Professeur Tryphon Tournesol (Cuthbert Calculus) appears in the lower-left corner... en train de lire un journal? (oof, did I say that right?)

Eh, as for me?
Art + BD = pure fascination

(hence, the share)

From T3 of the series "Les gardiens du Maser" (The Keepers of the Maser), by Turin's Massimiliano Frezzato. I've only read a little so far, but it seems like solid sci-fi / fantasy fare. I'd say the immediate eye-grabber is the art, which delivers some nice, slightly gauzy Juan Gimenez vibes.

https://www.lambiek.net/artists/image/f/frezzato_m/frezzato_maser2.jpg
(right-click as needed)

Frezzato saw his first story printed at the age of 17, and continued to publish short stories and illustrations during the second half of the '80s. A collection of all his short stories since 1984 was published in 2008. His first series was "Margot," a co-production with American writer Jérôme Charyn, of which two books were published by Glénat in 1990 and 1991. His best-known creation is the 'Maser' series, which runs eight tomes and has been translated to French, German, English and Dutch. Sadly, he passed away at only 57yo in 2024. --LBK & Johnny

Here's the first three Maser covers:

BDT with more on this one:
https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-310-BD-Gardiens-du-Maser.html

Konstantin is from Yekaterinburg. He's strived to develop a completely unique style, savage in nature at times, with a sort of sharply philosophical take on the happenings and beliefs of the day. Also, I find that the framework of his pieces often involve classic, mythological foundations. --Johnny

Memento Mori
(right-click as needed)

Atrox

Note that some of these are pretty low-calorie in quality. If you'd like to see higher-res versions, I'd suggest adding one of those extension which allows you to swiftly image-match via TinEye, Google-Images, etc. (it's been a lifesaver for me)

Once sacred, now discarded?

Arrow

One is Still Left

Chase

Votre commande, monsieur?

And then, it got worse

Miracle

Foof. That last one is pretty wild (read: disturbing to me), but I understand that it has to do with the ancient archetype of the savior's sacrifice.

Korobov depicts an even more savage-version via an angelic lamb being ripped to pieces by a pack of wolves, but I decided not to share that one here. You can find it on this guy's other sites, if you care to.

And of course, his other sites are chock full-o-goodness indeed:
https://konstantin-korobov.pixels.com/
https://www.latamarte.com/en/artists/3pXt/

NOTE: I'm completely cool with Russians, as long as we can also say:

❤️ SLAVA UKRAINI ❤️

Anyway, hope you found something to enjoy, and I apologise if some of this stuff was a bit over the top. 😅

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-86026-BD-Je-suis-leur-silence.html

Kinda challenging to summarise quickly, but the young woman with the punk-blondie haircut is "Eva Rojas," a wunderkind of a gifted, budding medical doctor, except when she discovered that she couldn't deal with dead bodies, and therefore steered over to psychiatry, instead. (she's in her late-20's here, a full M.D., technically)

(right-click as needed)

Anyway, before all this happens, she's been asked by a college friend to be their advocate in the reading of a major will in their family. Fair enough! Only problem? The patriarch of the family is evidently poisoned the very night before, with Eva the one who discovered the body(!) (and yes, now she's the main suspect)

From this point on, Eva's obsessive, super-talented native abilities seem to goad her in to playing detective on the case... trying to figure out the hows and whys upon the whole affair. It's rendered all the more dangerous for her, because this rich, influential family in question is NOT used to being examined under such lights.

Not to mention, the local police (and their detectives) retain a rather dim view of her 'hopping aboard.'

NOTE: Sorry, I forgot to mention above that Eva also tends to VIVIDLY remember the three most influential people in her life, which is why we see glimpses and full panels of the trio, above. In the story, these 'actual ghosts' range from super-helpful all the way to super-distracting.

