EDWARD GAUVIN

The pitch for this series could not have been simpler: Highlander, with a hot babe. It’s written by Christophe “License to Print Money” Arleston, superstar of French epic fantasy comics with his Lanfeust universe, and drawn by Thierry Labrosse. Fair warning: kids and progressives, keep a wide berth. The second volume of ongoing series Morea, The Dragon’s Spine, is now available as a digital exclusive from Soleil at Comixology.

From now on, Morea Doloniac is at the head of the DWC, one of the biggest meta-national companies on the planet. But she is also a Dragon, that is to say, an Immortal who fights the Angels, a group dedicated to the destruction of the planet and to the degradation of humanity. So, when a bacterium that would allow the terraforming of Mars is stolen from the DWC, Morea and the knight Terkio have to take action. But is this incident, which leads them to Miami, a trap set for her?

A little boy tries to kiss a little girl. The little girl gets away and sends him packing. No big deal. In any normal childhood, it’d just be a funny story. But if it happens at school in a Socialist republic, halfway through a propaganda movie, years before the Berlin all is even showing the slightest signs of giving out… Well, that’s asking for trouble. This is the story of two children in a society where paranoia and obsessive control mean that even the most innocent gestures can be blown completely out of proportion.

This graphic novel  is now available as a digital exclusive from EuropeComics on a number of platforms (Izneo, Kindle, Kobo, Google Play, and Comixology).

Writer Christophe Bec begins his three-part adaptation of The Fulgur, a scientific romance by Paul de Sémant first serialized in Le Globe Trotteur from March to August 1907. Sémant (1855–1915), whose real name was Paul Cousturier, was an author and illustrator of children’s books, and this novel of adventure and exploration will appeal to fans not only of Verne, but also steampunk and process-oriented, problem-solving SF like Andy Weir’s The Martian. The old-fashioned plotting and flat characterization are completely transcended, however, by what really sells this book: Dejan Nenadov’s art, with glorious colors by Tanja Wenish. Feast your eyes:

The first volume, The Depths of the Abyss, is now available as a digital exclusive from Soleil at Comixology.

1907. After a terrible storm, a steamer in the Yucatán Channel sinks in an ocean trench with a billion dollars of pure gold in its holds. Three years later, a bold group of explorers and treasure hunters embarks aboard the Fulgur, a revolutionary submarine with an unlimited energy supply, to find the lost cargo. But their adventure, is about to take them 12,000 feet down, into a world that defies all comprehension!

My dalliance with softcore continues in this conclusion, something of a happy ending to the Monika diptych, forsaking the sex orgies of the first volume for a more goth/punk scene.

In the epic conclusion to this sensual, political and psychological thriller, Monika must make her choice! It’s either the Vanilla Dolls or her own sister… At the behest of Theo, Monika takes to the erotic stage alongside the Vanilla Dolls, but this new masked charade troubles her and much as it exhausts her. The Crucis Brigade lie in wait, their seductive dream of a new of a new West edging ever closer… and Monika is the only one who can stop her murderous sister, Erika!

“Guillem March’s art is really something to behold.” – Get Your Geek On
“Its sensuous art work and bewitching story is a breath of fresh air… prepare yourself for a vivid comic experience.” – Fan Girl Nation
“With Milo Manara like pencils and a script that would make Brian De Palma sweat, Monika is a steamy addition to any bookshelf… 9 out of 10” – Newsarama
“Sensuous, ethereal and quite simply put, utterly entrancing…5 stars” – Comic Crusaders
“Thilde Barboni that weaves an erotic thriller brought to life by the sensual palette of Guillem March” – Ramingo

The Walking Dead, but with werewolves. This series in love with all things American hails from Soleil’s new French Comics imprint, with page layouts and panel designs more like American floppies, resulting in pacing that’s less like traditional Francophone bande dessinée. Written by Jean-Luc Istin, with B&W art by Kyko Duarte and grayscale by Ellem. The longer French volumes, coming in at about 100 pages, have been divided in half, so you’re still getting bang for your buck: twice the length of the average American comics issue. The first part of the first arc, God Has a Sense of Humor, is now available as a digital exclusive from Soleil at Comixology.

Devastated by an extremely contagious virus, a great part of the American population have gradually been transformed into hordes of Werewolves. Survivors, fleeing the infested cities and countryside, have gathered in protected, walled communities. Setting foot outside these sanctuaries is like flirting with death…

Over time, the Werewolves have organized themselves too, and a new nation has arisen: feral, ravenous, and drunk on its newfound power. A nation that, having forgotten what it feels like to be human, is feeding on humans instead.

In this dark era, we follow the parallel destinies of several characters in this new United States. Their aim is to survive, but also to eradicate the epidemic!

In Las Cruces, the Marshall family tries to stay alive: John, the father, a novelist, is ill prepared for this new world, is struggling to find his place within it, but has to rise to the situation to protect his family.

In Philadelphia, Jeremy Lester, a blind Blues player, tries to save little Sarah, whose father became a Wolf.

