Ted BenoîtBesprekingen

Neither the story nor artwork was anything terrific.

Clearly inspired by John Buchan's The Thirty-nine Steps, this adventure sees Captain Blake on the run, accused of being a spy and a murderer, whilst Professor Mortimer pursues him across the north of England and into the Scottish Highlands in an attempt to aid and exonerate him.

Rather than one finger too few, as in the case of Hannay's nemesis, Blake and Mortimer must beware the man with six fingers!

When will Colonel Olrik learn not to stand so close behind Mortimer when covering him with a gun? It always ends with an elbow to the solar plexus and a right cross to the chin! Despite some predictable elements, the plot delivers some deft misdirections regarding the identity of the mole in the upper echelons of the intelligence service.

This is a graphic adaptation of Chandler's hardboiled novel about a dame seeking to make a fresh start after she's been acquitted from her husband's murder, while her father-in-law has sworn that she will be made to pay. On the train to Vancouver, she's accosted by a playboy who offers to put her up at the luxury hotel he's staying in. They attend a party at the penthouse suite where the playboy gets stinking drunk and makes inappropriate advances on our gal, who next finds his dead body on the terrace outside her room.

It's an ok story, and while at first glance I thought the illustrations seemed interesting, I soon changed my mind when I found that most of them were average at best, when not downright disappointing. Can't say I recommend this one.

It may have been written in the 21st Century but strange Encounter is mored in the Cold War days of the 1950s - 1954 to be precise: the action takes place in America and involves Kansas, Colorado, the Hoover dam and Los Alamos in a far-fetched tale involving terrorism by time travellers.

What happened was that we gotr all gung-ho with atom bombs and such, bombed the stuffing out of the world, and basically destroyed the earth for centuries to come and causing future man to look rather like an alien, all green-skinned and deformed. Future man, understandably pissed off, developed time travel and has returned from the future to stop us developing these weapons of mass destruction.

They do this by infiltrating moles into high positions, wearing life-like body coverings so they pass for normal, and recruiting the services of Colonel Orlik and former world despot Basam Dambu. They seem to think that by putting the megalomaniac tyrant in power they will obviate the threat of nuclear holocaust. Go figure.

Beautifully drawn but weakly plotted with too many words, not enough action and no humour, ie same old. same old. Don't get me wrong, I will continue to buy the Blake and Mortimer series: despite all the negative things I have to say I do actually quite enjoy them...½

Un scénario pas forcément très original, une histoire un peu courte, mais toujours le même plaisir de retrouver Blake & Mortimer, et leur ennemi de toujours, le colonel Olrik.

Playback
Raymond Chandler was a huge star in the world of noir. His books and screenplays rose above a sea of pulp and continue to attract readers today. “Playback” was a screenplay he worked on for years, tweaking and re-tooling it several times. Partly due to film studio politics, and largely due to Chandler’s curmudgeonly behavior, “Playback” never made its way to the silver screen. Instead, it sat moldering in a studio vault until a few years ago, when Ted Benoit and Francois Ayroles turned it into this graphic novel.
“Playback” was not Chandler’s best, but it’s still recognizable as his work. The artists have done an interesting thing here in producing graphic work that closely resembles that of Chandler’s era. It makes heavy use of bold lines and shies away from half-tones. The result is a fun and witty read from a master of the genre to which the graphic novel owes so much. Without noir, there’s a good chance the comic book wouldn’t have caught on, and the later graphic novels wouldn’t have come about at all. The influence of noir can often be seen in the style of a huge portion of graphic novels as well, in the form of witty, fast-paced dialogue, questionable heroes, and general grittiness.
Sure, there are better graphic novels than “Playback,” but few are so grounded in the format’s roots. This is also a book that might find an audience in those who don’t normally read graphic novels.