Comics in killer mode

Accustomed to killers whom he enjoys making sympathetic, Matz has once again joined forces with the pencil strokes of Philippe Xavier (already his partner in “Tango”) to make us relive the adventures of “Joe”. Despite his appearance as a peaceful retiree crossing the American West à la Sergio Leone in a motorhome, Joe is a reformed ex-mafioso who in the early 1970s helped give birth to the prosecution witness program exchanging immunity for evidence allowing to accuse armies of crooks. Road trip full of twists, “The Serpent and the Coyote” belongs to this family of stories in one volume which form a complete story combining original but fluid drawing and effective scenario. Joe would like to turn the page and not have to use his weapon but when you are attacked, you have to defend yourself well…

Russian crimes

He presses a priori little on the trigger. But just because we don’t kill anyone directly doesn’t mean we aren’t indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. This is illustrated by Darryl Cunningham in “Putin, the rise of a dictator”. Starting from nothing and arriving very high, the master of the Kremlin is surrounded by a part of mystery. Discovering his career in comics allows us to better understand the character, without necessarily understanding how a modest thug was able to reach the top of a bloodthirsty plutocracy. The reminder of his mountain of misdeeds is almost tiresome, but at the time of the invasion of Ukraine, going back over this bloody journey is very useful. We had everything to be warned…

If Putin was able to prosper, it is also because Russian society has collapsed. The very original “Slava, after the fall” by Pierre-Henry Gomont plunges us back into the failings of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s, in which the smartest who are often the most cruel have the best chance of getting away with it. A story of fiddling and getting by in a collapsing country. Tenderness and cruelty intertwine.

When they do not evoke the fate of those who kill, the kings of 9^e Art can look into the fate of those who are killed. Run (in the script) and Florent Maudoux have thus taken up the challenge of tackling a mythical crime by seeking to trace the trail of the Black Dahlia. Brian de Palma made a film out of it, James Ellroy made a thriller out of it, they make it into “Short stories” a very original album mixing at the same time boards of a retro drawing, a hyperdetailed chronology and archival documents. The reading takes time as the album is rich but the approach makes it possible to better understand who this mysterious Elizabeth Short was, whose horrible murder which hit the headlines in Los Angeles in the second half of the 1940s remains unsolved. Miles Hyman and Mat had already told the story of the Black Dahlia in an excellent comic strip but in a much more classic narrative form.

Historical bubbles

A murder marked world history: that of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. Why were young people, united in their hatred of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ready to die trying to assassinate an heir ? historical comics “Sarajevo Mornings” de Chapuzet and Girard explain that the young Serbs who set fire to a European powder keg by their actions were often panicked and ill-prepared nationalists. And that they killed a prince who did not particularly want to reign. Their album takes us back in time and deciphers the event without judging.

Another kind of historical comics, “The Peasants’ War”: in early 16th century Germany^e century, the excesses of the Catholic Church fed a wind of revolt. A monk named Martin Luther will blow on the embers, a young person sent by the Pope to understand what is happening on the other side of the Rhine finds it difficult to be only a neutral spy. The texts are searched, the drawing in black and white busy. A detailed work on the birth of Protestantism or why and how some declared war on Rome.

Finally for the pleasure of drawing all in pastel paintings, we will point out “Gauloises” by Andrea Serio and Igort. A graphic thriller in the form of a somewhat elliptical poem. A romantic contract killer, smoker of Gauloises, is hired to do the cleaning. And since there is no smoke without fire, the killer will have to draw his weapon to accomplish, almost reluctantly, what is only a job not quite like the others.