Anyway, that's just how it is and is an interesting, if somewhat depressing, exercise to look at the similarities and differences in the comics business (such as it is/was) in the UK and in France. According to Wikipedia, the first story in the fictional universe that Adele Blanc-Sec inhabits, featured Lucien Brindavoine, and was serialised in the comics anthology Pilote in 1972 (there is a bit more detail here at the excellent Cool French Comics site). Pilote, first published in 1959, was a bit like a familiar British anthology comic, except that instead of being produced by a bunch of middle-aged old farts who didn't write or draw, it was the brainchild of Rene Goscinny, Jean-Michel Charlier, Albert Uderzo and Jean Hébrard. The same team that had earlier created a very progressive comic strip insert for newspapers, Le Supplement Illustre, and who had also teamed up to produce cartoons for a magazine published by Radio-Luxembourg. Pilote's biggest draw was the almost instantaneously successful Goscinny and Uderzo collaberation, Asterix the Gaul.
In 1960, the comic was bought by Dargaud publishers and Pilote took on a new lease of life, albeit with Goscinny still at the helm as Editor-in-Chief. New series such as Charlier and Moebius's Blueberry appeared, along with Achille Tallon by Greg. Pilote was fun and a comic book fan's dream, there was something to please everyone, a mixture of sci-fi, adventure, and humour, and in 1968 Morris's Lucky Luke, which began in Spirou in 1946, made the jump to to pages of Pilote. And just as Lucky Luke and Herlock Sholmes crossed the channel to appear in British comics like IPC's Chuckles, some British pages, like the late, great, Frank Bellamy's Winston Churchill graced the pages of Pilote.
The first appearance of Adèle Blanc-Sec, as a comic strip, was in the French regional newspaper Sud-Ouest in 1976. A collection of those strips was published by the Casterman Publishing House, and they also appeared in Casterman's comic, A Suivre, which ran from 1978 to December 1997. Like Pilote, and like Spirou, Tintin and Metal Hurlant, A Suivre presented the work of some of the world's premier comic book creators including Hugo Pratt, Jean-Claude Forest, Moebius, and of course, Tardi.
Set in Paris, in the years before and after World War I, Tardi's stories revolve around the investigative journalist, Adèle Blanc-Sec. On the face of it, it sounds a bit hackneyed, it is after all a familiar European comic trope, the picaresque tale. But as we have discussed in a much older post, the same can be said of Corto Maltese and Tintin and Largo Winch, it is the characterisation, the plotting, the singular magic of the draughtsman's pen, the degree of craft, that makes them all so very different. Take Tardi's reason for placing Adele either side of WW1, for instance; "Her feisty nature made it impossible to provide her with a place in the war. She would not have been allowed to fight, and could no more have settled for being a nurse, than she could have remained home rolling bandages". This is a creator talking about a character that lives and breaths, that could be put in an artificial situation by her author, but who would surely subvert her creators intention.
A cursory glance at some of the titles of Adele's adventures, goes some way to informing you that you will be heading for territory that Tintin did not breach; and that our heroine does not hesitate to lift the veil between this world and the next: Adèle and the Beast, The Demon of the Eiffel Tower, The Mad Scientist, Mummies on Parade, The Secret of the Salamander, The Drowned Man with Two Heads, Monsters All, The Mystery of the Abyss, The Infernal Labyrinth.
There is no point really in messing you about when it comes to the artwork and the story, this is Tardi for Heaven's sake, he is the Western equivalent of a mangaka, not just a seasoned professional, but a master illustrator and storyteller. The books are lush, and the stories are fabulous fun. To be honest, the sooner Fantgraphics gets round to publishing its English translations of this work, in that particular Fantagraphics way with those elegant covers, the better. There may be other, more experimental, titles in the Tardi library, but these extraordinary adventures are what I want to curl up with and you will too.
And there we have it, the progression, in an almost organic way, of a comic strip to the screen. It is almost identical to the route taken by many Japanese comics. Adele began in one publication, picked up a regular readership, was printed in a collection, developed a larger weekly readership, sold more collections, and then became a movie. Along the way a young cartoonist perfected his craft and made a living, printers and colourists were employed, merchandising made jobs for people in other industries, publishers and their families were happy, and film companies and soon DVD companies and the like, all found work from one little idea that was nurtured and encouraged. It is beautiful when it works.
Of course here it never did work, because the comics publishers kept "all the copyright" and regularly killed the characters off, and in many cases the cartoonists difted away from the business. And now, what do we have left, not a lot, well, not a lot at present, which is where the good news comes in. Titan (our old friends from our Garth post) will soon be publishing CLINT in the UK, and who knows, maybe, since those involved, including Mark Millar and Jonathan Ross, know about comics, and the comics business, and movies, and marketing, and manga, and merchandising, and the history of comics, maybe we will have a second bite at the cherry over here. Now that would be something.
So, the movie, by Luc Besson, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, will it be any good? I'm the wrong person to ask, I love French movies, and well, it's raising the profile of graphic novels and cartoonists so it will have to really stink up the room for me to hate it. And that seems unlikely, frankly, because it has fun written all over it, the leading lady is gorgeous, it has a mummy, a pterodactyl, and I get to vicariously smoke as Adele sparks up - I'm in heaven mate.
