The Century of the Shadows

1751. Under the influence of Pope Benedict XIV, Abeau and Cylinia ripen their project: to eliminate Weltman ... The latter, hidden under the name of Baron d'Holbach, a resolutely atheistic brilliant spirit, united under his roof the greatest thinkers Of Paris to celebrate his involvement in the Encyclopédie de d'Alembert. That same evening he was robbed of a precious commodity: a burst of meteorite. The Century of the Shadows.

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The Ogre Gods V1 - Petit (2014)

Petit is the son of the Ogre King. Scarcely larger than a mere human, he bears the brunt of family degeneration which makes each generation smaller than the previous one due to their inbreeding. His father wants him dead, but his mother sees in him the possible regeneration of the family since he could mate with a human as the Founder of the line once did. She then entrusts him to Aunt Desdee, the oldest of the family, who was dishonored because of her love for humans, and has become a recluse in a wing of the immense castle. But against his mother's wish, she will try to raise Petit, contrary to the usual family way ... Torn between the violent impulses he inherited and the humanistic education he received from Desdée, where will Petit find his place? And will he survive the voracious appetite of his family?

The Knight and the Unicorn (2015)

During the battle of Crécy, a prelude to the Hundred Years' War, Juan de la Heredia, helps King Philip VI of Valois who has just lost his horse. By leaving him his, the Knight of the Hospitaller Order finds himself at the heart of the fray. Galvanized by the inevitability of his fate, he unleashes himself until a sword pierces him. But, as life leaves him, he discovers that he is nailed to the horn of a unicorn. In the early morning, dazed, he is still alive and sees the legendary animal. Before being captured by the English, he tries in vain to catch up with him to know why death is denied him.

The Theory of Chaos - One Shot - (Schelle, 2001)

With a flutter of its wings, a butterfly flying in China can cause Godzilla to attack New York... Because each movement, small as it is, triggers a cascade of unpredictable consequences... The so-called superior species, Man, is the greatest propagator of chaos. As the grand magister of this spectacular & surprising "chaos", Pierre Schelle here signs his first album as an author. But he already has long experience of comic books as a colourist (with Stéphane Rosa) of series such as Golden City, Nash and Travis.

Kelly Green

Leonard Starr, of Little Orphan Annie fame, and Stan Drake, of Blondie fame, teamed up in 1980 to begin crafting a series of what were then known as graphic albums for the French publisher Dargaud. These graphic albums—what we would now call graphic novels—were geared toward an adult audience and featured nudity and violence, the likes of which would have horrified most Sunday comics readers in America. Though long out of print, Dargaud released English-language versions of these graphic novels in the United States in the early 1980s, under the series title Kelly Green, named after the main character of the books. And as obscure as they are today, they are, simply put, some of the best-looking crime comics ever produced.

Written by Leonard Starr and drawn by Stan Drake, the Kelly Green volumes are definitely worth tracking down. For Dargaud in Paris, he created Kelly Green with Stan Drake in 1980. This series of graphic novels about the sexy and capable female action heroine Kelly Green, were illustrated by Drake.

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The Fulgur v01 - The Depths of the Abyss (2017)

1907. Further to a terrible storm, a ship navigating in the Yucatán Channel sinks in an Oceanic 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 unique submarine, to find the lost cargo. But their adventure, diving to depths as great as 4,000 meters, is about to take a dramatic turn and defy all comprehension!

Dark Side of the Moon (2017)

Script by Blutch - Art by Blutch. The story takes place in a near future (more or less). The world is a huge factory, and the factory is the world. This world is presided over by “The Orifice,” the company which revolutionized the working method. You put your hands inside two holes, and you work, without you (or anybody) actually knowing what you’re working on… In the midst of all this is Lantz. Lantz is a comic book author. He’s the one who came up with the New New Testament, the bestseller that the entire economy depends on. Problem is: he’s got writer’s block. Riddled with doubt, he doesn’t know what he wants anymore, and his various frustrations are making him miserable. Lantz reflects the daily life of many among us. Will he be able to find an honorable way out of his psychological battles?

Fires & Murmur (2017)

Created by Eisner Award-winning artist Lorenzo Mattotti, Fires sweeps readers off into a hypnotic, haunting fantasy centered on a mysterious island where the hills are constantly ablaze. A series of vessels have inexplicably disappeared from the vicinity, so the battleship Anselm II is dispatched to investigate. When the expedition's leader, Lieutenant Absinthe, comes ashore, his encounter with the burning island's bizarre residents results in a form of psychic possession that leads to mayhem, madness, and murder. Mattotti's vivid illustrations, rendered with the depth and richness of paintings, propel the eye through a brooding, brilliantly colored atmosphere of mesmerizing imagery. A second tale by Mattotti, co-written with Jerry Kramsky, offers another fantastic voyage. Murmur traces an amnesiac's quest across phantasmagoric landscapes to recover his identity — an enigmatic journey in which fear and confusion are resolved by arcane magic rituals. This handsome hardcover edition marks the first publication of Fires and Murmur in a single volume. Both stories were originally published in French; this Dover edition features the 1988 English translation of Feux (Fires) and the 1993 English translation of Murmure (Murmur) English translations. Suggested for mature readers.

