A book a day: Serge Lehman & Frederik Peeters: The scribbled man

Títutulu Original: The scribbled man

Year of publication: 2018

Translation: Lucía Bermúdez Carballo

Valoración: It is quite good

Comic in which the French screenwriter Serge Lehman and the Swiss cartoonist – more known, I think – Frederik Peeters propose a detective adventure with historical dyes and, above all, supernatural, starring the French editor Betty Couvreur, her clear teenage daughter and, In the background, although playing a fundamental role, his mother Maud, famous writer of children’s books. In a dark and rainy Paris -there is to say that the scenery results, if not the most important thing about this BD, the most interesting, I think -the three women are threatened by a elusive and scary character, known as Max Cuervo . Thanks to the clues provided by the ineffable and sticky writer Pierre Inféri and by his own boss, the editor Sébastien Daule, Betty, next to his daughter, comes to the knowledge of dark secrets of the time of the occupation of France and the resistance, and even others Even more remote and telluric. This implies an interesting approach to the fantastic genre and an imaginary different from what is usually usual, in the European case; A refreshing change against the monsters of the nineteenth -century narrative (more or less) Nordic.

The comic is also drawn with a dynamic and effective Asaz style, while telling as a counterpoint a gloomy or directly dark atmosphere, typical of a horror narrative -what is this cartoon, after all already -, both in the city as in agriculture; What, in me to understand, is the most interesting thing about a book, next to a gallery of well -drawn characters and credible enough, despite their peculiarity, even those of supernatural (or cryptonatural nature, we could say). I ignore, because I am not so put in a French comic, if the line or lines proposed by this BD has been followed in others, but I do remember any history of enough years The bell of Didier Comès, with a winter rural world that hides terrible secrets.

In sum, a comic/graphic novel/Gang of the most entertaining and suggestive. With a memorable villain, a protagonists with which to empathize -Well, Betty is a bit grumpy, but it is worth- and an own mythology in which it is worth deepening. With less than that good stories have been built and this is undoubtedly.

Also by Frederik Peers in a book a day: Going around, blue pills