Discover our selection of comics mixing cosmic horror, unbridled adventure, existentialist stories, science fiction …
Hundreds of new products have taken over bookstores in recent weeks, thanks to the literary re-entry. To guide you in this jungle of paper, we have selected ten nuggets. On the program: cosmic horror, unbridled adventure, existentialist stories, science fiction and strong testimonies.
• The great void
This is the back-to-school comic book, the work of a young author, Léa Murawiec, whose work was confidential for the moment and which should be awarded multiple prizes by the Angoulême festival in January 2022. This ample, virtuoso tale of the contemporary obsession with fame takes place in a futuristic society where people disappear when you stop thinking about them. The heroine, Manel Naher, is confronted with her programmed disappearance when she discovers the existence of a singer who bears her name …
Le Grand vide, Léa Murawiec, 2024 editions, 204 pages, 25 euros.
• Journey to the end of horror
Japanese horror master Junji Ito’s comeback to France continues this month. Halfway between the cruelty of the Brothers Grimm and the cosmic horror of Lovecraft, Sensor follows a journalist in search of scoops in search of a strange woman with golden hair, endowed with supernatural faculties. The last pages are among the most memorable of its author.
Sensor, Junji Ito, Mangetsu, 240 pages, 14,90 euros.
Behind the scenes of a video game
New addictive shonen from Glénat editions, Shangri-La Frontier immerses the reader in the world of a virtual reality video game. Focused on the discovery of this game in the tradition of Warcraft, the first volume reveals the main lines of a manga that seems like the film Free Guy want to explore the gloomy backstage of a large video game company.
Shangri-La Frontier, Katarina and Ryosuke Fuji, Glénat, 208 pages, 6.90 euros.
• Alice in Wonderland revisited in Canada
Painter Elene Usdin worked for two decades on this story, which traces a dramatic episode in Canadian history. René is a young boy who struggles to find his place in society and who prefers to escape into phantasmagoric worlds. Over the course of his dreams, he becomes a girl, Renée, then a flower, a cat and finally a tree. So many manifestations of a discomfort revealed in a shocking finale.
René.e aux bois dormants, Elene Usdin, Sarbacane, 272 pages, 32 euros.
• The life of a great artist
A major artist of the 20th century, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) is currently the subject of her first French retrospective at the Center Pompidou. Famous for her organic and colorful worlds and her paintings of the deserts of New Mexico, she embodied throughout her life an ideal of freedom, including comics. Georgia O’Keeffe, Amazon of Modern Art echoed brilliantly.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Amazon of Modern Art, Steinkis, 189 pages, 24 euros.
• Adaptation of a bestseller
Victoria Mas’ bestseller on the misogynistic origins of psychiatry is available in film (by and with Mélanie Laurent on Prime Video) and in comics (by screenwriter Véro Cazot and cartoonist Arianna Melone). In Paris, in the 19th century, Professor Charcot studied hysteria and every year in mid-Lent organizes a ball bringing together women considered to be crazy. But some are not and they will take advantage of the event to emancipate themselves.
Le Bal des Folles, Véro Cazot and Arianna Melone, Albin Michel, 136 pages, 21.90 euros.
•”Dragon Ball” en version comics
Co-author with Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) from Fire Power, the designer Chris Samnee realizes in parallel with his wife Laura Jonna, which he presents as a comic book version of Dragon Ball. In a world on the brink of extinction threatened by giant monsters, a young girl, Rainbow, searches for her missing sister, Jonna. A story that the artist drew for his children and which should delight the young readership.
Jonna, Chris and Laura Samnee, 404 Comics, 120 pages, 14.90 euros.
• An uchronia in Algeria
The Last Atlas, saga of SF which imagines an alternative history of Algeria, ends with a very surprising last volume. This trilogy features giant robots, responsible for a nuclear disaster for which Algeria continues to pay the tribute. A way for its authors to evoke under cover of fiction the trauma linked to the Algerian war and colonization and to exorcise it.
The Last Atlas, Fabien Vehlmann and Gwen de Bonneval (screenplay), Hervé Tanquerelle (drawing), Fred Blanchard (design) and Laurence Croix (color), Dupuis, 232 pages, 24.95 euros. Three volumes available.
• The UK’s LGBTQI + history
British illustrator Kate Charlesworth delivers a fascinating and valuable testimony to nearly 70 years of LGBTQI + history in the UK. The designer mixes her personal story with great history and resuscitates often forgotten icons in pages that look like a diary.
Pink Story, Kate Charlesworth, Casterman, 320 pages, 25 euros.
• The secret history of the Fifth Republic
Controversial figure of the Fifth Republic, Bob Denard (1929-2007) is the most famous of the French mercenaries, involved in various coups d’état and assassinations in Africa (Yemen, Congo, Gabon, Rwanda). Screenwriter Olivier Jouvray and designer Lilas Cognet retrace with biting irony and offbeat pictorial treatment the fate of this individual who sowed chaos before taking his secrets to his grave.
Bob Denard, the last mercenary, Olivier Jouvray and Lilas Cognet, Glénat, 144 pages, 22 euros.
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