Morea

In the year 2082, beautiful Morea Doloniac is an ordinary employee in one of the biggest meta-national companies on the planet, the DWC. One day, she is nearly killed when commando squads execute, everywhere on the planet, members of her family. As the only survivor, she finds herself at the head of one of the main economic powers of the XXIth century. More mysterious, the attempt on her life was a success... She died... And yet, she is still alive!

Realmwalkers

We've got two kinds of news: a fantastic one and an even more fantastic one.

First of all, our Earth is just a part of the Collar of Worlds that consists of many parallel worlds. And, second of all, the gods that you read about in myths and legends actually exist. And any world that they visit will be destroyed in an apocalypse! But don't worry: there are heroes that will not let that happen. The universe is protected by the Realmwalkers - the mighty warrior of the ancient lineage Andrey Radov and his wife Kseniya that can control plants and their friend - the former Ivan Tsarevich who transformed into the Grey Wolf. Whenever one of the Earths gets a divine intervention, our trio immediately races to help! And their coordinators in this journey are the deathless ruler of Eden Koschei and Vasilisa the Wisest that observe the Collar from the edge of the Universe. 

Each new world is unlike the previous, each new monster is more dangerous - but the Realmwalkers are no weaklings either. They have magical abilities and incredible weapons - but the most important thing they have is themselves. Together this team can defeat any enemy and save all the worlds from annihilation... if they don't get tired of each other first...

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Marie Curie - The Radium Fairy (2016)

Marie Curie is the only woman ever to have received two Nobel prizes: the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, shared with her husband, Pierre Curie, and the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her work with polonium and radium in 1911. She was also the first woman ever to teach at the Sorbonne. This inspired comic is set at the time she received her second Nobel Prize, when a vicious press campaign was launched against her, denouncing her affair with the physician Paul Langevin. Through her flash-backs, we're invited to witness the key moments of this exceptional woman's life and work.

Fragments of Femininity (2017) (digital-Empire)

This is a collection of portraits of 7 women, of all different ages, backgrounds, circumstances and eras. Each one of them is facing a defining moment in her life. They are bound together by the symbol of their femininity: their breasts. We see an awkward college girl getting to grips with her womanhood; a 1960s house-wife freeing herself from the restraints of propriety; the manager of a small underwear shop fighting against corporate giants; a woman nude modeling for an unexpected reason… Love, illness, sex, liberation, sensuality: Olivier Pont draws us into the lives of these women with astounding force.

Today is the Last Day of the Rest Your Life (2013)

This starts out as a slightly dull memoir of a teenage punk runaway and the squatting scene in Europe, but the story steadily grows stranger and more compelling as Ulli and a female friend head south from Vienna into the heart of Sicily. The book is well observed throughout and there a few beatific moments where the story dilates beyond the consciousness of the narrator. But what will stick with me are Ulli's numerous encounters with Italian men who willfully refuse to understand the word "no." She's one of the few women openly walking the streets in small Sicilian towns and as a foreigner she's viewed as a prostitute by males of all ages and backgrounds. Her Italian boyfriend refuses to help when his buddy rapes her one evening in his bedroom. Her female friend tries to pimp her out to make a few bucks. And so on. The book downplays these horrific scenes as part of a larger quest for self knowledge, but they still paint a convincing and convicting portrait of an entire culture in the grip of psychosis.

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Diary of a Femen (2016)

The FEMEN movement began in Ukraine in 2008. It has since spread throughout the world, as far as Spain, Sweden and Belgium. In France it really began to catch on when Inna Shevchenko arrived in Paris, where she sought asylum after she was deported from Ukraine. She took refuge in the “Lavoir Moderne Parisien” theatre, which has now become the training ground of FEMEN activists in France. This project is a fictional story based on real events and witness testimonies collected by the author, who has been in personal contact with FEMEN France for over 4 years. The aim is to study this social phenomenon and open up debate on the subject without taking sides or pronouncing judgment. The journal follows the story of a young French girl who, after a number of negative experiences connected to her social status as a woman in contemporary society, decides to join the movement. It’s not easy, and there will be consequences in her personal and professional life. She soon begins to question herself. A fascinating album that helps us understand the inner workings of the controversial feminist organization.

