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Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011






Some background: Bandes dessinées means drawn strips and in France comics are considered one of the ninth arts. Comics are usually published in albums which is roughly A4 standard in size with about 40 pages. The productivity of the writers and artists vary and it is not uncommon that a comic is only published once a year (the Nikopol Trilogy consists of three albums that was published from 1980 to 1992).

Some key comics:

Barbarella by Jean-Claude Forest. The comic that really got the sci-fi comics in Europe started. It's basically about Barbarella, a galactic outlaw, who fucks her way across the universe.


Valerian and Laureline by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières. One of the most popular comics in Europe. It's about two agents in time and space (Laureline was a peasant girl from the 11th century France before she became an agent) who eventually rebels against their agency. It is also hugely influential outside of Europe and especially George Lucas cribbed a lot of his designs from the comic, which lead to this passive-aggressive drawing by Mézières:



Thorgal by by writer Jean Van Hamme and artist Grzegorz Rosiński
Set in the viking age, a viking chief adopts a child that literally fell from the stars. It's a comic that mixes sci-fi and norse mythology and currently there's a huge crossover event going one where the norse gods is fighting the christian god for supremacy over the humans.


The Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius. An incredible dense comic where Jodorowsky writes about everything from tarot to politics. It also had a lot of spin-offs which makes up the so called Jodoverse.


The Nikopol Trilogy by Enki Bilal. Egyptian gods suddenly appears in future France, hilarity ensues. Enki Bilal is a yugoslavian artist who moved to France when he was nine. He's known for his surreal comics and inspiring chess boxing. His other main work, the Monster Tetralogy, (which is also hugely recommended) deals with the breakup of Yugoslavia from a future viewpoint.

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joehonkie
Jan 12, 2006

I'm a member of STARS.
Good art overload.

I love me some Valerian and Laureline and I enjoyed Incal.

I keep seeing Thorgal and I'm always curious as to the style of it. Might have to pick some up.

What is your take on Aldebaran?

EDIT: Recently picked up Retroworld, Orion's Outcasts, and Downward to the Earth but I haven't had time to read any of them yet. I should get on that.

joehonkie fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Nov 21, 2018

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




joehonkie posted:



What is your take on Aldebaran?


It's..okay.

joehonkie
Jan 12, 2006

I'm a member of STARS.

Alhazred posted:

It's..okay.

Well that's not promising.

Valerian is incredible. Great art and stories. I found it like right before the movie was announced but....oh jeeez, that movie. I mean it did look nice, I guess.

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos
Hell yeah, un nouveau fil des Bandes dessinées!

BioTech
Feb 5, 2007
...drinking myself to sleep again...


I haven't read all of them, or even enough to give more than a general description, but I really enjoy Storm whenever I read one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_(Don_Lawrence)

Astronaut flies into some anomaly, returns a few hundred years later to a post-apocalyptic Earth.
Not the most original story, but I really dug the art since it reminded me of those gorgeous Chris Foss scifi covers.




The one that stuck with me the most was the Von Neumann Machine where they investigate the titular machine and find (I don't remember how) a life-size replica of Dante's Inferno built underground.
They have to traverse it, walking over frozen lakes with the legs of liars sticking out, enormous demons guarding gates, etc. It was amazing.



The Incal was already mentioned, but I thought The Metabarons was way better and definitely a classic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabarons



The story follows multiple generations of Metabarons, unstoppable warriors who have such improbable powers that they single-handedly destroy entire spaceship armadas.
It would have been easy to turn this into a mindless action spectacle, but the story itself very much follows the pattern of Greek epos, dealing way more with telling legends than just showing fights.
There is still a lot of gorgeous violence, but it has so much more to it.

If you've seen Jodorowsky's Dune (if you haven't, what is wrong with you?) this is a very enjoyable experience, because all those ideas he failed to put to film were poured into The Metabarons instead.


joehonkie
Jan 12, 2006

I'm a member of STARS.
What are people's favorite Valerian and Laureline stories? I've read the first five and Ambassador of the Shadows (which is the first thing I read and which the movie is very vaguely based on) and loved Ambassador of the Shadows and Empire of a Thousand Planets the best.

Storm looks good. I like Foss and will be interested in anything that looks like that.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




BioTech posted:



The Incal was already mentioned, but I thought The Metabarons was way better and definitely a classic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabarons



There's also the Technopriests which is set in the same universe as the Metabarons and the Incal. The Technopriests is a cult who rules the galaxy with video games:

Three children are born as the result of a rape by three space pirates, one red girl with four arms, one boy who's black haired and one albino kid:

The albino kid tries to take over the cult in order to take it down. It's not as essential as the Metabarons and it's mainly a chance for Jodorowsky to rant about organized religion.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




Some more Enki Bilal. His latest work is a post-apocalyptic story where earth has frozen over and humans is no longer the dominant species:

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Jordan7hm
Feb 17, 2011




Lipstick Apathy

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Hell yeah, un nouveau fil des Bandes dessinées!

Heck yeah. Just saw this.

I resubbed to izneo’s unlimited service. Massively recommend to anyone who can read French.

I’ve been poking at different books, it doesn’t really fit in terms of style but I just read Le Monde de Milo which is a kids oriented book about a boy who can move between worlds. Child of destiny, orphan boy, evil wizard etc. More of the Marcinelle style than the more realistic or abstract stuff that’s been posted.

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