JohnnyEnzyme

Haha, gotta love that last panel for the Red Rackham vibes. 😁

So, I found Alas to be a nice, provocative read that also raised a lot of unsettling questions. It's set in a Paris of ~1900, in which anthropormorphic animals have caused humans to go near-extinct, hanging on here and there only in the wilderness. Story-wise, a hunting party finds a little human family of four, slaughters the parents, then captures a small boy and a girl named "Leaf." The rest of the book involves her story, as well as a porcine protagonist, "Léopoldine."

Why does Leaf, a little human captured by poachers, cause such a stir in the country's political and scientific class? She speaks, of course! But that is not the only reason for the prosecution to which she will be subjected, despite the help given to her by the journalist Fulgence and the young Léopoldine, a science student and daughter of a famous professor. From traps to incredible escapes, from false leads to real dangers, Fulgence and Léopoldine will end up discovering the terrible truth. Against a backdrop of political intrigue, romance and dementia, a romantic adventure whose feline, porcine and canine actors demonstrate very... human concerns. --Bedetheque

Thematically there are definite resemblances to Orwell's Animal Farm and similar works, for example in questioning whether humans and other animals can ever properly get along without the former mistreating the latter (and vice-versa). Also-- are hierarchy and the need for control utterly inevitable, whether within the wilderness or urban settings?

At ~70pp this reads quickly, and is more of a thought-experiment than something which aims for definitive conclusions. I wouldn't quite call it a classic, and it didn't exactly give me a 'cheerful, satisfied feeling' after reading it, but it's a fine story and good food for the thinking person, particularly one skeptical of man's footprint on Earth, let's say.

I was not previously familiar with the work of writer Hervé Bourhis, artist Rudy Spiessert, nor colorist "Mathilda," but they're definitely on my list from now on. Oh, and the publisher is Dupuis, 2010.

EDIT: Evidently a free English ebook was available for some time at this link, a service I was unaware of until today. Folks might want to check that site out for other free e-graphic novels.

This is from the book Les cybers ne sont pas des hommes ("Cybers are not men"), in which François Landon wrote the script. The book follows a format in which text appears on one page, then a wordless splash page on the next.

Me, I found the 1st/3rd-person narrative rather surreal, almost cynical in tone, in which a couple survivors of a plane crash must contend with a mad scientist's collection of robots... or something like that. Very 50's American sci-fi movie-style, it seemed to me.

The opening text begins: (thanks to Google-Translate)

So an interesting thought-experiment I guess, but I feel like Chaland pulled this kind of thing off far more effectively with his own Freddy Lombard, which was a pretty lively pastiche / parody series.

If any native French-speaker knows this one, I'd be interested in your views. Certainly the art is neat to look at for any LC-fancier!

Oh, and if you're not familiar with Chaland:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/chaland.htm

The back cover from the album we covered a couple weeks ago.

Three Belgium comic artists set out to make their fame & fortunes in the 'land of Walt Disney,' only to come crashing back to earth in Europe, ironically becoming BD superstars in their own rights.

My community is:
https://lemm.ee/c/eurographicnovels

The post I was working on was:
https://lemm.ee/post/2890991

To be clear-- I, in no, way, shape or form intend to delete my community. I wish the community to remain undeleted, thanks.

In case it matters:

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EDIT: Google retains the specific URL's of a bunch of our posts, such as the "Moebius" ones.

Baynes was an English artist who illustrated a landslide of works in an impressive variety of styles over the years. The turning point came from... well:

J.R.R. Tolkien had written Farmer Giles of Ham, a humorous novella about dragons and knight-errantry set in a faux-medieval period, but was dissatisfied with the work of the artist who had been chosen as illustrator. Baynes's work caught Tolkien's eye and she got the job, creating a lively set of pictures that wittily pastiche the look of illuminated medieval manuscripts. So perfectly did Baynes capture the essence of Tolkien's tale that he declared them to be "more than illustrations, they are a collateral theme". He also delighted in reporting that friends had said that her pictures had succeeded in reducing his text to "a commentary on the drawings"(!)

It seems Tolkien also wanted her to illustrate the Lord of the Rings books, but it was not to be. Just imagine the Hildebrandt brothers with serious competition, hey?

In any case, she did do a nice map for LotR:

Lots more of her art and life-story below, including more on her collaborations with Tolkien:

https://www.paulinebaynes.com/

Miou! Miou, get back here!
By Thoth, what's this magic?
Damned cat!

So I'm finishing up tome 1 of this series, titled Kheti, fils du Nil, by Isabelle Dethan & "Mazan," as published by Delcourt. It's nominally intended for young readers, but to me retains that certain charm of being a "childrens book" chock full of delights for adult readers. I also found it not too hard to understand as an A1/A2 French reader, with the Translate app on my phone filling in the gaps nicely.

Kheti, the apprentice scribe, gets bored copying out the precepts dictated by his grouchy master. Suddenly a cat, then a little girl run into the temple where he's studying. When the cat passes through a strange portal in a wall, the children are dragged after it. They're propelled into a deserted place, in ruins, very similar to the one they left. In fact they're now in the world of the gods. The children and the cat will have to foil the plot that's being hatched against the goddess Sekhmet so that she can release the waters of the Nile and thus ensure the future of the Egyptians. --Bedetheque, Google & Johnny

There are certainly some analogues here to Lucien de Gieter's classic children's series Papyrus, but I feel like this one takes the mythos and culture of Ancient Egyptian far more seriously, not to mention allows the story to find its own pace as opposed to pushing it forward ala the classic and perhaps dated 'adventure book' style of Spirou magazine, where Papyrus first appeared in the 70's.

