|
|
Post by foxley on Jun 20, 2024 8:28:21 GMT -5
A question for those more familiar with European comics than myself. I have been trying expand the range and variety of European comics I read. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Barracuda by Jean Dufaux and Jérémy Petiqueux (in the Cinebook translation), I have been keeping my eyes open for a series with a similar feel. I recently heard of a book called H.M.S. His Majesty's Ship. Has anyone read this, is it any good, and is it similar to Barracuda? I also think this has been yet to be translated into English, but it looks like the sort of thing Cinebook is likely to translate at some point.
Haven't read that one, but I can fully recommend:
Long John Silver by Xavier Dorrison and Mathieu Lauffray; this one was the inspiration for Dufaux to actually do Barracuda. It has been translated by Cinebook.
and Jean-Charles Kraehn and Stefano Carloni "Redbeard" is also a new install of the classic pirate comics which hits some of the same beats as Barracuda. Also translated by Cinebook.
Thanks for that. I'll add them to my list.
Is Redbeard the one that the pirates in Asterix are a parody of?
|
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 20, 2024 10:24:41 GMT -5
Haven't read that one, but I can fully recommend:
Long John Silver by Xavier Dorrison and Mathieu Lauffray; this one was the inspiration for Dufaux to actually do Barracuda. It has been translated by Cinebook.
and Jean-Charles Kraehn and Stefano Carloni "Redbeard" is also a new install of the classic pirate comics which hits some of the same beats as Barracuda. Also translated by Cinebook.
Thanks for that. I'll add them to my list.
Is Redbeard the one that the pirates in Asterix are a parody of?
Yes. The series was originally published in Pilote, where Astérix was also serialized. (René Goscinny, writer of Astérix, was co-founder and editor-in-chied of the magazine). Part of the cast from Redbeard is also parodied in Astérix: the old pirate, the African watchman and Redbeard's son (who was, as I recall, left as a loan collateral at some point so the pirates could get another ship which was, naturally, promptly sunk). |
|
|
|
Post by tomalakis on Jun 22, 2024 8:59:33 GMT -5
Those are really well-made; like I said when you posted samples of Saudek's work upthread, it's really too bad hardly any of it has been translated. I really like the style. Thanks. Yeah, it's a shame. But funnily enough, his work is even hard to obtain in Czech Republic. There's some weird legal cloud surrounding his work. There are practically no reprints of his work being done. The Lips Tullian was reprinted 14 years ago and it was sold out in an instant and no new prints were ever made. And now you find that book being sold 10 times its original price on internet auctions... it gives his work an aura of exclusivity even over here. Another insight into Saudek's works' peculiarity is apparently, that most of his original drawings are lost. Saudek himself allegedly sold off or gave away many of the originals (meaning the individual pages, not the comic as a whole) to friends, and therefore reconstructing his works for the demands of the modern press is quite a problem because although his works exist in the original periodicals where they were published, the print quality was not the best (comics had a great stigma in communist Czechoslovakia). A lot of them were reconstructed by our leading Saudek expert Filip Konečný, when he literally put together a jigsaw puzzle of various sources (including detective work - searching for originals and persuading their owners) to prepare the most authentic reconstructions of Saudek's works. Some of the comics took him allegedly 3 years to fully prepare for the re-release. Here's and example of what he had to work with:     You can visit his page over here: (in czech ofc) www.filipkonecny.cz/kaja-saudek/ |
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Jul 8, 2024 11:30:32 GMT -5
Mister No: Hram Majastory: Guido Nolitta, art: Roberto Diso Originally published in Italy in 1976 in three separate issues of the regular Mister No series, no. 13-15 (June-Aug.) under the titles “Rio Negro,” “Ombre nella notte” and “Il Tiempo del Maya”; this Croatian collected edition was published in 2021 I decided to sample some of the material featuring another Bonelli Comics character I’d been curious about for some time. First a little background: Mister No was created by Sergio Bonelli (writing under his frequent pseudonym Guido Nolitta) and artist Gallieno Ferri. The series ran from 1975 to 2009. Mister No’s real name is Jerome ‘Jerry’ Drake, a US Army veteran who moved to Manaus (northwestern Brazil) right after World War 2, where he works as a bush pilot and occasional tour guide. This often gets him into all kinds of adventures and trouble, although generally he claims he just wants to live an unveventful life, working as little as possible and drinking and chasing skirts as much as possible. In this book, he gets hired by two American archeologists, the elderly Prof. Warren and his research assistant Patricia Rowland, to take them deep into the Amazon jungles to find what they believe is a long-lost and previously unknown outpost of a group of Mayans who fled there from Central America. Mr. No hires a river boat and assembles a motley crew. Of course, as always seems to happen on archeological expeditions, there are some nefarious characters also interested in the professor’s quest, and they initially attack Mr. No in Manaus and later follow them into the jungle. I found this a pretty by the numbers ‘jungle expedition’ story and honestly a bit bland. There are also quite a few chunks of the story where it’s just the characters sitting around and talking. The art by Roberto Diso, who apparently drew quite a few of the Mr. No adventures and is something of a fan favorite, is solid and serviceable but nothing I found incredibly remarkable. However, Mr. No seems to have been a pretty popular character in the Bonelli line, and has a pretty devoted set of fans here in Croatia. This story, by the way, has also been translated into English and published in the US by Epicenter Comics under the title “The Temple of Maya.” The Mister No series appears to be inspired by the 1954 film "Secret of the Incas," in which Charlton Heston played a skirt-chasing American working as a bush pilot in South America. It was a major inspiration in both plot and feel for "Raiders of the Lost Ark."  