"French comics" refers to La Bande Dessinée (literally "pictures of continuity", abbreviated BD) in the French-speaking world. In May 2016, I published an article in Reading entitled "Antiquities in 'French Comics'", lamenting that Hergé's "Ligne claire" French-language historical comic tradition after "The Adventures of Tintin" did not have enough influence in the Chinese reading world. More than six years have passed, and much has changed: Ocean Press has released a ten-volume anthology of the Chinese translation of The Adventures of Alex by Jacques Martin (1921-2010); Beijing Fine Art Photography Publishing House translated and published the "Alex's Journey" series supporting "Adventures" according to the original layout, which is also ten volumes, with the general title "The Legend of Time" (including Greece, Athens, Rome, Babylon, etc. and two volumes of ancient Egypt); The "postromantic" studio, which is very planned and ambitious in publishing French-language comics, has also translated and published two volumes of Egyptian pyramid archaeology and exploration stories in Edgard Félix Pierre Jacobs (1904-1987) The Adventures of Blake and Mortimothy into a thick copy of The Pharaoh's Secrets. Although it cannot be said that it constitutes a large enough market size, and because the quality of text translation and cultural familiarity have affected the charm of some stories, after all, it has opened up a gratifying situation, just look at the few but joyful comments on Douban to feel it.
A Song of Swords and Shadows: The Adventures of Vasco
Recently, the People's Literature Publishing House published "Vasco", a French-language comic book with a "bright line" school of historical themes, entitled "Song of Swords and Shadows: The Adventures of Vasco's Wanderings", curated by the "Nine Jiu Readers", which can be regarded as a new achievement in the translation of the above series. This Chinese translation currently translates the first twenty volumes of the original book, divided into four thick bound volumes. I couldn't wait to read the new book with the fragrance of paper and ink, immersed in the gallery of historical and architectural paintings of the late medieval Eurasian world constructed by Gilles Chaillet (1946-2011), and gained a great sense of happiness from the rich and colorful images and gripping stories.
Gilles Sayer is a cartoonist who grew up with Jacques Martin for a long time, and is equivalent to Hergé's second disciple. In my old article, I argued that this Vasco is enough to prove that the author "is truly a fellow traveler like Jacques Martin who faithfully and passionately represents monuments in drawing stories." Unfortunately, his life was not eternal, he was more than twenty years younger, but he died almost at the same time as Martin. Vasco has been published in thirty volumes as of 2019, but at least in the twenty-third volume, others have collaborated and changed some of the style and charm, so the first twenty volumes of this series of Chinese translations can almost get the full picture.
The protagonist, Vasco, a young man from a banking family in Siena, Italy, in the mid-fourteenth century, roamed the world for the business of his uncle banker, as well as for his sense of justice and curiosity, not only to the medieval cities of Europe, but also to the eastern world, including China. The storyline of each book is also more tortuous and bizarre, and is dotted with many evidence-based descriptions of historical events and literary imagination. "There are real toads in the imaginary garden", in which we can not only see the Byzantine emperor John VI who was about to marry his daughter Princess Sophie to an Ottoman chief (this princess and the protagonist Vasco later began a protracted love story), the Yuan Shun Emperor Toyamuer, the French king "good man" John and the British "black prince" Edward, but also in Rhode Island to meet the kidnapped brother of the author of "Decameron" Boccaccio, in the fantastic cave world of Cappadocia, he met the abandoned descendants of Louis VII of the Crusades, Even just rested for a night in Verona from the balcony of Romeo and Juliet's tryst, and then happened to meet the great poet Petrarch on a magnificent trip outside Venice.
Volumes I and II revolve around the political cause of Cola di Rienzo (1313-1354), which Vasco supported, about how he won the love of the Roman people, staged a "bloodless revolution" and was elected tribune, and how he was framed by the papacy conspiracy that fled to Avignon and was discredited by self-aggrandizing hubris. Volumes 18 and 19 continue to write that Lienzo made a comeback a few years later, unscrupulously regained all kinds of political capital, and once again completely lost popular support, and was finally cut by the rioting people. As a real historical figure, Lienzo's ideological character is portrayed in this comic book quite three-dimensional and vivid: his early years were heroic, with a chivalrous heart, full of pride and ambition to restore Rome's former glory; After successfully ascending to the throne, he was tempted by fame and fortune, inferior to his commoner origin, and gradually became a puppet driven by the rhetoric of the nobility and the Holy See, forgetting the demands of the people at the bottom to support him; After middle age, after ups and downs, Lienzo's personality became more complex and fickle, bewitched by the church's fabricated origin myths (saying that he was the illegitimate son of Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor), boasting about speaking ancient Latin in his daily life, and spending a lot of money to satisfy his vanity and glitz with Roman antiquities. The book is full of literary artifacts and elaborate depictions of ancient architecture, and the sense of drama is accentuated by Lienzo's delusion of becoming Roman emperor.
Not only that, throughout the book, especially in volumes 7, 8, 13, 14 and 20, the protagonist frequently travels between the towns of medieval France in the context of the Hundred Years' War between England and France, and the composition design will first have a comprehensive view of the city before entering a new stage, followed by many immersive details. We can discover the charms of the medieval places of Avignon, Carcassonne, Castelbouc (castle on the Tarn), Saint-Enimé, Albi, Corde, Chauvigny, Poitiers, Le Mans, Paris, Boulogne, Angers, Vitreté, Fourger, Treguier, Le Mont-Saint-Michel and many more. If we compare the monuments left behind today, we can see more about the author's intentions in this regard.
In addition, some stories take place in the Germanic and Flemish regions under the control of the Holy Roman Empire, Constantinople and the surrounding islands in the afterglow of the end of the Byzantine Empire, and the Mongol Yuan Empire at that time. Volume X, Vasco is outside Isfahan, quite similar to the scene of "The Adventures of Tintin" "The Golden Clamp Crab Drug Syndicate Cracked"; In the eleventh volume, Vasco serves the Yuan Shun Emperor, who is exiled in the famous city of Balkh in Khorasan, and he wants to escort him to Tubo, part of the story recalls the snow-capped mountain encounters in "Tintin in Tibet". The main stage of the twelfth volume is the city of Beijing and the court of the late Yuan Dynasty, which is also known as "Khan Bali", although it is obviously different from the "isolated island" of the twentieth century and the occupied area of Shanghai in the story of "Blue Lotus", but the family secrets found by the protagonist in the dusk Chinese garden, as well as the trust and friendship he and the Yuan general Boyan (this character broke through his original historical true identity in subsequent volumes, came to Europe, and became Vasco's adventure partner), all borrowed from Hergé's model to some extent.
The composition method and narrative means of the "French Manga" picture book are different from the thoughtful storyboard technology of Japanese comics, and more pursue the streamlined transformation of the picture to express events, and most of the plots are clearly expressed through text narration and character dialogue, rather than relying on a grid of pictures to continuously illustrate the advancement of action. And this historical theme is much more complicated than "The Adventures of Tintin", which tests the reader's understanding of the historical background and the identification of the details of the scene in the painting, so the content of a thin volume of more than fifty pages may contain a very rich plot. The author also shows his literary talent, often quoting scriptures, making the lyrical language of many characters appear humorous and subtle, and interspersing the dialogue of the characters with commentaries on various civilizational historical phenomena and religious concepts, which makes us even more energetic when reading. In any case, I feel that this kind of historical theme "French comics" are worth continuing to import.