

Asterix and the Griffin is a sure win and another triumphant addition to the magically mythic Gaulish oeuvre for laugh-seekers in general and all devotees of comics.
Original edition © 2021 Les Éditions Albert René. English translation: © 2021 Les Éditions Albert René. All rights reserved.

Scared to Death volumes 1 & 2: The Vampire From the Marshes & Malevolence and Mandrake


By Mauricet & Vanholme, with Lee Oaks: colours by Laurent Carpentier and translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978- 1-905460-47-2 (Album PB Vampire) 978- 1-905460-77-9 (Album PB Mandrake)

There’s a grand old tradition of scaring, empowering and entertaining kids through carefully crafted horror stories with junior protagonists, and this occasional series is one of the better modern examples.

Conceived and executed by Belgian journalist Virgine Vanholme and youthful-yet-seasoned illustrator Alain Mauricet, the Mort de Trouille series of graphic albums was launched by Casterman in 2000 resulting in five further sinister sorties until everything paused in 2004.

Whilst I’ve not been able to find out much about the author, the artist is well travelled, having worked for CrossGen, Image and DC as well as on a wide variety of features in Europe. He’s also been in David Lloyd’s magnificently wonderful digital delight Aces Weekly.

Born in 1967, Mauricet inherited the comic bug from his parents and, after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts under legendary creator Eddy Paape, began his own career aged 20: another recruit for major magazine Le Journal de Spirou. From spot cartoons he graduated to strips, creating superhero parody Cosmic Patrouille with Jean-Louis Janssens and Les Rastafioles with Sergio Salma. Following the aforementioned stateside sojourn he resumed his Franco-Belgian efforts with the strip under review here, as well as basketball comedy Basket Dunk (with Christophe Cazanove) and Boulard (with Erroc) and others.

A resident of Brussels, he also designs for computer games whilst working on a more personal graphic enterprise entitled Une Bien Belle Nuance de Rouge and in latter days worked for DC on Superman and Batman. In 2021 he released Porchery – On n’attrape pas les cochons avec des saucisses.

Back in early 2000, though, he was detailing the first of a sequence of spooky yarns starring studious Robin Lavigne and boisterous, overly-imaginative Max Mornet: a couple of lads with an infallible instinct for ferreting out the weird and uncanny. Cinebook translated Mort de Trouille: Le vampire des Marais in 2008: inviting British, Antipodean and American kids to solve the mystery of The Vampire from the Marshes, which began when the boys first snuck a peek at forensic scientist Dr. Lavigne‘s locked files…

The well-travelled medic has been called in to examine a body found in rural Deadwater Swamp: a corpse stinking of booze, drained of blood and completely covered in hundreds of tiny triangular bite marks. His son Robin and especially horror-story obsessed Max are fascinated by the case. The latter envisions all manner of ghastly and vivid vampiric scenarios, despite his more prosaic pal’s protestations. All too soon the lads are invading the (still “potential”) crime scene, recording their own findings and suppositions. They are pretty freaked out when they find a strangely slaughtered bird and completely terrified when they disturb a poacher who chases them away with murderous curses. Unbeknownst to all involved, their prying has also alerted and disturbed a clan of far more dangerous and unnatural creatures…

Soon the boys are being shadowed by an uncanny, cloaked figure. He/she/it even breaks into the Lavigne home: striving to preserve anonymity and ancient secrets from the eyes of prying, violent mankind. However, when it is noisily disturbed as it closes in on the boys, they can only thank their lucky stars that the household cat is such a noisy and vicious beast when stepped upon…

Events peak to a cursed crescendo next day after Max falls into his own hastily dug vampire trap and is taken by the noisome Nosferatu. Whilst Robin anxiously and urgently searches for his missing friend, Max is learning the tragic secret history of the bloodsuckers.

His oddly ambivalent abductor is Janus who seems rather reluctant to bleed him as a proper vampire should. The creature has, however, no problem leaving him – and freshly captured Robin when he stumbles upon them – to drown in a deep well…

Next morning, Dr. Lavigne and the cops are frantically but methodically searching the swamp for the missing boys, but only find them thanks to some unknown person leaving Max’s camera on the rim of a well…

As the frightened lads are pulled to safety, Robin’s dad questions them and goes ballistic on learning they’ve been looking through his confidential files. He also utterly trashes their ridiculous theory of vampire killers, patiently explaining the true and rational – if exceedingly grim and grisly – cause of death of the drunk in the swamp.

