THE HUNTING PARTY

THE HUNTING PARTY 

Writer Pierre Christin and artist Enki Bilal's classic tale of the last days of Soviet Russia is a quiet, subdued masterpiece.

The Hunting party is a graphic novel which attacks the taboos of communist crimes. Christin and Bilal take the subject head on: The purging, the systematic elimination of the opponents to communism, the hunting for the Trotskystes, the Kominform, the Spring of Prague crushed under Russian tanks, the massacre of the peasants' resistance to collectivization... Christin's slow but hypnotic plot is carried over the story's 82 pages by the powerful dialogues. It is with abandon that the author plunge us by flashbacks, in a maze of past repressions, crimes and terror. 

Enki Billal's art is atmospheric. His quiet drawings conveyed the desperateness of the last days of Soviet Russia. It's a style full of decrepitude and it goes well with this nauseating political history. With Bilal, no wall is without cracks, not a street without holes, nor is a face spared the ravages of time and bad decisions. Even the trees seem exhausted. His use of visual metaphor's and allegories to display the emotionally charged scenes, bring resonance to this story of power and control.  Bilal does not use colors to embellish, but to generate emotions. One can only describe The hunting party's visual atmosphere as, unhealthy. 

Reading this graphic novel does require some minimal knowledge of contemporary history, but the true Russian aficionado will be able to seize all the subtleties of the graphic novel, in particular the contents of the propaganda posters. 

The hunting party is not only one of the best political graphic novels in the history of the Ninth Art, but also reveals itself to be a work of conscience and recollections.  Even more, it was a formidable prediction of the explosion of the Eastern bloc.

Get this seminal work here:

XIII Vol.1: THE DAY OF THE BLACK SUN

                                           XIII Vol.1: THE DAY OF THE BLACK SUN 

Written by J. Van Hamme and drawn by William Vance. Published in English by CineBook.

Comics (and bandes dessinées) have always mined other mediums for ideas (and vise-versa). Sometimes that fact is quite obvious as in J. Van Hamme and William Vance's XIII. One could believe that the protagonist, named Alan in this first story, lives on a parallel plane of existence with Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne character.

Obviously, the man in question here is either military or spook. But since he lost his memory, not even he can be sure. All we know is that a whole bunch of people are after him and that he might have committed a murder worthy of national ramifications.

Old pro J. Van Hamme delivers a script that is just top notch. The plot is solid, the pace tense and the dialogues effective.

Another veteran, William Vance, handles the art chores and just like vintage cars, his style never goes out of fashion. One could almost compare him to a Belgian version of the late-great John Buscema. An accomplished draftsman and graphic storyteller, his art is direct, without bells and whistles and is concerned in telling the story in a clear manner.

Originally published in French in 1984, the book is available in English from CineBook and is the first of many albums in the series. Get it here: