Comic Books
Background
I grew up reading lots of comic books (AKA “bandes dessinées”). I read lots of Franco-Belgian comics including classics known all around the world, such as Tintin and Asterix, but also Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck which of course originate from the US. I am not a huge fan of the superhero comics or manga, but that might still come.
Latest reads
Favorite comic books
Individual works
- Maus, by Art Spiegelman
- Le Cycle de Cyann, by François Bourgeon
- Le dernier chant des Malaterre, by François Bourgeon. This is the third part of Les compagnons du crépuscule, and contains some of the most amazing drawings I have ever seen.
- Les Cités obscures, by Schuiten and Peeters
- Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories, by Don Rosa
- La vie comme elle vient, by Lewis Trondheim. This is part of his series Les formidables aventures de Lapinot.
- L’incal, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius’s masterpiece.
Among the classics
- Tintin, by Hergé
- Asterix
- Yoko Tsuno
- One particularity of this series is that the hero is a woman and women constitute the majority of the important characters of the stories (even though the author, Roger Leloup, is a man). This never bothered me the least as a boy and, as an adult, I still love the series.
- Achille Talon
- This series has been a favorite of mine ever since I encountered it (only the original albums by Greg).
- It is probably impossible to translate this to English or other languages. The humor is quite tied to the French language. Greg even went to the US for a while to promote his character, but it failed.
- Alix
- Jacques Martin created this genre where the story takes place during the Roman antiquity.
- He started with Alix, and then created a modern version of the character with Lefranc (below).
- Lefranc
- The other major character created by Jacques Martin.
- Some of the stories in this series are just very good.
- My favorite might be Le Repaire du loup, drawn by Bob de Moor, which is a masterpiece of the genre. Unfortunately, de Moor was not allowed by the Studios Hergé to continue working on Lefranc.
- Blake et Mortimer (the original series)
- You can just read and re-read these albums without ever tiring of them.
- Thorgal
- This is a excellent series which mixes northern mythology, science-fiction at times, always with adventure.
- The art by Grzegorz Rosiński has evolved over time from album 1 to album 36 (1980 to 2018). Album 37, from 2019, features a new cartoonist, Fred Vignaux.
- Jean Van Hamme (1-29), Yves Sente (30-34), Xavier Dorison (35), Yann (36-37).