PROS:

• Nicely-done story, with the reader constantly in suspense (and no cheap tricks, either) .
• Amazing reveal at the end, just like the classics.
• Solid world-building, which all came together for the most part.
• Eva's an absolutely hilarious, jaw-dropping main character from out of nowhere, and IMO comic-dom has been *starving* for such for many years. (oof)

CONS:

• While Eva's a fascinating character, she's also a bit 'over-the-top' to the point that it's hard to entertain her actual existence, at times. Somehow she's super-smart and super-talented, yet completely reckless to the point of self-destruction. Then again, she's bipolar, and I have no idea what that's really like.
• I don't care too much personally for 'Disney-esque reactions,' and this tome came close to pushing that line, but to its credit, never went over that line

In any case, this was a load of quality fun, and Jordi Lafebre is DEFINITELY someone to take note of.

https://www.lambiek.net/artists/l/lafebre_jordi.htm

Let me try to clear up some confusion & rancor based on "Strange Planet" being added here a couple weeks ago:

First of all, the sidebar is not meant to strictly consist of other BD comics. Rather, it's meant to be a mix of the most useful BD sites we can imagine, plus a mix of very good and useful other review-places & hot sources.

TBH, as this community evolves, it will probably involve some shuffling around of these things, as we do already have a thread of various goodies.

In any case, "Subnormality" is without doubt, one of the top-three continuing webcomics in history, alongside SMBC and XKCD. The difference is that this one doesn't seem to get seen very often due to it's overlarge-size and unusual nature. Hence, why I chose to list it here, as meanwhile 'everyone' knows SMBC & XKCD.

Hope I made better sense here than last time. 😅

Bob de Moor was one of the Belgian comics masters of the XXth century. I just finished a "Balthazar" book of his, and have collected some comics like the above to share in a future post, but here's this sample for now.

He was a versatile creator indeed, however:

Despite his personal creations, De Moor sacrificed most of his own career to his loyal service for Hergé. As a result, the general public is less familiar with his name than they could have been, while millions of readers have seen his artwork in 'Tintin' without even realizing it.

https://www.lambiek.net/artists/d/de-moor_bob.htm

I already, dearly love stained-glass art, but in this case... I'm rendered s*&!@$ASjkhf...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palau_de_la_M%C3%BAsica_Catalana

This is all happening in ~50 BC, so... pretty impressive, eh?

(see how many anachronisms and Easter Eggs you can spot)

Of course it's from the classic album Asterix and the Big Fight (1966). Now for me, one of the rather throat-clutching things to see in this tome was poor old Getafix the druid (i.e. Panoramix) being squashed by menhirs several times, idiotically and carelessly thrown by Obelix. The result was that Getafix turned in to a (mostly) harmless lunatic for most of the story, which was probably even more weird and disturbing to see. Guess it's good he had that classic comic-book elasticity and invulnerability, then.

It seems there was a 1989 animated film version, but that one was more of a pastiche, and not much of a true adaption. However:

(right-click as needed)

In 2025, Netflix released a 3D animated miniseries, Asterix and Obelix: The Big Fight. This adaptation, which expanded the book's original story and altered several plot elements, started streaming on April 30, 2025. --WP

Anybody catch that one? If so, what did you think?

There's a movie trailer and promotional page here, and image samples at google.

(this one's for you, @[email protected], altho I'm not sure I tagged you correctly, and not sure it will work across different software types, i.e. Lemmy & PieFed)

"WD" is a highly beloved, brilliant, wonderful, all-ages tale first published as a 413pp novel in 1972, written by Englishman Richard Adams. It's been adapted in film, twice in TV, theatre, radio, as a role-playing game, and even as a musical album(!) Until 2023, there'd been no BD or GN adaptation until Americans Joe Sutphin (artist) and James Sturm (adapter) finally gave it a shot.