Abelard (2012)

The charm of Renaud Dillies strikes again: after the mouse of Bubbles & Gondola, here is another dreamer, little chick Abelard. To lure pretty Emily, Abelard sees only one solution: to catch the moon for her! So off he goes to America, the country which invented flying machines. Armed with his banjo and his proverb-sharing hat, he launches out on the country roads, meets Gypsies, then Gaston, a grumpy bear with whom he will share a good bit of his way! With this funny animal road-movie where the absurd becomes poetry, Regis Hautiere and Renaud Dillies offer us another small jewel.

Simply Samuel (2017)

This graphic novel unfolds in front of the reader as a puzzle of short stories and moment-capturing images. Samuel is a pale, ghost-like character, drawn in clear line, against the controlled psychedelia of color and form. He exists almost invisible to his surroundings, a hero of the ordinary. Musturi's precise storytelling is about individuality and loneliness among others, and of freedom, pondering our daily actions and the choices and values behind them, all evidenced by Samuel’s peculiar actions.

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Udolfo – The Watch with the 7 Rubies

In the eighteenth century, the public writer and detective Udolfo and his assistant Tirelire are contacted by Clarissa, a young woman chased by the notary's gang who wants to steal the watch with the seven rubies owned by the watchmaker Nicolas, the father of Clarissa...

Howard - Dirty Fred, the Skipper

Smiling Jim was going back to the bar where he spent a lovely evening beating two dozen men unconscious. He forgot his knife in a sailor. Said sailor was alive and kicking and offered Jimmy a job aboard a luxury cruiser. There the young master criminal has to deal with murder mystery, mass hysteria, and sleeping on the job. Later - as it so often happens to heroes of epic novels - he meets the prince of an island nation who wishes to switch roles with him for a day. From there one storyline follows the adventures of the young prince in the Singapore underworld after he is sold into slavery for two and a half dollars (which seems like a bargain price for undercover royalty). The other consists of the journals of his quasi-illiterate grace, king Smiling de James, the first of his name. Their quests are haunted by the mysterious living legend of the seas, Captain Dirty Fred, whose fiendishly clever schemes will decide the fate of both the prince and the pauper...

The Mission (Sebok) (1971)

Péter Zsoldos was a Hungarian science fiction author who largely wrote about themes common in US/UK science fiction like space travel and robots. In The Mission, he describes an even closer contact: the dead astronauts' personalities revive in the brains of inhabitants of the distant planet, thus creating an exciting coexistence of differently evolved intellects sharing one body.

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A Season in Egypt

St. Petersburg, early nineteenth, it is not easy for Sacha, penniless young man with no experience to realize his dream of glory and writing. Especially when tuberculosis is curing. The latter fortunately has the idea to cure his evil and his spleen, to embark for Cairo. Fatal beauties, painter obsessed by his model, races in the desert, bohemian and madness: begins for him an accelerated initiation that will propel him to the heart of the East and the heart of real life.

The Summer of Irreverence v01 (2016)

Mexico, August 1923. Edward Weston has just abandoned his wife and children and joined his mistress Tina Modotti. Daughter of Italian emigrants, Tina started out on a career as a Hollywood actress before discovering a passion for photography, in Edward's wake. In Mexico, the lovers soon discover that revolution goes hand in hand with artistic expression. The walls of public institutions are colored with the vibrant paintings of Diego Rivera, Xavier Guerrero and all those who would go down in art history as ' the muralists.' In this pivotal period between the old world, still struggling in the aftermath of the First World War, and the new world, yet to be constructed, Tina and Edward become deeply involved in the artistic political movement of the epoch. For Tina, sex, freedom, art and politics become the pillars of her lifestyle, leading her to sometimes make choices that are difficult for Edward to deal with. But passion burns the senses, and suffering kindles the fires of creation...

Rage (2007)

The ruins of civilization, mutants, stunted Farmland, naked women, the hordes of thugs, eager to take away everything... all except one - a hidden and uncontrolled rage...

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The Midlife Crisis (2016)

Script by Florence Cestac - Art by Florence Cestac. Usually around about the 40 mark, the human male has a habit of leaving his well-worn spouse in search of greener pastures. As they say, the grass is always greener on the other side. Florence Cestac dissects this subject of common interest, from the very first symptoms right up to the final outbreak, via the pangs of “bathrobe-sofa” depression. “You’re the love of my life! But with her, it’s something else… she’s a fairy,” declares our hero with the touching honesty of a male en route to adventure. So once our hero’s skipped off into the sunset with his fairy, our heroine begins asking herself a series of counter-productive questions regarding her general attitude and in particular her cellulite. 

