{"id":29238,"date":"2024-01-10T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T09:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=29238"},"modified":"2024-01-08T18:15:55","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T18:15:55","slug":"the-bugle-boy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/01\/10\/the-bugle-boy-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bugle Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Alexandre <\/strong>Cl\u00e9risse<\/strong>, translated by Edward Gauvin<\/strong> (Europe Comics)
\nNo ISBN – digital only edition<\/p>\n

The dead don\u2019t 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 <\/em><\/strong>was first published in 2009, offering a humorous, whimsical tone to what must have been a pretty depressing situation\u2026<\/p>\n

Translated by digital-only Europe Comics and apparently now only available digitally, The Bugle Boy<\/strong> is a story of debts paid and brothers-in-arms honoured, which begins as an ageing veteran decides to settle some long outstanding affairs\u2026<\/p>\n

Marcel<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, 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\u2026<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s grandly installed in the local town museum – which is now dedicated to bugles of all kinds – as the heart and soul of the town\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u2026 Not if Marcel and Andrea have anything to say about it\u2026<\/p>\n

Writer\/artist Alexandre Cl\u00e9risse 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 Angoul\u00eame and began releasing such superbly readable Bande Dessinee as Jazz Club<\/em><\/strong>, Souvenir de l\u2019empire de l\u2019atome<\/em><\/strong> (seen in English as IDW\u2019s Atomic Empire<\/strong>) and all-ages Seek-&-Find book Now Playing<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n

Heartwarming and irreverent, poignant and deeply funny, The Bugle Boy<\/strong> has all the impact and gently subversive wit of classic Dad\u2019s Army <\/strong>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\u2026
\n\u00a9 2019 – Dargaud – Cl\u00e9risse. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alexandre Cl\u00e9risse, translated by Edward Gauvin (Europe Comics) No ISBN – digital only edition The dead don\u2019t 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 … <\/p>\n

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