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Debaser

Thorgal

Yesterday, in the weekly team newsletter I help produce, I started including a “bandes-dessinées” (Franco/Belgian comics) recommendation column, and figured why not share it here too. Here’s what I started with.

I love the sequential arts, and have found myself reading comics, manga, and bandes-dessinées (BD) my entire life. After half a life spent in Japan, I drifted away from the world of BD, but since moving to Montreal I’ve been diving back into that world, discovering interesting new series, while also re-reading some of the classics – and I get all of these from one of our nearby libraries, since we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of the Mordecai-Richler and Marc-Favreau libraries. Each week I’ll highlight one of these series – and yes, they’re all in French, but even if you struggle with the language, comics are a great way to practise your reading skills (and some of these may have English editions as well).

For this first column, I’ll bring up Thorgal, a series I’ve been devouring in recent months. It’s a fantasy series – with a touch of sci-fi – that tells the story of man who is raised in Viking culture, but later discovers that his roots lie elsewhere. Written by Jean Van Hamme (XIII, Largo Winch, Wayne Shelton) with fantastic art by Gzegorz Rosinski, there are 35 books in the main series so far (Van Hamme handed over the reigns to Yves Sente from the 30th volume), and a few spinoff series as well. I never got into Thorgal when I was a kid – I think I found it too dark at the time – so this was my first time reading it, and I love it. I’m not the biggest fan of fantasy, but the stories here are epic, with ongoing storylines that keep you looking forward to the next book, and the sci-fi inclusions are fun too.

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Debaser Uncategorized

Les vieux fourneaux

This is a French graphic novel that came out a couple of years ago that I was noticing in lots of year-end “best of” lists, and kept wanting to read. I was lucky enough to get it as a present in a gift exchange we did at work, and really quite enjoyed it. Lovely art and a fun tale of a bunch of geezers who come together in an unexpected way. I see now that there are two other books out in the series, and I really want to read them as well.

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Anime Film Manga

Christophe Ferreira

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I came across this interview (in French) with Tokyo-based Christophe Ferreira, a French person who works in the Japanese animation industry. It’s interesting to hear him talk about how he got his start — a difficult one, considering the incredibly low wages he received as someone starting out — and to see how he managed to stick with it, while at the same producing comics of his own, in the form of the series Le Monde de Milo, which he has just launched in Japanese as well.

The interview also led me to the discovery of the site Furansujin Connection, which was created to give support to French people working in the Japanese animation industry — and to also give info on how someone can get started. As with the interview, the site is all in French, but it’s a rather impressive resource for someone looking to make it in the world of Japanese anime.

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Berceuse Assassine

Following my enjoyment of the Undertaker series, I decided to try and find some more work from the creators of that book, and came across this 3-book series by the same artist, and written by Tome, whose work I’ve also enjoyed in the past (Spirou & Fantasio, Soda). Berceuse Assassine has a rather interesting concept, telling a noir story 3 times, with each book seeing it from the perspective of a different character. The kicker is that the character featured in the 3rd book did not appear to be important at first, but ends up being the lynchpin. It’s an older series – was published in the late 90s – and well worth a read.

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Undertaker

As I mentioned in my favorite media of 2015 post, when it comes to graphic novels, I tend to play a lot of catch up at the end of the year, as the year-end lists start to come out. On the French side, a new Western series called Undertaker piqued my interest, and so I decided to give the first book a try (there are 2 out). I’m a big fan of the Western genre in general, no matter what the medium, and this is definitely one of the better entries, with a great story – and killer cliffhanger ending – and solid art. I immediately had to read the second book, which offered up a satisfying conclusion to the first story arc, and sets up things nicely for future books. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more.