Here's an invitation for ~~young~~ all-ages readers to discover Egypt through its legends, its deities, its customs and beliefs, for example via the critical importance of the annual Nile inundation. Various divine beings appear to considerable amusement and exasperation, such as Bes the bearded dwarf, Thoth as the learned baboon, a bored cobra goddess, and of course Apophis, an evil python. There's also a nice little glossary to help understand certain figures and nomenclature.

----> more art samples <----

Cruising Tumblr today, I was intrigued by the top-left piece. It reminded me somewhat of the work of the late, great Patrick Nagel. So then, to work finding more...

Wróblewska is a graphic designer, product designer and digital illustrator who graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Supraśl, Poland. She continued her visual arts education in Germany and Finland, later founding her own design studio. --ArtInHouse.pl with edits by Johnny

Her personal work is primarily in portraits, particularly depicting female characters surrounded by magical auras, who dominate, entice and evoke nostalgia. Her works are meant to tell short stories suspended through time and space.

(that left one reminds me a bit of how American Maxfield Parrish so deftly handled polka dots, such as with The Idiot and Florentine Fete)

More:
https://www.artmajeur.com/marta-joy
https://www.behance.net/martawrblewska1

This little story is from Romain Dutreix' darkly-hilarious Impostures series, which are collections of satirical tributes to famous BD cartoons.

---> https://imgur.com/gallery/IP8wYYR <---

Google's translation services didn't do too badly today. Hopefully it will continue to improve.

Note: this is all based on the prior post, its comments, and maybe a little bit of research on my end.

For alt-comix fans, this format is a parody of the glorious, enduring Red Meat indie-American comic, and thank you to Monkeydyne for helping me make this little fake comic. 😘

Someone in an Asterix forums recently complained that Obelix never got a proper love interest, and it got me thinking... I mean, it seems that across Asterix, Lucky Luke, Tintin and probably many other popular series, very few (or outright none?) of the main characters discovered a bona fide romantic partner, and I suspect that the difficulties of mixing romance with a humor format was one of the biggest reasons why.

That, and the fact that adding a love interest would generally mean that such a character would become part of the ensemble, which means another mouth to feed, so to speak. (more storyline & panels for them, etc)

This is kinda why I'm re-reading Henk Kuijpers' Franka series, tomes 14 & 15, in which Franka has a pretty exhilarating love / adversarial relationship with "Rix," an art thief she initially sets out to capture. It's sort of in the style of James Bond films like From Russia with Love and The Spy Who Loved Me, and I thought author Kuijpers brought it with a lot of style and interest:

Now, I suppose that the difference in Franka (compared to more directly humorous series) is that such a series only lightly relies on humor, and maybe has greater license to muddy the waters without getting bogged down. For example, "Rix" could easily have been killed off either immediately or down the road, with the spirit of the series suffering little or no detriment. (much like a Van Hamme series for example, such as Largo Winch and Lady S.)

Compare that to Asterix, Lucky Luke or Tintin, in which it would have been a notably tragic event, doubtlessly shifting the tenor of the series. For Asterix in particular it could have been plainly disastrous, offending readers along the lines of how Simpsons viewers were outraged by the episode which revealed that Principal Skinner was in fact a fraudster.

All that said-- I'm hardly some 'know-it-all BD/Euro person.' So maybe in some other series, particularly humorous ones, romance can work perfectly well..?

This story finds Corto reuniting with many friends from previous stories, searching for the Mu, the fabled lost city. The Mu story is incredibly convoluted, making this a particularly hard translation. Lots of statements contradicting previous statements. It took me a while to come to the decision that Pratt was doing this on purpose, but the discovery of just what Mu turns out to be is a big part of the ongoing story.

This one is one of the longest Corto stories, and there are a lot of trippy dreams and dreamy trips that happen throughout. This is the loosest of Pratt's draftsmanship, and my favorite Corto Maltese art. The story meanders all over the place. The ending is in fact very affecting, especially if one has read some of the previous books (Corto Maltese in Siberia would be the key book there). --ECC blog

I liked the Mayan-style reference art and watercolor style here, but I don't recall if I've read the "Mu" story itself, as it's been a while since I dipped in to CM. Some more art samples from the story here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22corto+maltese%22+%22MU%22&udm=2

First of all, thanks Ella & crew for clearing up Lemm.ee's recent image-hosting issues! 🤘

Unfortunately, I note that there are still several post images I uploaded here that went missing ~2 months ago and never did get restored. Some examples: [1], [2], [3].

Whatever. I'll just move them over to Imgur.

As a matter of fact, at this point I'd rather just host everything at Imgur so as not to burden LE with images, which can frankly get pretty big at times. But that's where I just now noticed a seemingly big problem with how LE processes image uploads:

• I noticed that the original 95k community banner which I uploaded a long time ago was turned in to a significantly worse-quality WEBP file at around 250% the size of the original.

• In my attempt today to completely move the banner over to Imgur, I uploaded a higher-quality link today, then noticed the same issues. Also, it seems the banner file got moved over to LE (against my intent) and bloated to ~440k for you folks. Not what I intended, and seemingly not good.

So to recount: whatever process is currently handling image uploads seems to be 1) needlessly re-saving them as less-efficient WEBP's, 2) reducing their overall quality, and 3) the software is forcing all logo & banner content to be hosted at the local instance rather than offering the choice of being hosted elsewhere.