Cinebook Ltd: Spirou & Fantasio 21 - The Prisoner of the Buddha

 

Author: Greg, illustrated by Franquin and Jidéhem
Age: 8 years and up
Size: 21.7 x 28.7 cm
Number of pages: 64 colour pages

£11.99 incl VAT

ISBN: 9781800441354

Publication: May 2024

Spirou and Fantasio, paying the Count of Champignac a visit, discover that he is hiding an imposing visitor: a towering Russian genius who has created an anti-gravity ray. Unfortunately, the KGB is already hunting him, because he’s decided he wants to keep his invention secret. And to make things worse, his former associate, who knows almost as much as he about the ray, has been captured by Chinese authorities. Spirou decides it is vital to free the prisoner … 

 ISBN: 9781800441354

Regarding frequency of this title 18 came out in August 2021 and 19 in January 2023 and 20 was in September 2023 and I mention this for a specific reason; with this series (apart from where they refer to a past event or villain) the delay does not matter as each comic album has its own self contained story. 

We have our more-than-hapless adventurers (and Marsupilami) getting into all kinds of situations and all wonderfully drawn.  The visual gags abound and the colour work is as nice as you could wish for.  What I am still amazed at is the amount of detail in each panel with 7-8 panels on some pages the backgrounds can be as busy as the foreground.  Last page was a quirky bit of fun.

What is still a wonder is that we have had 20 Spirou and Fantasio adventures in comic albums -Running Scared, Virus, Wrong Head, Who Will Stop Cyanide? The Clockmaker and the Comet, Shadow of the Z, Z Rises Again, The Visitor from the Mesozoic to name a few and all just waiting to be purchased and read and chuckled over!  Twenty years ago people in the UK hardly knew what a comic album was and now Cinebook has deluged us with them!

To think my generation looks back on Buster, Valiant, Dandy and Vulcan but in future adults will recall growing up with Cinebook albums!

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Cinebook Ltd: Yakari 22 - Yakari and the Pronghorns

 

Authors: Derib & Job

Age: 6 years and up
Size: 21.7 x 28.7 cm
Number of pages: 48 colour pages
Publication: September 2024

£8.99 incl VAT

 ISBN: 9781800441446

On a lovely spring day, Yakari happens upon Quiet Rock, the tribe’s elder, busy admiring a Pronghorn – an American antelope. The young Sioux then spends a few days with the Pronghorn’s family, learning about their everyday life. With the help of several of his animal friends, he even helps them through several incidents –  from coyote attacks to prairie fires – and learns a valuable lesson about humility while he’s at it. 

Hmm. Not sure that I approve of the coyote as it is portrayed in this book as it does give youngsters the impression that coyotes are just plain nasty  -hey, I am a mammalogist specialising in canids and this is my blog so 😝

The idea of a young indigenous boy who can go out and peacefully walk amongst the wildlife and learn all about them works well even though in the past the story has gotten quite serious.  Of course this series is meant for youngsters so it is colourful and entertaining while educating to a degree and I know the books also appeal to older readers because, lets face it, this is pure escapism from a rather grim world.

Despite the coyote business (which may be blown out of context by me) I would still suggest this title for younger readers and with reading and comics these days you need to get them young and why not a comic album?

Cinebook Ltd: Thorgal 25 - The Blade-Ship

 

 

Authors: Rosinski & Sente

Age: 15 years and up
Size: 18.4 x 25.7 cm
Number of pages: 48 colour pages

£7.99 incl VAT

ISBN: 9781849184984
Publication: August 2024

While Jolan and his companions finally learn from Manthor what their grand destiny will be, Thorgal is still on the trail of the men who kidnapped his other son, Aniel. Along with jolly mercenary Petrov, he sails down a frozen river aboard a Blade Ship – a trade vessel equipped with heavy metal blades to break the ice. The journey is fraught with dangers – storms, raiders, spies, wild animals … and a group of shipwrecked Vikings looking for a mysterious chest …

Once you have started on Thorgal you are in it for the long run. Well, we have seen Thorgal in Mesoamerica and in a hot air balloon and a lot far weirder places and this time there is a race across the barren ice plains, pursuing tigers, Vikings up to all sorts of nasty things and mainly being very bad to villagers -it goes all Orca Killer Whale (if you ever saw that movie).

The pacing and story is excellent and the art top notch. Will he live long enough to find his son? He better had since the final words uttered in this volume are: "They've condemned your son to death, you know" and the promise of the final confrontation with the Red Mages is enough to get excited about!

Some 25 volumes in and I'm hoping I get to see the conclusion of the Thorgal saga!

