Nicholas (nwhyte) wrote,
Nicholas
nwhyte

#Worldcon75 GoH work: Les Lumières de l'Amalou, by Christophe Gibelin & Claire Wendling

Second frame of third chapter:
Second dialogue frame of third chapter:
"We were just about to succeed."

Worldcon 75 is in Helsinki next August, and you all have to come. There are five guests of honour, and I'm going to do a series of posts highlighting some of their work.

First up is Claire Wendling. She is a brilliant artist, who made a big splash in the French comics (ie bande dessinée) world at a young age. Les Lumières de l'Amalou, published between 1990 and 1996 (ie before she was 30), shows her style developing from a quirky ligne claire in the early volumes to a balancing of people and landscape in the last. Compare this page of the plane crash which kicks off the narrative:

with this pursuit across rugged landscape neat the end:

The story itself is about hybrid creatures inhabiting the shores of the river Amalou, uneasily located between central France of our world and the kingdom of the Oak (a huge but immobile sentient tree). In genre it's a hybrid between anthropomorphic fantasy and steampunk, between liminal and intrusion, between fairy-tale and tribal conflict. It's rather difficult to describe in more detail, but TV Tropes has had a go. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available in translation, but the point for Worldcon attendees is the art anyway, and I found it a rewarding and intriguing read.

This was my non-English comics slot, which I'm no longer really pretending to read in any particular order.

Tags: bookblog 2016, comics, worldcon 75
Subscribe

  • My tweets

    Thu, 18:40: Doctor Who and the Silurians and Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke, and The Silurians, by Robert�Smith?…

  • My tweets

    Wed, 13:32: Andr�e Tainsy, 1911-2004 https://t.co/7vKdcRoeLS Wed, 15:32: RT @ Megintransition: Thinking about attending glasgow 2024*…

  • My tweets

    Tue, 18:14: Erasing Sherlock, by Kelly�Hale https://t.co/P1pyeHHYHZ Wed, 10:45: First up-close images of Mars’s little-known moon Deimos…

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    When you submit the form an invisible reCAPTCHA check will be performed.
    You must follow the Privacy Policy and Google Terms of use.
  • 0 comments