(right-click as needed)

In brief, it's about an extraordinarily dangerous journey a small group of rabbits make in order to escape certain death. The problem is that developers are out to turn the land their warren is built on in to a new housing development, which one gifted, runty rabbit ("Fiver") has a major premonition about. Their journey to find a new home is an unusual, perilous affair which seems to stretch on for eternities, and pushes just about every member of the group near death, exhaustion, or a nervous breakdown at one point or another. In short, WD is very much a 'hero's journey,' not unlike Odysseus' 10yr return from the conquest of Troy, but more of a group thing, like Jason & the Argonauts, say.

(a taste of daily life before the apocalypse)

The GN seems to be very well received by all audiences. There are various representative reviews at Amazon, and a very nice breakdown at NPR-Wisconsin.

You can also view a whopping ~20pp at BDT, in French:
https://www.bdgest.com/preview-4442-BD-watership-down-recit-complet.html

NITPICK TIME?

Personally, I mostly enjoyed the adaptation, and would rate it about 4.1/5 stars or so. TBC, the novel was a beloved treasure from my childhood, so my standards were ultra-high on this one, fair game or not. The biggest problem I feel is that sometimes it's almost impossible to adapt certain literary works for a variety of reasons. Specifically, I feel that one of the key issues here was in needing the reader to see things from a 'lapine' POV. An FPS (first-person-shooter) perspective, so to speak. But as with most other adaptations, scenes in WD were moreso portrayed as the characters being pleasantly-drawn, mostly cute bunnies set on grassland, altho there were some occasional exceptions, such as:

I guess the other big issue for me is that we naked apes are incredibly keyed-up and designed to recognise facial expressions and body language in other humans, but much less so across other species, I think. I suppose that partly explains why anthropomorphic characters can work so well, in that they can still be represented as 'animals' in signal ways, yet still retain the core of humanity's looks, gestures, and so forth, FWIW. Sort of a 'best of both worlds' thing, you know?

Rabbits are seemingly much tougher to accomplish this with, and indeed... after a while I felt that the impact of the story was blunted by the fact that there was a certain 'sameness' that crept in to the scenes. Again & again it became a sort of 'little bunnies out in nature' situation visually, even though story-wise it was generally anything but, if that makes sense. In fact the lengthiness of the story tended to add to that problem. Really, I think a little bit of Thomas Ott's (Swiss artist and comics creator) style could have helped represent certain moments of bleakness and danger:

(more OTT samples)

But all of that bitching & moaning also kind of whistles home the fact that Richard Adams' Watership Down is truly a monumental accomplishment, being able to spin this kind of page-gripping, classic story primarily using small animals as main characters, and not in any kind of haha-Disney / haha-cartoon sort of way. He even invented an impressive lapine vocabulary and mythology, and it's some of these very 'old-timey' tales that help break up the chapters, the telling of which incidentally aids the group in staying on track. That is to say, in not melting down in to quaking fear about doing the unthinkable, i.e. traveling many, many miles above ground, surrounded by predators day after day and night after night.

SMALL NOTE: I understand that classic prey animals such as antelopes, gazelles, and rabbits can indeed shut down fatally if chased and/or threatened too relentlessly. This is an actual, significant danger not necessarily mentioned too explicitly in the text of WD, altho Adams did allude to it via animals going "tharn."

If you do read the GN, I'd highly recommend following with the original novel to get the fuller, more impactful story. Also, for those unaware, Adams wrote a smaller sequel book about the lives of our little heroes and heroines here.

Derek's Canadian as a matter of fact, but he's got that modern LC-style, so let's give him the go-ahead here. Bot-9 is a wordless, 64pp GN, about a fish that finds itself on an eye-opening journey, inside the head of a robot. (you know, that classic tale? :P)

You can read the first six pages here:
https://www.dereklaufman.com/bot-9

.

He's also got some other nice-looking stuff, as seen above. Some of it looks like its in 'webcomic' format, so dig in if you like:

https://www.dereklaufman.com/comics

This was a bit of a plodding book to get in to, but eventually the 'spark hit the tinder' for me. It's set in 1744, London, and centers on famous theatre figures Peg Woffington and her manager and bosom friend Ignatius Sancho. Many other personages of the day also appear, such as David Garrick, arguably the most influential theatre figure in the 18th century.