Italian adventure comics are very talky in general compared to their American counterparts. Issues tend to run around 100 pages a month, which is a pretty amazing production rate even using different artists for different story arcs. I don't mind the narrative decompression if the art is good, which it generally is. I own most of the pages for Mister No #319 (2001) 'Due Vite in Gioco' (Two lives at stake). Here's a sequence in which a sniper (the guy with the bowl haircut) has Mister No and his colleague pinned down in the Andes. The sniper ought to hold his position and wait for reinforcements, but he gets greedy to keep the bounty for himself, and he gets lured into a decoy trap and captured. The dialogue has a lot more discussion of military tactics than you'll find in an American superhero comic. The art is by Fabrizio Busticchi (who died at age 63, in 2017) and Luana Paesani.      It seems to me that the Italian adventure fumetti artists generate nicer results since they know it will be published in black and white. As you see, full backgrounds are very common. |
|
|
|
Post by EdoBosnar on Jul 23, 2024 11:08:49 GMT -5
Just got through reading the most recent, third, issue of a Croatian comics anthology series, with the rather amusing (or off-putting, depending on your point of view) title, Farto.  Like a similar local anthology series that I’ve been posting about in this thread, Strop ( here’s my review of the last issue), it’s basically a samizdat project run by a few local comics creators: Goran Sudžuka (whose name should be familiar to US comics fans), Bob Solanović, Fran Strukan, Valentina Briški and Matej Stić.  ( covers to the 1st & 2nd issues) They contribute most of the material, although it does include work by other creators, including (and unlike Strop so far), non-Croats. For example, this most recent issue has this beautifully drawn contribution (“Lester – That Old Feeling”) by a Spanish comics guy named Fernando Dagnino:  Many of the features have a tongue-in-cheek quality, and there are occasionally single page gag-bits, like this one:  Or this back cover illustration for the second issue:  There are also two ongoing features, an autobiographical one by Solanović and one by Tomislav Tomić about, well, rabbits and Jesus and stuff. You’ll notice that the sample pages I’ve posted are in English. That’s because it is produced bilingually, and you can get the digital versions (as pdf files) at this link: Fartographics.itch.io. I should note that when you click on the download button, you’re taken to a page that asks for a gratuity, so if you want you can throw a little money their way. For my part, I purchased the Croatian versions at three successive Zagreb comic conventions since 2022, which has the advantage of getting them signed by whichever of the creators happen to be around; below are signatures in my copy of the second issue from (clockwise from bottom left-hand corner) Fran Strukan, Valentina Briški and Bob Solanović.  |
|
|
|
Post by Dizzy D on Sept 1, 2024 14:09:22 GMT -5
I bought two European comics (read one of them, the other soon):  "Wat Vooraf Ging" ( What Came Before... or maybe not quite as literal, but better in spirit Previously...) by Hanco Kolk: Kolk explains in short black&white stories (who have apparently been published before individually in magazines and newspapers, but I never saw those) with a healthy dose of humour the origins of various stories and popular characters like "Romeo and Juliet", "Batman", "Micky Mouse", "Cinderella", "Frankenstein's Monster", "Dracula" and "Sherlock Holmes". For Romeo and Juliet, he starts for instance with Spielberg's Westside Story tracing back through remake and reworks back to Masuccio's "Mariotto e Ganozza". So far I've found Cinderella the most fascinating, where the story is traced back to *at least* the Bronze Age, as well as going in detail on the various studies done of the Cinderella story and myth by various writers and psychologists. The funniest one was the origin of Frankenstein's monster, where Kolk lists 14 "recipes" to create life according to creation stories, ancient alchemists and more recent science fiction stories with my favourite recipe being Doctor Konrad Dippel's version where Dippel obviously being effected by his own Elixir of Life (in real life various forms of highly potent hallucinogenics) loses his train of thoughts halfway through. The second comic I got was Habemus Bastard by Sylvain Vallée (Artist) and Jacky Schwartzmann (writer)
Not a chance to read it yet, but Sylvain Vallée's Antananarivo was one of my favourite books when it came out about 2 years ago. (Apart from that and Katanga I haven't read a lot with his artwork though, but I know he changed his style a lot over the years, originally having a more realistic style like William Vance).
|
|
