Chaland Anthology #2: Freddy Lombard - Yves Chaland
Another library find—on my last visit I checked out a whole pile of comics, mostly ones that I'd never heard of before. The artwork on this one reminded me a little of Tintin, so I thought I'd give it a go. I don't know much about Chaland other than what I've seen in this book, but apparently he died at a young age in 1990, and there are some anthologies of his work being published now. The two stories in this book, "Holiday in Budapest" and "F.52," were originally written in the late 80s.
Freddy, Dina, and Sweep are the three main characters who apparently go around having adventures somewhere around the 1950s or so. "Holiday in Budapest" takes place during the crushing of a rebellion by the Russians in 1956, and "F.52" is about the maiden voyage of a giant newfangled passenger jet. The trio are a Scooby Gang of sorts, getting tangled up in things and thwarting the bad guys.
The difference between this and Tintin, however, is that the content is a bit more mature. There's some slapstick humor, but also real violence and a little sexual content. "F.52" has a disturbing subplot involving a rich couple trying to swap their own mentally retarded daughter for another girl. Chaland also makes the reader work a bit in figuring out what's going on, something he alludes to in the notes included at the end: "I want to really grab the reader's attention, I want him to know that if he skips one image, he could miss a bloody massacre with 583 casualties."
I don't know how much else he's written, but at the very least I'll look up Anthology #1.
Fed to jonathan's brain | July 10, 2006
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