Writer: Pierre Christin Artist: Enki Belial Publisher: Humanoids Publishing Format: 84 pgs. Hardbound, color $14.95
Plot: A group of aged Cold War radicals put their lives on the line one last time to spoil a conspiracy to undermine democracy in Europe.
Humanoids Publishing offers a unique product with high-quality European comic stories that are translated into English, and offered in attractive hardbound collections. Their sole serial offering at present, Saga of the Metabarons, hipped me to the caliber of creators that were being translated and presented, some for the first time, to an Anglophone audience.
The Black Order Brigade (BOB) is a fantastic political thriller, not unlike a Tom Clancy novel minus the focus on American policy. Instead, the reader is dragged across nearly every border in Europe as this not-too-friendly group of counter revolutionaries endeavor to discover not only the extent of the plot against them but also the meaning of their own lives in the realities of a post-Cold war world.
Though the underlying story (as seen in the plot summary) is hardly a new one, Pierre Christin is able to twist the necessary plot devices into statements on the futility and brutality of warfare, however righteously motivated. In the end, it almost becomes a study in evolving into that which you oppose and despise, much like Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, leaving the reader questioning the nature of conflict and whether it truly pays out what it appears to offer.
The use of august players for the cast heightens the tension throughout as they struggle to endure the hardships of inconspicuous travel across guarded borders. In an industry filled with nigh invulnerable super-thrashers and regenerating mutants, these characters, through their frailty, elicit real empathy, though their plans are hopeless and their goals, a little outdated.
The artwork in BOB is quite unlike anything one would normally find in English comics, with the exception of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Throughout this album, I was struck by the similarities between O'Neill's much lauded work and Enki Belial's style, though I would not be the least bit surprised to find out Belial was 80 and had been doing comics since the invention of pencils based on the confidence he shows here.
His style is driven by precise, yet expressive fine lines that capture the emotional intent at the heart of each panel with a minimum of strokes, evoking the classic French cartooning aesthetic while still managing to wow the reader with renderings of architecture and landscape. Ethnicity becomes a fascinating element of the book as Belial is able to clearly distinguish, with his pencils, between groups separated by mere miles, if not by ideology alone.
The coloring is fairly muted, consistent with clandestine atmosphere of the story, that utilizes shades of purples and greys, mixed in with flashes of brighter hues, predominantly red (like, there is a lot of gory war scenes in this). The paper stock and printing job is top notch and looks like it will make for a pretty durable book. Along these same lines, I was also impressed with the price of this book for this harcover format as this was a full $5 cheaper than the average TPB and offered a truly complete story.
The Black Order Brigade, from Humanoids Publishing, is a great example of what other parts of the world are doing right with their comics. It should also be a warning to American publishers that an insistence on maintaining the homogeneity of their publishing lines in the face of imported product of this quality may result in more readers going to see if, in fact, their bonnie does lie over the ocean after all.
