The second part of La Malédiction des Trente Deniers has now been out for a month. This is volume 20 in the Blake & Mortimer series, but the drawings are (predictably) done by yet another artist, Antoine Aubin! The style is not that bad (despite yet another awful cover!), but the scenario by van Hamme is very poor and the story does not move much when compared with the first volume: both heroes manage to find the location of the tomb of Judas and survive the trap set by their enemies… In the previous post about the first volume, I was mentioning the Indiana-Jonesque feeling about the plot, but it got much stronger with this volume! A ray of light comes from the heavens and burns the bad guy on the spot, while Blake & Mortimer escape by an unlikely underground river, along with the young Greek woman who had betrayed them to save her fiancé… The story borrows to earlier Blake & Mortimer stories, for instance the underground exploration is reminiscent of the beginning of l’Enigme de l’Atlantide, but the connection with Hergé s Tintin is stronger: the evil Beloukian behaves like Rastapopoulos in Flight 714, the shipwreck and the escape on a home-made raft is very similar to the one in The Red Sea Sharks, and several drawings evoke the atmosphere of The Black Island. Hopefully, the next volume will see a clear improvement by the new team, Sente and Julliard, but their botched Sarcophagi of the Sixth Continent is not very promising…
Archive for graphic novel
Blake & Mortimer [volume 20]
Posted in Books, Kids with tags Blake and Mortimer, book review, Edgar P. Jacobs, graphic novel, Hergé, Tintin on January 8, 2011 by xi'anlogicomix
Posted in Books with tags Bertrand Russell, foundations, graphic novel, incompleteness theorem, Kurt Gödel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Russell's paradox on December 11, 2010 by xi'an
Thanks to Judith Rousseau (who gave me the book to read), I have enjoyed very much Logicomix: An epic search for truth, which is written in the format of a comic book or a graphic novel (just like Nietzsche, even though it is drawn in an altogether different if pleasant and colourful style). This bestselling book is about Bertrand Russell‘s doomed quest for the logical foundations of mathematics and about the intense debates in the philosophical and mathematical communities at the turn of the century, ending with Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Philosophicus. (Which reminded me of another book, Wittgenstein’s poker, that I read ages ago.)
La Voie du Rige
Posted in Books, Kids with tags graphic novel, Le Tendre, Loisel, Quête de l'oiseau du temps on March 27, 2010 by xi'an
I have just received from amazon the last tome of the series La quête de l’oiseau du temps written by Serge Le Tendre and drawn by Régis Loisel. (The series has been partly translated in English as Roxanna and the quest for the time-bird.) I have loved this series since the first cycle was published, about twenty years ago, and the second cycle (which takes place thirty to forty years before) is even better! The quality of the drawings by Loisel is superb, with a clear mastering of colour and shade, and the fantasy plot is deep enough to keep the series more than attractive. The end of the first cycle was highly climactic and the second cycle contains enough threads and first rate characters to be gripping despite the slow publication rate (the first volume appeared in 2004 and the second one in 2007, as advertised below).
The story is slightly less innovative/informative in the third tome than in the two previous ones, with less of a “global picture” , but the central character of “Le Rige” only appears after a tense expectation and the final redemption words (“do you want to become my pupil?”) are quite surprising.