Cinebook Ltd: Emilie's Inheritance vol. 1 - The Hatcliff Estate

 

Author: Florence Magnin
Age: 8 years and up
Size: 21.7 x 28.7 cm
Number of pages: 48 colour pages

£8.99 incl VAT

ISBN: 9781800441361
Publication: June 2024

Ireland, 1801. Two men are walking across the moors when they chance upon an unearthly mausoleum lost in the mists. 122 years later, Emilie Bertin, a cabaret singer going through difficult times, is contacted by a lawyer, who explains that she is the only heir to a man who vanished in mysterious circumstances, and now stands to inherit a castle and estate … in Ireland. Thus begins for Emilie the most fantastic of journeys. 

This book starts off with a  hint at the magical with two adventurer types or, more accurately, one treasure hunting "adventurer" and one moaner who you have to ask "Why his he involved in this?"  Our heroine, Emilie learns about an inheritance from a lawyer who appears to be doing what a rather dubious character tells him to -including leaving Paris.

This is a tale of adventure but with a fairy tale of sorts interwoven.  Is it any good as a story? Yes.  Is  the characterisation good? Yes.  The art is just lovely and the colour work is equally as good and not a surprise since Magnin writes, draws and colours this work. 

My interest has not been so high to see a next volume because this is a series that could turn out to be a masterpiece or a let down., If things continue in volume 2 as they do in this volume my guess is that it will be a series to be recommended.  I know eagerly await that second book!

Cinebook Ltd: XIII Mystery 3- Little Jones and XIII Mystery 4- Colonel Amos

 

Authors: Yann & Eric Henninot
Age: 15 years and up
Size: 18.4 x 25.7 cm
Number of pages: 56 colour pages

£9.99 incl VAT

 ISBN: 9781849182744
Publication: June 2024

Chicago, the Seventies. Life is tough when you’re an orphan in the streets – and even more so if you’re black. Little Jones, 10, doesn’t even know her real name. All she has is a brother who flirts with the Black Panthers, a streak of cunning and determination a mile wide, and a dream: that of some day enlisting into the Army. A chance encounter with war hero Major Whittaker will change her life forever...

Authors: Alcante & François Boucq
Age: 15 years and up
Size: 18.4 x 25.7 cm
Number of pages: 56 colour pages

£9.99 incl VAT

ISBN: 9781849182768
Publication: June 2024

Colonel Amos is the head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. His current investigation sends him on the trail of an agent of Mossad – Israeli intelligence. The ensuing operation – a joint FBI/CIA effort – will prove to be a difficult one. Not only because of the agent’s skill, or because the colonel and his CIA counterpart Giordino don’t get along, but also because before coming to the USA, Samuel Amos was a founding member of Mossad...

I reviewed volume 1 -Mongoose- here and in September 2014

https://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2014/09/cinebook-9th-art-xiii-mystery-i-mongoose.html

and volume 2 )Irina- here in January 2022

https://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2022/01/cinebook-ltd-xiii-mystery-irina.html

With those dates you can see where I am going. I got these books and had no idea what they were about and yet they were the third and fourth volumes in a five volume series (I really do hope to live long enough to see volume five but at my age it's a case of "fingers crossed").

I stand by everything I have written about the original XIII series as it had suspense, mystery, gripping action and when I read through it a couple weeks back my opinion had not changed.  Everything since that time has seemed to be cashing in on XIII.

Do not get me wrong; the writing is good and the art is of the quality we expect from European comic albums but they are just not gripping me.  Why was Clint Eastwood's character "The Man With No Name" so successful? Because we had the story and action but he was still a mystery to us. We had XIIIs story and now it is almost like making a movie to tell the store owner's life story or the guy running the stables when everything we needed rested on the mystery of Clint's character.

What happened in Mongoose or Irina and were they parts of a continuing saga picked up by Little Jones and Colonel Amos?  I have absolutely no idea since part one was eleven years ago -I keep double checking that date because I still can't believe it was that long ago. And the other volume was two years ago.  Nine years between volume 1 and 2 is not good and  two years between 2 and 3 and 4...not good. I do not have enough time to read all the past volumes in this and other series to catch up.

It does not matter how good a series or story is waiting between issues can kill a book. Look at when Fantagraphics decided that Love and Rockets (my favourite Indie book) was going to go yearly. I think I got as far as remembering up to volume 3 and then comic shops said it was not worth ordering in. Readers lost interest.

I do not know what goes on at Cinebook but I have been the company's biggest supporter since it started publishing but to open a package with 10 or so books and find that there were years between volumes kills the excitement and fun. There are other books I know that are part of a series but only two volumes have appeared a good while ago.  Hopefully, Cinebook can get caught up at some point.

At least the reader can buy volumes 1-4 and know that it leaves one issue to get and then the series is complete.  

2024 (another ) Avengers Annual 1

 

Let's be brief.

No. Thanos does NOT fight alongside the Avengers.  

The only Avengers in this book are Thor and Captain Marvel who are literally there for filling and making this an 'Avengers' title.  