Chastened but undaunted and sharing an incredible secret no adults will ever believe, the boys are taken home whilst deep in the wooded mire an ancient family of incredible beings pulls up stakes and moves restlessly on to who knows where…

 

With additional art assistance from Lee Oaks, the schoolboy spook-chasers resurfaced in Scared to Death volume 2: Malevolence and Mandrake. Scholarly Robin and rowdy, horror-fan Max are still chasing every implausible rumour and probing unknowns but becoming increasing dependent – though they’d never admit it – on the wit and bravery of Robin’s brilliant little sister Sophie Lavigne

Cinebook’s second translated selection was actually the third Franco-Belgian chiller chronicle Mort de Trouille: Maléfice et mandragora: suitably set around All Hallows Eve and posing uniquely terrifying problems for the young trouble-magnets…

It begins a little before the much-anticipated night, with Elizabeth Simon Secondary School abuzz with worries over missing student Thomas and the seemingly simultaneous arrival of oddly-attractive, exotic transfer student Emma Corpescu. She comes from Romania and Max is strangely antipathic to her at first. That soon changes, though…

Robin also feels a bit off as the newcomer blatantly insinuates herself into their lives, paying particular attention to Max. Soon, so-savvy Sophie is paying closer attention. Far more so than the idiot boys do…

She’s wise to do so: Emma is soon revealed as an ancient shapeshifting sorceress named Malevolence, who steals the youth of boys to restore her own life force… and to – one day – resurrect her properly dead sister Mandrake

After doing desperate research online, Sophie arms herself with anti-witch tricks and gadgets and – after discovering the incredible fate of Thomas – eventually convinces her incredulous brother to stalk the wicked enchanter to her lair in Deadwater Swamp and rescue the now officially-missing Max. The poor oaf has fully succumbed to Emma’s wiles and now resides in her lair, transformed into the same uncanny form as Thomas was…

Arriving just in time, the rescuers are set for an incredible clash of wills and powers – especially Sophie, who’s borrowed a few supernatural forces for the ordeal…

Of course, good triumphs in the end, but can such seductive evil truly die?

Deliciously delivered in the manner of Goosebumps and Scooby-Doo – if not Stranger Things – these superb slices of spooky fun work classic kids’ horror tropes and style to enthral and enchant everyone who has suffered from “father knows best” syndrome and loves tall tales with devilish twists. Seamlessly mixing fear with hilarity to enthral and enchant all generations equally, these tales should be resuurected and completed for all of us in need of scary relaxation.
Original edition © Casterman, 2000 and 2003 by Mauricet & Vanholme. English translation © 2008 by Cinebook Ltd.

The Rugger Boys volumes 1 & 2: Why Are We Here Again? & A Spoonful of Style and a Tonne of Class


By Béka & Poupard: coloured by Sylvain Frecon, Murielle Rousseau & Magali Poli-Rivière & translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-33-5 (Album PB/Digital edition v1) 978-1-905460-44-1 (Album PB/Digital 2)

Time to cash in on a global sporting event again. We must do a cricket, ping pong or skateboarding feature one day…

Human beings and – according to the internet – a huge variety of our pets and animal housemates seem obsessed with and revel in chasing balls about. So much so that we/they even apply a range of complex rules to the sheer exhilaration of the process, just to make things more difficult and artificially extend proceedings.

We call it sport and when it’s not hugely thrilling and deadly serious it can be hilariously funny…

Comics over many decades and throughout the world have often mined our obsession with assorted games for secondary entertainment value and these Cinebook tomes detail in dramatically humorous manner stunning strips starring a dedicated amateur team of French gladiators, all painfully enamoured of the manly (and womanly and British-originated, let’s not forget) oddball pastime dubbed Rugby.

Les Rugbymen was created in 2005 by writing partnership Bertrand Escaich & Caroline Roque under their collaborative nom de plume Béka (Studio Danse, Les Fonctionnaires) in conjunction with self-taught illustrator Alexandre Mermin, who generally labours under the pseudonym Poupard (Chez Gaspard, Les Brumes du Miroboland). The resulting flurry of short sharp gags and extra-time yarns have filled 20 albums thus far with another due any day now, and there’s even a junior league spin-off which began in 2010 entitled Les Petits Rugbymen

On n’est pas venus pour être là! was the third Euro-volume but as Why Are We Here Again? was the first to be translated by Cinebook… probably because it features a brief sporting tour of England. Pithy, gritty and very funny, it perfectly encapsulates the passion, toil and sheer testosterone-fuelled idiocy which can warp normally rational folk.

