Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec Vol. 1: Pterror Over Paris / The Eiffel Tower Demon
by Jacques Tardi
Promo copy:
Both a rip-roaring adventure series set in pre-World War I Paris and a parody of same, Adèle Blanc-Sec has been enchanting, thrilling, and puzzling readers worldwide through four decades.
With various American attempts to publish Adèle having dribbled into nothing decades ago, Fantagraphics Books, fresh from its triumphs with Tardi’s West Coast Blues, You Are There, and It Was the War of the Trenches, launches a spectacular, newly retranslated, hardcover series that intends to collect every one of its nine (soon ten) volumes.
In this premiere installment, Adèle becomes involved in an interlocking series of mysteries that involve a revived pterodactyl, a frightful on-stage murder, a looming execution by guillotine, and a demon from the depths of hell — plus of course moronic gendarmes, loyal (or perhaps traitorous?) henchmen, and a climax atop the Eiffel Tower.
The Adèle Blanc-Sec series is currently being adapted into a series of films by the renowned action director Luc Besson (The Professional, The Fifth Element), bringing this quirky, very French series to a new worldwide audience.
The Fantagraphics reprints have made me into a Tardi fanatic!
Elephant Man
by Greg Houston
Promo copy:
Baltimore has a great hero. He’s always there just when he’s needed to thwart crime! This marvel is Elephant Man. Yes, none other than the deformed and hideous man himself! But such power and the adulation that follows it begets much jealousy. Before you know it, one of the city’s best known TV anchors, ‘handsome’ Dick Denton and another hideous being fused by some radioactive accident: the Priest, The Rabbi and The Duck, come together to seek his demise and ridicule him in public! Will Elephant Man overcome this new challenge? Another hilariously silly exercise in grotesquery, spoofing superheroes, from the acclaimed brilliant artist of Vatican Hustle.
Networked: Carabella on the Run
Written by Gerard Jones
Art by Mark Badger
Promo copy:
Some alien invasions are loud and bloody…some are quiet and friendly. The blue-skinned girl named Carabella thinks she’s escaping the oppression of her own world, but instead she’s exposing the earth to an invasion so soft and friendly that everyone welcomes it—until Carabella herself sees what’s happening and tries to make someone, anyone see that our websites, our cell phones, and even our shoes (yes, shoes) are being used to steal first the privacy and then the freedom of everyone on earth.