Euro Crime And Steampunk at one of it's best!

This week I stumbled upon the comic book series; The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec.

Attracted by the art and its subtle hues it was presented in a hard back book.

All together there are 10 stories and at present we are on book five of those translated into English.

1. Extraordinary Adventures

2. Adèle and the Beast

3. The Demon of the Eiffel Tower

4. The Mad Scientist and Mummies on Parade

5. The Secret of the Salamander

First published in 1976 and written and illustrated by French comic’s artist Jacques Tardi these  books were originally printed on a Sunday in the newspaper Sud-Ouest.

The character to whom we follow is heroine Adele Blanc-Sec who within herself is a popular fiction writer; inspired by secret sects which history has long forgotten.

She is cynic and it’s this cynicism which leads her into a mystical world of crime. We get corruption, the occult, incompetence which leads to the dangers of patriotism.

The majority of the stories are set within Paris in real life locations during events throughout the 20^th century.

The book starts off pretty light hearted in the year of 1910 and is an excellent parody of books and illustration of that time, but as we move forward, we see the mood get darker as World War 1 is just around the corner.

The thoughts and ideas of Adele becoming a nurse soon get over turned by her feisty nature, and of course, a lady was not allowed to fight.... BUT she gets injured.

Here we see the sudden leap into what we affectionately know as STEAM PUNK!

This is one of its finest.

Adele gets cryogenically frozen…. And I’m not going to give any more away.

The impression I got was though the author wanted to keep the time line historically correct he didn’t want this character entangled within war which is why we get this leap in genre.

SO...

It’s a thrilling ride and if you like disregard to the law, crime, scull duggery and a magic carpet ride then this book is for you!

One of things thing I like about it; is the story takes you on one of the wildest journeys but you never loose the feeling that you’re sat reading by gas lamp, the pictures and colours never betray the reader or story.