Today, New Vessel Press releases Charif Majdalani’s award-winning novel Moving the Palace, the third of a trilogy loosely based on his family history, a.k.a. how I spent my last summer vacation: marching through the Lebanese professor’s fictionalization of his grandfather’s WWI escapades. The titular dwelling is teamstered piecemeal camelback through Northern Africa, and I felt, doing my 3000 words a day, involved in a similar long haul of something I was not quite be able to fathom in its entirety until it was reassembled at the end.

Lithub has an excerpt from the novel’s opening chapter, the first paragraph of which I present here:

This is a tale full of mounted cavalcades beneath great wind-tossed banners, of restless wanderings and bloody anabases, he thinks, musing on what could be the first line of that book about his life he’ll never write, and then the click-clack of waterwheels on the canal distracts him; he straightens in his wicker chair and leans back, savoring from the terrace where he’s sitting the silence that is a gift of the desert the desert spreads in its paradoxical munificence over the plantations, the dark masses of the plum trees, the apricot trees, the watermelon fields, and the cantaloupe fields, a silence that for millennia only the click-clack of waterwheels has marked with its slow, sharp cadence. And what I think is, there may or may not be apricot orchards or watermelon fields, but that is most definitely the desert in the background of the photo, the very old photo where he can be seen sitting in a wicker chair, cigar in hand, gazing pensively into the distance, in suspenders, one leg crossed over the other, with his tapering mustache and disheveled hair, the brow and chin that make him look like William Faulkner, one of the rare photos of him from that heroic era, which I imagine was taken in Khirbat al Harik, probably just after he’d come from Arabia, though in fact I’m not at all sure, and really, what can I be sure of, since apart from these few photos, everything about him from that time is a matter of myth or exaggeration or fancy?

Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Naked, the final volume of his Marie tetralogy, published last September by Dalkey Archive, has been nominated for the inaugural Albertine Award, an initiative of New York’s French bookstore founded by the Cultural Services of the French Consulate. Watch Eleanor Hutchins read an excerpt in a video coproduced with Bookwitty!

In its tenth anniversary year, SelfMadeHero is delighted to announce the publication of GAUGUIN: The Other World a new graphic novel by Italian illustrator Fabrizio Dori.

Renowned for his paintings of Tahiti and Polynesia, Paul Gauguin abandoned his married life in Denmark to find liberation and inspiration in paradise. Fabrizio Dori vividly celebrates the life and work of the Post-Impressionist artist who is closely associated with Van Gogh, and whose reputation grew after his death. A series of essays contextualize his work.

This sensitive biography runs through Gauguin’s days as he reviews them from the perspective of his final moments, bringing to graphic life some enduring questions about being an artist vs. being a human being, and what romantic legacies we inherit from the towering figures of earlier eras. While translating this, I went back and read Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, with its fictionalized, Anglicized version of Gauguin, one of the first artists to scandalize society by turning his back on it to pursue his art.

Polar Night, Volume 3 of Golden City, an all-ages series written by Daniel Pecqueur with art by Nicolas Malfin, is  now available as a digital exclusive from Delcourt at Comixology.

Held prisoner for six months in a disciplinary penal colony, which is lost in the depths of the Arctic Ocean, Harrisson Banks is no more than just a number: 990320. Desperate, alone, Banks has not been forgotten though, as his enemies nevertheless pursue their plans to kill him.

“If there’s one thing people can’t stand having called into question, it’s their certainties,” writes prolific scripter Xavier Dorison, who in previous series such as The Third Testament and Red One has worked with renowned artists from Alex Alice to Terry and Rachel Dodson. In his preface to the 16th century swashbuckler Sword Master, with art by Joël Parnotte, he enjoins readers to imagine first “western civilization if all life, thought, and death were filtered through a single prism: God,” and then “an upheaval that made the invention of the wheel and the discovery of the New World seem trivial in comparison”: namely, the Protestant Reformation. The religious wars are the backdrop to this wintry adventure, which yielded the death of… a distant relative? (Spoiler alert: his head gets smashed to a pulp.)

Dorison sneaks other nifty historical aspects into this bitter tale, like the merits of bastard swords vs. rapiers, working technological change into characters’ personal worldviews and conceptions of honor.

It’s 1537. Deep in the mountains of the Jura, a group of fanatical Catholic mountain dwellers track a young Protestant and his guide. Big mistake. For his guide is no other than the former master-at-arms of Francois I, Hans Stalhoffer. After being defeated in an unfair fight, Hans had exiled himself from the court. Some years later, Gauvin, the surgeon who saved his life, and his young apprentice beg his help. They wish to travel undercover to Switzerland to publish a French vernacular Bible. The only possible route is to take the infamous Jura Pass. Hans, now a drunk drowning in debt, is willing to sacrifice a few days to guide the two men through the hostile mountains. But when the authorities get wind of the scheme, they launch a wide-scale manhunt led by his former court rival. Hunted, injured, and freezing, Hans now faces the hardest fight of his life.

This graphic novel is now available as a digital exclusive from EuropeComics on a number of platforms (Izneo, Kindle, Kobo, Google Play, and Comixology).