EDWARD GAUVIN

The Walking Dead, but with werewolves, and maybe a little bit of Stephen King’s The Stand thrown in… This series in love with all things American hails from Soleil’s new French Comics imprint, with page layouts and panel designs more like American floppies, resulting in pacing that’s less like traditional Francophone bande dessinée. Written by Jean-Luc Istin, with B&W art by Kyko Duarte and grayscale by Ellem. The longer French volumes, coming in at about 100 pages, have been divided in half, so you’re still getting bang for your buck: twice the length of the average American comics issue. The conclusion of the first arc, God Has a Sense of Humor, is now available as a digital exclusive from Soleil at Comixology.

Riker’s Island prison is now a gigantic larder for the wolves, and prisoner Malcom Spolding owes his continued existence only his talent for mechanical repairs.

Two years ago, I began a series by Arthur de Pins called March of the Crabs: a gentle satire about a French seaside resort, a pair of nature documentarians, and self-actualization for an evolving crab species. De Pins, an animation veteran with other books in English to his credit (NBM’s Zombillenium), deploys bold, colorful art in the service of a rather unique saga probing such topics as environmental disaster, revolution, and personal fulfillment.

This year, BOOM! Studios continues the series with Book 2 of the crably epic, an Angouleme and Eisner nominee. Will one giant step forward for crabkind bring about enlightenment or only collapse? As Chinese premier Zhou Enlai is rumored to have said, when asked about the impact of the French Revolution, “It’s too early to tell.” But you can preview the art at Comics Beat!

 

Olivier Guez’s latest op-ed, in The New York Times, on the upcoming French elections: “At Stake in France’s Election: What It Means to Be French”. An excerpt:

What Europe’s heads of state have not done, and simply must begin to do, is prepare their citizens for the one great requirement for progress toward more unity — an enormous leap of faith and optimism, even while in the grip of fear. Instead, they betray their peoples’ fondest dreams by pecking at one another. And even my generation, who were 15 to 20 years old when the Berlin Wall fell, fails to stand up to them and demand that they save the dream we were promised — a Europe finally at permanent peace and working in unison after all the divisions and horrors of the 20th century.

Goldy, Volume 4 of Golden City, an all-ages series written by Daniel Pecqueur with art by Nicolas Malfin, is  now available as a digital exclusive from Delcourt at Comixology.

Surviving his incarceration, Harrison Banks has ended up on an ice-cold lake… Where a young woman, who looks like strangely like Lea, his childhood sweetheart, takes him in and looks after him. But their time is short and their reverie is interrupted by assassins…