(right click as needed)

The book is historical fiction, probably my very favorite genre in BD. The backstory is thus: women had recently been allowed to perform in theatre plays only a few years before (in the past, males played all roles). While Dubliner Peg is almost universally lauded, she chafes at the still-limited range of roles available to her.

Sancho then has the inspired idea for her to play a key female role from the lost play Cardenio, which was evidently Shakespeare's attempt to write Cervantes's Don Quixote(!) Only problem..? The play is indeed lost, and so begins a sort of detection-adventure in which Peg & Sancho race to find the play whilst others have the very same notion.

My knowledge of historical theatre is quite limited, but one thing's for sure-- this was a dynamite premise, with all kinds of interesting settings and people involved. Unfortunately, as with various others of his work, I find that author/artist Jean Harambat waffles around at times and doesn't quite 'extract the juice' from the fascinating premises that he builds. A bit of condensing would have helped here, and I also get the sense that his art is better suited to action than to thought/art pieces such as this.

https://www.bedetheque.com/media/Couvertures/Couv_375568.jpg

Now, the above is one I thought worked a little better, with the premise being right out of Agatha Christie's playbook (think "Ten Little Indians").

Eh, I don't mean to bitch and moan so much, but I guess it's a case of wanting to fall in love with a person's work due to their general style and piquant subject matter, yet never quite getting there. As for this particular book, it's certainly not bad, but is probably the best match for history buffs, theatre buffs... something like that.

In any case, Harambat's certainly worth keeping up with:
https://www.bedetheque.com/auteur-16727-BD-Harambat-Jean.html

It's by the brilliant evergreen tree planted by Jean Giraud, who totally isn't known by the pseudonyms "Gir," nor "Moebius."

https://www.lambiek.net/artists/g/giraud.htm

"Bebe," one of our two protags, is sort of a 'celebrity flight-attendant,' who is in fact a fashion model in high demand. She's temporarily moved to NYC to get away from various distractions and unwanted suitors, such as "Massimo," an Italian nobleman endlessly in pursuit of her.

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In the above page, he's managed to track her down to her apt in Greenwich Village. Finally, they can get hitched! (whether or not Bebe has the slightest interest, which she mostly doesn't) But he's a powerful man, who can make her life hell if he chooses.

In that first page above, she blurts out that she'd already gotten married a few days prior. Enraged, he doesn't believe her, and now she's on the spot, needing to produce a proxy. Fortunately, her neighbor and fellow protag "Norman," a strapping young journalist, fits the bill rather well. In the second page we see him going about his day, in his office-apt.

The story is a classic, surely right out of the golden-age Hollywood playbook. I found it fun to read, and not too taxing on my modest 'A1/A2'-level French. Most of all, I really dig Italian Lapone's art, which I find to be a sort of jet-set, googie, retro-futuristic variant of late-stage LC art.

More on the book: (oh, is it a series?)
https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-48979-BD-Greenwich-village.html

And more on Lapone:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/l/lapone_antonio.htm

Btw, I've only read ~3 of his works so far, but found his "Adam Clarks" spy/heist-thriller to be a modern BD masterpiece. I hope to share more on that one... er, one of these days! 😅

By NO MEANS am I qualified to comment, here.
Other than to observe that artist Joyce Lee is a TOTAL badass.

"Haha!"
(that's my nervous, PeeWee Herman laugh right there)

This came out in late April it seems, based on its successful "kickstarter." It's 232pp, and evidently features work by six classic BD+ creators-- Enki Bilal, Antonio Segura, José Ortiz, Vicente Segrelles, Sergio Gerasi and Janevsky.