Paradise Lost (2016)

For many, Milton’s epic is a poem to admire rather than enjoy. Auladell’s adaptation is a more accessible beast, heavily abridged, its pictures focusing on the drama of a tale of devils, treason and temptation. Many comics have visited cosmic realms, but Auladell crafts something definitive, from hell’s vast plains and twisted demons to the parapets of heaven. His expressive, black-hatted Satan delivers Milton’s juicy soliloquies with style, while the war in heaven is a splendid mix of cannons, single combat, mist and darkness.

Hearts at Sea (2016)

Script by Cyril Pedrosa - Art by Cyril Pedrosa. Jean-Paul is a shy, slightly gawky young man leading a rather unremarkable life in which his oppressive mother is all too present. As the anniversary of his father’s death approaches, he feels increasingly dissatisfied with his life, and increasingly aware of his loneliness. It’s time for things to change. So, without telling anyone, he embarks on a singles cruise and takes his first steps in a brave new world.

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The Council of the Trees (2016)

In an unlikely nineteenth century, bathed in a New England atmosphere at Sleepy Hollow, two paranormal investigators try to understand why, in a hospital lost in the middle of the forest, children are disappearing. They discover that, not far from this old building, centuries ago, a massacre would have taken place. These strange disappearances would be linked to this sacred and cursed place ...

Hubert (2016)

Hubert by Ben Gijsemans. A simple story, beautifully told. Hubert (the graphic novel) is as much about Hubert’s journey to become an artist as it is about unrequited (or requited) love.

Sandcastle (2011)

A secluded beach becomes the stage for self-discovery for various strangers bound together during the most important moment of their lives in this graphic novel, which begins like a murder mystery, continues like an episode of the Twilight Zone, and finishes with a kind of existentialism that wouldn’t be out of place in a Von Trier film. An early morning vignette with a mysterious swimmer and a perching voyeur is soon interrupted when families arrive at the beach, bringing their cluttered lives with them. The geological, primordial beauty of the cove can’t soften the anger and sarcasm of the complicated generational relationships that land on it that morning—the spousal bickering, the teenage angst, as multiple visitors snipe, attempt to escape from each other, demand attention that never comes, and fixate on tiny quirks about their day that soon blossom into something to panic about. When the members of the group finally understand their situation, they find themselves challenged to cherish every moment of life that might be left for them after years of never living at all. Levy is Peeters’s collaborator on a film adaptation of the graphic memoir Blue Pills; together they take this idea to frantic, metaphoric heights. - Publisher's Weekly.

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Vercingetorix

At the age of five, Vercingetorix saw his father sentenced to death by his family for having dared claim to be king of the Gallic peoples. Nourished by the same ambition, the young Arverne learned military discipline by completing his classes with the powerful Roman army. Back in Gaul, he deploys his military talent and eloquence to unite the Gallic tribes and repel the Roman invader. Proud, courageous, disciplined and ingenious, Vercingetorix is ​​one of his most formidable adversaries for the famous legions. But, without ceasing, he is confronted with a more formidable strategist: Julius Caesar ... Discover the campaigns of this first mythical hero of the History of France whose Gallic War, story of propaganda to the glory of Caesar, is the only one existing written source.

Wally Gropius (2010)

Written & Illustrated By: Tim Hensley. Published By: Fantagraphics. The first great comic of the Great Recession. Tim Hensley’s breakout graphic novel, previously serialized in the Mome anthology, seems like a send-up of silly ’60s teen-comedy and kid-millionaire comics on the surface, but beneath lies as odd and accurate a cri de coeur about capitalism and consumerism as I’ve ever read. It also does things with body language I’ve never seen in comics, and is funny as hell to boot. There’s nothing else out there like it.

Suite Française: Storm in June (Irène Némirovsky & Emmanuel Moynot) (2015)

Suite Francaise, an extraordinary novel about village life in France just as it was plunged into chaos with the German invasion of 1940, was a publishing sensation ten years ago; Irene Nemirovsky completed the two-volume book, part of a planned larger series, in the early 1940s before she was arrested in France and eventually sent to Auschwitz, where she died. The notebook containing the novels was preserved by her daughters but not examined until 1998; it was finally published in France in 2004 and became a huge international bestseller, including in North America, where it has sold over 1 million copies. This dramatic and stirring graphic novel, translated from the French and faithful to the spirit of Nemirovsky's story, focuses on Book 1, entitled "Storm in June," in which a disparate group of Paris citizens flees the city ahead of the advancing German troops. However, their orderly plans to escape are eclipsed by the chaos spreading across the country, and their sense of civility and well-being is replaced by a raw desire to survive.