Paris (AFP)
Fifteen years after the release of "Dust", the latest album of the series Blueberry, Christophe Blain (drawing) and Joann Sfar (scenario) have raised the glove with the publication Friday of "Amertume Apache", a new adventure of the most famous cowboy of Franco-Belgian comics.
The result is up to this expectation. The creators of "Quai d'Orsay" and "Cat Rabbi" were able to reinterpret, without betraying, the famous hero created 56 years ago in the magazine Pilote by Jean-Michel Charlier (scenario) and Jean Giraud, aka Gir, aka Moebius, drawing.
The album (64 pages, 14.99 euros), published by Dargaud, has a circulation of 70,000 copies. He is in the running for the Fauve d'Or of the next Angoulême festival. Two volumes are planned.
The story begins with a tragedy. Three young whites in a religious community led by an iron guru, murder two women from an Apache tribe. The two victims are the wife and daughter of a warrior named Bitterness. This double crime risks triggering a new Indian war unless Lieutenant Blueberry, witness of the crime but arrived too late on the scene of the tragedy, manages to get his hands on the young assassins ...
Even if the two authors did not seek to "imitate" Charlier (1924-1989) and Giraud (1938-2012), the readers of the series are found from the first boxes in the world of the creators of the saga. Blueberry, rebellious and lonely, still looks like the young Jean-Paul Belmondo, the decorations, cinematographic inspiration, are both simple and sumptuous. The faithful will find with pleasure certain iconic characters of the series as the "bag of hoar" Jimmy McClure. The story is a twilight beauty.
The place of women has always been important in Blueberry's albums (we remember Harriett Tucker, the lieutenant's southern love, Katie Marsh, the teacher of "The Man with the Silver Star" ( 1969), from "Chihuahua Pearl", the almost wife of Blueberry). This time, the role of women is essential giving the album a feminist tone.
Before Blain and Sfar, other authors (Colin Wilson, Michel Blanc-Dumont, François Corteggiani ...) had taken the character of Blueberry but for derived series ("Marshall Blueberry" and "The youth of Blueberry"). "Apache Bitterness" is the first to fit directly into the founding period of Blueberry.
In addition to the famous cowboy, other comic book heroes have recently been performed by contemporary writers. We can cite the "Spirou" Franquin taken by including Emile Bravo or "Mickey" taken by designers like Cosey, Lewis Trondheim, Regis Loisel or Tébo in the collection "Disney by Glénat".
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