I first saw the cover on Mastodon, and enjoyed the way that photo was skewed a bit, but here's a straight-ahead view if you like:

(right-click as needed)

US$30 seems like a pretty steep price ordinarily, but then again, magazine prices downright skyrocketed during the pandemic, so who knows? Also-- at 232pp, it's arguably a dang-ol' bargain, assuming the content is decent. Especially being a collectible and all. That said, I haven't read it myself, yet.

As for "Cleo," I've never seen her reimagined like that, but it does fit the classic aesthetic of the mag. As a history nerd/moron... eh, I'm going to say it works... somehow! :S

Not to mention, I'm pleased that it's not just straight-cheesecake, which eventually got pretty-dang ridoinkulous in the American version, IMO. (mid-90's, I guess)

Butttt... if you simply must see a clip of the specific art creator working on a 'mini' of the character, it's here [NSFW]: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1014862657234502 [NSFW]

All that bloviated, let's just see how things works out, yeah?

And, yet-- I do kinda *cling* to a certain cynicism which easily biases me, which is that the previous HM magazine-runners (the ones after Kevin Eastman) were near-complete idiots, running the mag pretty-much wholly as a vanity project.

(and now a moment of silence, please, while St. Caragonne blesses their pitiful posteriors, hahaha)

Bah! Anyway:
https://fanboyfactor.com/2025/04/heavy-metal-magazine-relaunches-with-massive-new-issue-1-featuring-returning-legends-and-breakout-creators/

So, not exactly a red-letter day.

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These come from early in tome one, just as things are heating up. The bottom half of the above page struck me due to it's interesting architecture, nicely-done perspective, and strangeness of the apocalyptic situation. To me it's kind of oddly more attractive than the actual full page.

So far I'm about midway though book two of six, and find this series about on par with LEO's style of sci-fi work. (check out a sampler of his HERE) I don't have strong feelings about this either way, but it's been decent reading, so far.

As great a job as artist "Emem" does on the long shots, I'm not a huge fan of the 'poster-art' style of colors he uses for the faces, generally preferring cross-hatching and such. Just a tiny pet peeve, but it made me kind of chuckle, thinking about how some artists seem incredibly gifted in conveying personality, yet can be pretty shaky on backgrounds. While it can be completely vice-versa for others, hehe.

The actual story has to do with humanity dealing with a deadly plague, an ongoing global breakdown, an AI / enemy faction out to sterilise everyone else, and... wouldn't you know it? An alien coalition that's decided to step in and try to prevent global extinction.

I guess they may be living in even more interesting times than we are(!) 😅

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-62133-BD-Renaissance-Duval-Emem.html

Interstellar Dust is written by C.J. Hudson, with Polishman Igor Wolski handling the art. The special cover above was done by Brandon Graham. Print copies are offered HERE, and it can be read online THERE. I checked it out a bit, but it kind of missed me, amounting to modern-American sci-fi pulp, I'd say. But if that's your 'cuppa joe'...

What I did like was this specific street and market scene, in which I half-expected John DiFool to stroll by at any moment. Though, I wonder if I should have added a "cheesecake" tag, as you can see. *gulp*

As for Wolski specifically, I'd recommend an earlier post, which conveys a nice taste of what he's capable of, when unleashed:

https://piefed.social/post/742453

Oh gosh, obligatory novelty song from my youth!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZmV5pF4eNA
(Wet Dream - Kip Addotta)

So these are from Bryan Talbot's Force Majeure , the fifth and final album in his magnificent "Grandville" series. It's a bit like Blacksad, but far -more- dangerous, SteamPunk, less 'pastiche,' better-plotted, and far -less- Disney-esque in overall tone and complexity.

(right-click as needed)

Also, he does a pretty great job with his historical fiction elements, which go back to the Napoleonic era as I recall, moving forwards in to the... 1930's, I guess it is.

Another thing I really loved as a comics fan were all the hilarious cameos by famous characters who appeared throughout the series, kinda making for a Where's Wally / Waldo experience. For example, the cameo of Snowy from Tintin was actually quite moving, which... yeah, perhaps It would be good to re-post here, sometime? (it got lost in the big site move)

The UK's Bryan Talbot is an absolute mad-lad to me, alongside other UK comics geniuses such as Pat Mills, Alan Moore, ~~Neil Gaiman~~ and Posy Simmonds, for example.

Here's his LBK:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/t/talbot_bryan.htm

This is all new to me, but I believe these three come from The Silent Kingdoms.

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Jérémie Almanza is a Spanish-French illustrator and cartoonist known for the "Eco trilogy," "Au chant des grenouilles," "Les Royaumes Muets" and many other books. His drawing style is luxuriant and poetic. The atmospheres are intriguing and contrasting. It makes you want to dive into one of his illustrations and explore every nook and cranny! --Madalina on SubStack

Yeah, no kidding about his art, huh? I'll have to see if I can grab something of his, in future.

I highly recommend checking out his interview, as at the very least it contains lots more cool art samples:

https://forartists.substack.com/p/interview-27-the-art-of-jeremie-almanza

Last i had seen it was in a Spirou collection album in the early 90ies - after reading a bunch of news about healthcare this popped back in my head... Glad i found it!!

I've always liked Moebius. I remember reading the World of Edena in college. It totally broke my mind.

I'm always looking around for interesting material, especially by creators I'm unfamiliar with, also pulling recommendations from others who share and/or talk about BD & general comics content. One such example would be Seth Hahne, a fellow reviewer and creator who also teaches university courses on comics. (see new link to his site on the sidebar there)

Now, actually tackling my 'incoming stack' can sometimes be a downright boring slog, or at other times, makes me feel as if I've stumbled in to a wonderland of fantastic new material. This was the case with a couple recent discoveries, such as Perdy right here, and Salt Magic, which I'm still reading.

(as always, right-click if needed to expand images)

So far it looks like Image has translated two books, written and drawn by a pseudonymous Frenchman who styles himself "Kickliy Yilkcik." It's about a sex-lovin', bank robbing, ornery mama ("Perdy") who's just been released from prison, looking to get back with her former colleague and daughter "Rose," who wants nothing to do with her for a great many good reasons.

The sequence we're seeing here is actually a brief segue over to San Fran, CA from Rose's settlement in "Petiteville," in which one of three map-holding brothers is conducting business. Perdy has previously dealt with his brothers in rather merciless fashion, but it looks like he's going to be far more dangerous 'prey' than his kin. I'm sharing these pages because they're somewhat impressively atypical of the way Kickliy handles the rural depictions. What a great, talented comics artist to have never heard of. 😳😖

The tone in these books is immediately wild, hilarious and farcical, but then turns in rather soul-searching and excruciating ways, as the two leads have a mountain of unfinished business between them, and wind up drawing virtually everyone in town in to their conflict. And of course, there're heaps of violence and death, I suppose fitting this here gun-slingin' Wild West setting, directly reminding me of Mssr. Tarantino's characteristically breezy-brutal work, with all those genre-busting psychological embellishments, and such. (or something like that, haha)

More on Kickliy's other projects:
https://www.illustoria.com/blog/2018/2/17/creator-crush-kickliy

Concept art for Verne on Vacation, an animated pilot (Cartoon Network, 2009) that recently got picked up as a series (or is it a film?). HERE's a 3min sample. (always interesting to see completely different genres hybridize like that!)

From Marc's site: (abbreviated)

Sylvain Marc is a French artist with over 15yrs experience in animation. His practice ranges from art direction and visual development to character design, direction, 2D/3D animation, storyboard, illustration, and comics. He's worked with well over a dozen major studios so far.

When he's not doing art, you'll find him gardening, planting trees, tending to his four sheep, dozen hens and four cats or building a ram pump to bring water up to his veggie garden on a hill of the Basque countryside.

I find his art witty, wonderful, lively, lushly-detailed, and thoroughly playful.

He's not listed on LBK yet, but here's his site:
https://www.sylvain-marc.com/