The rest of the Avengers are all stuck on their "easier to get to world emergencies space city" because transporters are out.  Yes, the only Avengers in the entire Marvel Universe (in which every hero or anti hero is a standby or active roster Avengers) are stuck in space until they tell Thor in the last panel "We can beam down now". It is that lame.

This is, as it becomes very obvious and at warp speed, an Infinity Watch Preview. WTF are the Infinity Watch? I could not give a toss. Every single member of, no doubt, "Marvels latest sensation", were so badly characterised and acting like petty teenagers with dialogue that at times made the 1960s MLJ Mighty Crusaders comics look like Shakespeare writing at his best (no, William Shakespeare did not write for MLJ -Archie Comics- in the 1960s). 

 All I could think was that these were badly written throw-away characters for the plot and when they were being killed off I uttered the words "best move to date" but, of course, they all came back in the end.

I did use the word "plot" back there.  That made it seem that someone had sat down and written a good story.  They had not. No characterisation, no real action that was worthwhile and no Avengers (well, just two).  I even started asking myself whether the writer had ever seen or read anything with Thanos in before.

In recent years Avengers annuals have mostly all been number 1s (well of course they have because Marvel assumes that everyone buying comics is so dumb they cannot count beyond 1).

I have all the Avengers Silver and Bronze ages annuals as well as King Size and do you know what is in them?   Avengers (it sort of went with the title). Also, characterisation, plot and good dialogue. And they had fun and action in them.  Okay, modern writers (as we shall call them) get their literary education through TV, You Tube and movies. They obviously do not read books or anything that teaches them the basics.  The old writers got inspiration from movies but their major influences were literature. They read the classics, they read mythology and they were highly literate and good at what they did. Kirby was massively influenced by mythology and as he pointed out several times, Lee was a classics guy and the Thing joking about the words Reed Richards used was basically an in-joke (Lee being Richards and Kirby being Ben Grimm).

What we have with the 2024 Avengers annual is something with no merit or value. And this is what Marvel has done to its once proud flag ship title (with Fantastic Four fairing a little better).

The actual monthly Avengers title goes from fairly readable to piss poor and ....Marvel doesn't care. They are all getting pay cheques so can sit back and be lazy. This current book, as an annual, would never have even gotten through as a rough draft in the good days of creative Marvel.

Those days are gone.

Cinebook Ltd: Amazonia 1 - Episode 1 and 2

 

Authors: LEO & Rodolphe; illustrated by Bertrand Marchal
Age: 15 years and up
Size: 18.4 x 25.7 cm
Number of pages: 48 colour pages
Publication: April 2024

£7.99 inc VAT

 ISBN: 9781800441316
 

Brazil, 1949. A photographer crawls into a mission deep in the Amazonian rainforest and dies. On one of his films is an extraordinary shot: a man with skin white as snow and an elongated cranium. Deformed human … or extra-terrestrial being? Kathy Austin, having reluctantly become the specialist in such situations, is immediately sent by the crown to investigate. But the British aren’t the only ones with an interest in the bizarre creature …

Authors: LEO & Rodolphe; illustrated by Bertrand Marchal
Age: 15 years and up
Size: 18.4 x 25.7 cm
Number of pages: 48 colour pages
Publication: August 2024
 £7.99 incl VAT

ISBN: 9781800441408

On the trail of the bizarre, potentially alien creature photographed in Brazil, Kathy Austin has reached the isolated mission where the photographer died. Unfortunately, the road forward leads into the heart of the rainforest and the territory of extremely hostile natives. Continuing will be difficult and dangerous, especially as she appears to be followed by a number of people including two suspicious Germans … and the Brazilian Navy! 

It may seem that I am late on these reviews but the books were listed and sold out on some sites by the time my review copies arrived. So, I am still reviewing as received.

The art in these two volumes is excellent and exactly what one comes to expect in these series and Marchal does an excellent job and Sebastien Bouet on colours just adds even more.  Leo and Rodolphe are as good as ever on script, dialogue and overall story telling.  The tall guy with the big head...Alien or something else?  We are kept guessing.

I do have a problem with this type of series, though.  Volumes 1 and 2 arrived together so the story draws you in but...how long before volume 3?  We know there are 5 volumes in this story but the important thing is delays between books as that can kill the buzz you get and in the past long delays have meant that my aged brain has to be back and read previous volumes to remember why someone wants to kill someone else.

And as I have mentioned volumes did you know Kathy Austin, the heroine of this series, and a British secret agent, has tackled the weird before?  Oh yes; in the 5 volume Kenya and 5 volume Namibia series.

It's good old fashioned adventure combined with spies and science fiction -the type of story that the late John Creasey used to write in his Z5 Dr Palfrey series from the 1940s on (he also created The Baron, Gideon of the Yard (developed into TV series) and many others). I would recommend Kenya and Namibia and as Amazonia are the continuing adventures of Austin...yeah, buy them and see how good comics are made.