Our stars are a few dedicated souls faithfully enjoying the trials and welcome tribulations of club rugby (and that’s Rugby Union, right?) as played by the stalwarts of fictional south-western French town side Paillar Athletic Club, affectionately known to their frankly obsessive fans as The PAC…

As seen on the introductory page, the usual suspects generally manifest as intellectually compromised “Hooker” Lightbulb, Herculean “Prop” Fatneck, 2nd Row star The Anaesthetist, dashing sex-crazed Back Romeo and Scrumhalf/Captain The Grumpster, all regularly adored and vilified by The Coach who never lets his speech defect get in the way of a good insult to the dozy slackerrrs…

All you need to know is that these guys are bold, sturdy and love food and drink as much as they do smashing each other into the mud…

Their exploits are generally delivered as single page sequences, lavishly, lovingly and outrageously illustrated and jam-packed with snippets of off-kilter slapstick to supplement the main gag and the dramatic material. Content is almost everything you’d expect from such a fixture: big beefy blokes in very small towels, lots of booze-fuelled gaffes, bizarre eating eccentricities, what we Brits refer to as “knob-jokes” and mutual sportsmanlike skulduggery of the sort that has permeated all games Real Men compete in…

However, also on display are a profusion of smartly-planned running gags and truly effective comedic gems such as the well-meaning meatheads’ ongoing efforts to help Lightbulb find “love”, Romeo’s constant comeuppances from husbands, boyfriends and employers unhappy with his off-pitch assignations and The Coach’s eternal battle to whip his doughty but dopey band of idiots into a team he can be proud of…

As previously mentioned, this collection also contains a wry, preconception/prejudice-confirming international excursion when The PAC accept an offer to play a friendly match against British college side Camford. As well as a chance to pummel the despised English, there’s the promise of seeing a Six Nations match to offset the unbearable pain of living on the foreigners’ appalling food and pathetic beer…

 

The Rugger Boys volume 2: A Spoonful of Style and a Tonne of Class

Continentally the fifth outing, On va gagner avec le lard et la manière was the second (and, thus far, last) translated Cinebook tome – once again probably because it features brief sporting excursions to lesser English (sort-of) speaking nations Scotland and New Zealand.

As such it perfectly recapitulates the passion, toil and sheer testosterone-fuelled idiocy which can warp normally rational folk.

The titular Union Rules stars Romeo and The Grumpster are joined by character-expanded players like precocious Centre Hugo – The Engineer – Cap, and 2nd Row veteran Freddy – The Anaesthetist – Bones whilst The Coach now has a name to be cursed by – Bernard Farmer. He still never lets his barrrrbarous accent get in the way of a good insult or pithy instruction to the dozy slackerrrs…

These guys are bolder, funnier and sturdier – because they still love to eat and drink as much as they do spending every weekend in sanctioned unarmed combat. This time however equality reigns and there’s a succinct glimpse of the Paillar Athletic Ladies Team too, and you can share the lads’ first turbulent TV appearance too…

Mostly, however, on display is a profusion of smartly-planned running gags and compact comedy gems like the well-meaning meatheads’ further efforts to help Lightbulb find love, more of Romeo’s confrontations with other people’s significant others, and employers unhappy with his off-pitch Tries, plus the woebegone touchline medic’s miserable life and Coach’s eternal battle to make sporting gold from part-time dross…

This time kick off leads to an extended origin story revealing how the playful imps they once were turned a boring school lesson into a life-changing indoor match: thereby forming sporting bonds that last a lifetime…

As promised, this fixture includes a brief tour of Scotland, offering a broad belt of new experiences from braw brews to fine-foods-&-bonnie lassies, to life-changing injuries, before concluding with a bombastic whistle-stop tour of the Antipodes when The Pac are generously invited to visit the mighty New Zealand All-Blacks at home, after the Rugby World Cup concludes…

Mostly though it’s always about mud, mauling, getting stuffed and getting smashed – in every sense of the term…

Fast, furiously funny and splendidly boisterous, these cartoon antics might even inspire dedicated couch-potatoes to get out of the house… unless they order books and dinner online…
© BAMBOO EDITION, 2006, 2007 by Béka & Poupard. All rights reserved. English translation © 2007 Cinebook Ltd.