Archive for graphical novel
De pierre et d’os
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags aquarelle, Arctic, book adaptation, book review, chamanism, ethnography, Far North, First Nations, graphical novel, Greenland, husky dogs, Inuits, inukshuk, Lille, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Northern lights, Paul-Émile Victor, qimuttoq, sledge dogs, supersition, tupilak on June 30, 2025 by xi'an
Pierre Christin (1938-2024)
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags A Suivre, bande dessinée, BD, cover, Ecology, Enki Bilal, fantasy, Franco, graphical models, graphical novel, hunting, hunting lodge, International Brigades, Jean-Claude Mézière, journalism, mai 1968, Métal Hurlant, obituary, Pierre Christin, Pilote, political assassination, science fiction, space opera, Spanish Civil War, University of Bordeaux, USSR, Utah State University, Warsaw Pact on October 15, 2024 by xi'anThe BD-ist Pierre Christin died on 03 October. His heritage is a huge collection of graphical novels he scenarized. Many of them masterpieces, from the political Black Order Phalanges with Enki Bilal, where a group of [very] former International Brigadists (pictured in 1937 on the cover below) reconstitutes to fight to death a parallel group of fascists who fought in Franco’s war against the Spanish Republic and rerouped (circa 1980) againstprogressive forces throughout Europe, followed by a scathing description of the decaying USSR in Hunting Party, again with Bilal, to
the science-fiction series of Valérian (and Laureline) [along with Jean-Claude Mézière] that spans decades and follows societal progress by seeing Laureline becoming the main character (rather than her female partner Valérian), fighting dictators, conglomerates, colonialism, and pollution—more a space social drama than a space opera, as he once stated—, to
the 86-ish ecology cum fantasy trilogy, La Croisière des Oubliés, again with Bilal. Plus other great books that I read and re-read during my (extended!) childhood, mostly in the BD journals that were created over that period, from Pilote to Métal Hurland, À Suivre, &tc. He was also involved in teaching, from a visiting position in contemporary French literature in USU, Salt Lake City, to a professorship in journalism and communication at the University of Bordeaux, where he created the first French public school of journalism, now Institut de journalisme Bordeaux Aquitaine. A great artist, may he now roam forever the deep space landscapes he and Mézière created!
a journal of the chaos, conquest, war, famine, and death mid’year
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, Wines with tags BD, book review, Brussels, censorship, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, Don Quixote, film review, frijoles, gangster movie, graphical novel, Guatemaltec cuisine, Journal of the Plague Year, maze, Netflix, ospedale, Paris, Paris 2024 Olympics, PSG, rhubarb, Russian invasion, time travel, tortilla, Ukraine, ze kitchen galerie on August 24, 2024 by xi'an
Read a third of (a physical copy of) T.J. Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets before giving up. Unbearably boring, predictable, dripping cheap sentimentality and cheaper robotic humour. Worse than the earlier House in the Cerulean Sea. That I already did not much enjoy. (I bought the book in Edinburgh while at SMC 2024, as a 3-4-2 deal, along another one I had to return because it was volume 2 of a series I had not yet started!, not so much of a deal in the end!!, even though I manage to exchange it for Naomi Novik’s The Golden Enclaves) Also read the silent BD Béatrice, by Joris Mertens, set in the same imaginary city as Nettoyage à Sec, a mix of Paris (mostly) and Bruxelles/Brussels (partly), except with a fantasy side. The 1960’s atmosphere, the asphyxiating weight of the city, the isolation of the young saleswoman, the large scale boxes make both BDs outstanding. And I started Don Quixote (in French), which reads surprisingly well (possibly thanks to the translation) and layered with many levels of irony and pastiche, never too late to discover classics I had not yet read!
Made heaps of rhubarb preserve and jam (with honey, lemon, maybe too much lemon, and chia seeds). And learned from friends how to make Guatemalan maïze tortilla and frijoles. Had a great meal with them at Ze Kitchen Galerie, on the eve of the Paris Olympics, which meant entering a maze of barriers installed along the Seine river (and Xing paths with the president of the local football club, not that I would have had the slightest clue of who he was without the excitement of passerbys). Alas missed a chance-in-a-decade opportunity to have dinner at Da Franz, due to my ospedale days.
Watched the first season of Travellers, a 2016 Canadian TV series about time travel agents arriving in the current era to save the future and the many paradoxes it induces. Soon spiralling into homely concerns and out of the slightest plausibility, if with enticing characters.
Jean-Claude Mézières (1938-2022)
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags 1970s, BD, French literature, graphical novel, Jean-Claude Mezières, Pilote, science fiction, space opera, Star Wars, Valérian et Laureline on January 30, 2022 by xi'an
also sprach Nietzsche
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags Andrew Gelman, atheism, Friedrich Nietzsche, graphical novel, Maximilien Le Roy, Michel Onfray, Philosophenweg on March 30, 2015 by xi'an
