Adele's unusual adventures

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Adele's unusual adventures (French: Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec ) is a Franco-Belgian comic series from the pen of the French comic artist Jacques Tardi . After an advance publication in the daily Sud-Ouest , the first album of the series was released in 1976 by Casterman . From 1980, Adele's adventures appeared in sequels before an album release at (à suivre) .

action

The series portrays the adventures of the writer Adele Blanc-Sec in Paris during the Belle Époque . The adventures begin on November 4, 1911, when a prehistoric egg breaks open at the Paris Museum of Natural History and a pterosaur hatches, terrifying the city. Adele's “unusual” adventures in the truest sense of the word are a bizarre mixture of crime thriller and fantasy story. Adele's world is populated with occultists , mad scientists, dinosaurs, ape-men, living mummies and other monsters. The plot elements seem to be borrowed from trivial novels at the turn of the century and are interwoven with real events in contemporary history to create complex narratives that often only reveal themselves after repeated reading. Tardi has the character Simon Flageolet say: “Strange story! Not even good for a bad novel ... Too complicated! You wouldn't understand anything ... "

main character

Tardi used a picture of the accident at Gare Montparnasse in the band The Mummies' Revolt in a failed attempt to murder Adele

Adele Blanc-Sec is the beautiful and courageous heroine of the series. She lives in a Paris apartment and makes a living as a detective novel writer. Mostly against her will, she is repeatedly involved in mysterious adventures in the course of which she is repeatedly sought after life. After surviving a few assassinations, she is eventually killed and frozen, only to be brought back to life a few years later.

The historical background of the first volumes of the comic series is the eventful years before the First World War , the mood of which Tardi is able to convincingly capture and convey to the reader. It is mostly a gloomy, tense atmosphere, which is reproduced with carefully researched, detailed drawings. When the series reached the fourth volume in 1914 and thus at the end of this era, Tardi decided to let Adele die. He later linked the story of Adele with that of Lucien Brindavoine, the main character from his comic book story about the First World War The End of Hope , which was integrated into the Adele series as the fifth volume. In the sixth volume, Tardi miraculously resurrected Adele in 1918.

bibliography

After Carlsen Verlag had published the first four volumes in German between 1982 and 1984 , the German translation of Adele's unusual adventures has been published by Edition Moderne since 1989 . The following albums have been released so far:

The pre-war plot up to 1914 (drawn from 1976 to 1978) appeared in four volumes:

  • Volume 1: “ Adèle et la Bête ” (1976); German " Adele and the monster " (Carlsen, 1982; Ed. Moderne, 1989)
  • Volume 2: " Le Démon de la tour Eiffel " (1976); German " The Demon of the Eiffel Tower " (Carlsen, 1982; Ed. Moderne, 1989)
  • Volume 3: " Le Savant fou " (1977); German " The Ape Man " (Carlsen, 1983; Ed. Moderne, 1989)
  • Volume 4: " Momies en folies " (1978); German " Uprising of the Mummies " (Carlsen, 1984 Ed. Moderne, 1989)

The volume “ The End of Hope ”, which appeared in 1974 and was active during the First World War , was added as volume 5 in the series. The protagonist is Lucien Brindavoine. Adele Blanc-Sec naturally does not appear in this volume, but is briefly mentioned in an insert. In other countries the volume is considered a single work and, unlike in France and Germany, is not included in the numbering of the series. Adele's absence was subsequently explained by her murder in the fourth volume:

  • Volume 5: “ Adieu Brindavoine et La fleur au fusil ” (1974); German " The End of Hope ", (Carlsen, 1984; Ed. Moderne, 1989)

The later volumes (drawn from 1981) play after Adele's awakening in the period after the First World War between 1918 and 1923. Lucien Brindavoine and Adele Blanc-Sec already meet in volume 6 (volume 5 according to a different counting method). Brindavoine now plays a leading role alongside Adele or in parallel storylines in all other volumes:

  • Volume 6 (5): " Le Secret de la salamandre " (1981); German " The Secret of the Salamander " (Ed. Moderne, 1989)
  • Volume 7 (6): " Le Noyé à deux têtes " (1985); German " The drowned man with two heads " (Ed. Moderne, 1989)
  • Volume 8 (7): “ Tous des monstres! “(1994); German " Alles Monster " (Ed. Moderne, 1997)
  • Volume 9 (8): “ Le Mystère des profondeurs ” (1998); German " The Secret of the Deep " (Ed. Moderne, 1999)
  • Volume 10 (9): “ Le Labyrinthe Infernal ” (2007); German " The devilish labyrinth " (Ed. Moderne, 2008)

Other protagonists from independent early works by Tardi have guest appearances in the series. So the main characters from Tardis “ Le Démon des glaces ” (1974, German “ The demon in the ice ”) in volume 4 “ Revolt of the mummies ”.

The unknown soldier from “ La Véritable Histoire du soldat inconnu ” (1974, German “ The true story of the unknown soldier ”) is mentioned in volume 6 as a fellow writer missing in the war, and their joint publisher is also introduced.

filming

In 2010, Luc Besson filmed Adele's unusual adventures . The film was released in German cinemas on September 30, 2010 under the title Adèle and the Secret of the Pharaoh . The main roles are played by Louise Bourgoin and Mathieu Amalric , among others .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Demon from the Eiffel Tower. Adele's Unusual Adventures Volume 2, Carlsen 1982, ISBN 3-551-02332-8 , p. 34.