Jacques Martin - A Ligne Claire Master - The Adventures of Alix

One of the collaborators of Herge and a true master of the Lignare Claire school, Jacques Martin produced some fantastic art during his times outside of the Tintin Albums.

His greatest output is the series The Adventures of Alix. Beginning with the first album, Alix l'intrépide, is a series of stories about the Gallo-Roman Alix, whose adventures are set in a historic Roman setting.

Between 1948 and 1996, Martin produced twnety fantastic albums, . These generally appeared first in the Tintin magazine, then printed as a book by Casterman, a few were printed originally by Lombard.

Later albums were done by younger artists of talent with Martin authoring the stories.

Beginning 1996, a beautiful series outlining the historical places travelled by Alix in his adventures, began to be produced. Known as Les Voyages d'Alix, it showcases some of the best known ligne claire artwork, with stunning details of the places, set in the historic timeframe.

These books though not from the brush(pen) of Martin, are heavily influenced by him, and by Alix. They contain very interesting historic information about the places, along with great art.

Jacques Martin created other characters and stories, which we can visit at some other time.

There are some awesome editions of the Alix series from Casterman, including multiple story hardbound editions such as the Alix, les premières aventures , which combines Alix l'intrépide, Le Sphinx d'Or and L'Egypte 2(from Les Voyages series)

These are all ofcourse in French. and can be found at Amazon UK/France or at several of the online French Bande dessinée stores such as BDNet.

Learning French - Apprendre le français

With such rich comic art culture and the enormity of books originating from the Franco-Belgian part of the world, at some point in time one begins to think... maybe we should learn French.

If one were to look at the quality of art, storyline, albums and literature on the art and artists like Herge, what we see translated in English is a fraction of what actually gets created in French.

A look at Casterman's catalog is sufficient to know what we are missing out. Of course a lot of it does get translated in English, for instance Cine Book does a great job, as does Egmont.

Still some great books are only in French. For instance there is this two-volume book on how to create and draw comics based on Herge's works,

(1) tome 1 - J'Apprends a Dessiner les Personnages (Volume 1 - Learning how to Draw Characters)

(2) tome 2 - J'Apprends a Raconter une Histoire ( Volume 2 - I'm learning to Tell a Story)

Then there are some exotic editions of the Tintin albums, for instance,

Le Temple du Soleil - Nouvelle édition (The Prisoners of the Sun - New Edition)

There are some outstanding works by famed artists such as Edgar Jacobs, Jacques Martin, Roger Leloup.. just a pick from Studios Hergé alone! and there were so many from where they came from!! Many of their works are coming in to the English domain and other languages, but at one or two albums a year!

So..... there does seem enough reasons to learn French.

A few quick links to get started... with the moderate goal of being able to read French.

(Learning to speak French.... well... lets add the to our next birth's To Do list :)

http://ielanguages.com/french1.html

http://www.jump-gate.com/languages/french/index.html

A good dictionary is a must to get going. Of course one can use Google Translate. It is a fantastic tool. But... where fans of Tintin always can use an excuse to buy this dictionary..

Harrap's 'Tintin au Pays des Mots '. Though out of print, used ones can be sourced.

So lets get going then.....

le, la, un, une, les, des, Bonjour, Bonsoir, Merci !!

Book review : The Phantom: The Complete Newspaper Dailies Volume 1: 1936-1938 (Hardcover)

Great Start

First off, its a huge relief that this book is finally out. Its almost a year since I placed my order at Amazon.

Its good to have the first ever Phantom hardbound. It is a Huge book, similar to the format most reprints these days come in. Great to get started on the complete collection of Phantom.

For those who grew with the stories as a kid, Phantom is a truely remarkable character. The stories, the settings, the action, the adventure, the travels, the dangers, the fun, the romance.. It had everything. The Jungle settings, the caves, the chronicle chamber, the treasure chamber, the island of Eden, the continuum of Phantoms, it is a wonderful set of tales spun by Lee Falk.

The Phantom evolved over the decades, the character as well as physical appearance, due to the fact that it was drawn by different artists over this wast span of time. Each artist was unique, had his unique recipe for bringing Lee Falk's tales to life. Ray Moore, Wilson McCoy and Sy Barry among the most prolific Phatom illustrators. The story as well as the settings, and art work evolved and improved vastly year over year, this is easily noted even within an artist's span, one can see Ray's artwork remarkably improve over time.

There has been reprints of the Phantom in book format from various publishers. Noted among them is the Australian Frew. They have been consistently producing Phantom for decades. Then there was Pacific Comics Club, who came up with great editions of the reprints. Also there used to be a large number of stories that were printed in India known as Indarjal Comics. Mostly these were one story per book. There are the Frew Annuals, humongous books with tons of stories. very well printed.

The version under review is probably one of the best yet. Excellent paper, nicely hardbound, very well printed collector's edition class, and promising to collect all the stories.

It is important to note that these are dailies, and are the earliest of the strip. Also, newspaper comic strips were just evolving then. There was a fixed format and a necessity to hold some suspense every single day, and there was a panel daily. All this meant the artist would be at work on a rigid timeframe. Compared to that the Sundays were more carefully rendered and of course the color would enhance the quality.

Given that, the printing of the first stories have come out very well in this edition. As the stories progress, and the art matures, it is only going to get better. Looking forward to more art work of Moore, McCoy and of course Barry.

This is an extract from my review at Amazon.com, You can find more of my reviews here.