Heroes without scruples

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Heroes without scruples ( Les Innommables ) is a Franco-Belgian comic by Conrad and Yann . It is commonly assigned to the sub-genre Semifunny , which means that the drawing style is in the funny tradition , but the stories also deal with more serious topics.

Release history

Creation and magazine impressions in Spirou

Conrad and Yann developed the series in 1979 without a specific assignment, when both began to establish themselves in the editorial team of Spirou magazine . The satirical war film MASH was the model for the stories, which initially only took place in a barracks . The first character studies came from Yann, Conrad wanted to draft the story for him. But in the course of their work it soon became clear to them that they should divide up the tasks in opposite directions.

After Conrad's previous Jason series ended in Spirou No. 2143, editor Alain de Kuyssche asked him for a new one. At the same time he expressed the wish for something in the follow-up to the aviation and adventure series Buck Danny , whose last short story for the time being appeared after the death of the illustrator Hubinon in no. 2138. Thereupon the two quickly invented the heroic pilot Chuck Willis as the alleged protagonist of their story. Two test pages not intended for publication were created, in which Chuck was seen martial in the Pacific operation. The cover image of Spirou No. 2182 from February 1980, in which the first episode was started under the title Chuck Willis: Matricule triple zéro , showed the hero hanging on a parachute with an Asian beauty on his neck, looking a crocodile in the eyes. In the story in the magazine, however, which now took place in the barracks in question, he was run over by a jeep in the second panel and was thus written out of the series.

The coup succeeded, de Kuyssche was faced with a fait accompli. The episode was carried through to issue 2192, a second, Shukumeï , followed in the same year by Spirou No. 2219 to 2229. The planned third story, Cloaques , was, however, no longer reprinted on the instructions of Charles Dupuis. A scene in particular with two bare-breasted girls fighting in a junkyard armed with knives led to the decision. It was revised around 17 years later and, adapted to the progress of the series, released directly as an album. Instead, 1982 began in Spirou No. 2297 Aventure en jaune (German: Adventure in Yellow ) and thus the longest continuous history of the series, the so-called Hong Kong cycle , which runs over five albums . But even this adventure offered too much sex and violence for the publisher and was canceled in the middle of the action in issue 2311, whereupon the series no longer returned to the magazine.

French album editions

In 1983, the small publisher Temps Futurs published the first complete adventure in yellow . In 1986 it was reprinted for the first time by Glénat and Bédéscope, which were followed by an edition of Shukumeï in 1987 . In the latter album, an edition of Codename: Triple Zero was already announced, but the series was also previously abandoned by Glénat.

She then achieved her breakthrough with Dargaud . From 1994 to 1996 the four albums that completed the Hong Kong cycle were released here , also in 1996 the third edition of Abenteuer in Gelb , which was accompanied by a black and white reproduction of the code name: Triple Zero . From 1997 to 2000 and 2002 to 2004, the three-album Korea and USA cycles followed. Between 2005 and 2010 the offshoot Tigresse Blanche (German: The White Tigress ) was submitted, in which the training of the main female character, Alix, as a Red Chinese spy is shown. This series comprises seven volumes, all of which were also drawn by Conrad, but only the first two were written by Yann. Later, Conrad's wife Wilbur took over the work on the scenario.

Translations into German and other languages

From May 2001 to October 2002, Carlsen Comics first brought the Hong Kong and Korea cycle as volumes 1 to 8. In September 2003, Shukumeï followed as "volume 0" . The end of the first adventure in the fifth album is available in three versions that differ in the outcome and each have a variant cover. A paper ribbon around the various editions clarified the differences. The official ending, which is followed by the rest of the series, already differs from the others six pages before the end and was offered "for the undecided". Alternatively, there was a happy ending “for romantics” and a tragic “for fatalists”, each of which only differs in the last five pages.

The America cycle was published from August 2009 to May 2010 by Finix Comics , which in April 2011 then submitted the code name: Triple Zero as "Volume 000". One problem was that this story was published in Spirou in color but with a comparatively poor print quality and then only once in black and white . For the German edition, Oriol Schreibweis, a member of the publishing house, created a new color scheme that was based on the colors of the magazine imprint and that was subsequently used in a French anthology with Triple Zero and Shukumeï .

The white tigress was published in full by Schreiber & Leser between May 2008 and January 2011.

In addition to the French original and the German version, the series has been translated into Dutch, Spanish, Danish and Finnish.

characters

  • Mac is a corpulent American who always smokes cigars and is something like the leading figure of the three protagonists known as “heroes without scruples”. But he becomes extremely careless as soon as Alix or Tim are in danger.
  • Tim is Mac's short boyfriend who always has a baseball bat hidden on his body unless he is using it - but not to play baseball. Mac and Tony usually refer to him as an "animal", probably because he detests soap. He is more childlike, both in terms of naivety and curiosity. Despite everything, it has a special effect on women.
  • Tony is slim and of a rather normal stature, he is the most level-headed of the trio, but you could also call him the most passive. He is gay and slightly racist. He is also more anxious than the other two, often pessimistic and sometimes jealous of Tim.
In terms of character, the three heroes only take shape in the Hong Kong cycle . In code name Triple Zero they only differ in their very different stature.
  • Alix is an agent of the "Gong-An-Ju" (GAJ), a Red Chinese secret service that appears for the first time in Adventure in Yellow . Her mother was once burned as a scapegoat for the misconduct of a high party official in the boiler of a locomotive, which is credited to Kang Sheng's daughter after she got involved with Mac, an "American class enemy".
  • Colonel Lychee , the main antagonist in the Hong Kong cycle, is Japanese. He bears his title from the war days when he was stationed in Hong Kong for the Kempeitai . He is proud to have sold his mother to a brothel, is a specialist in torture and hates being woken up from dreams by his murder victims.
  • Jade , the daughter of Alix and Mac, was born in the Hong Kong cycle and separated from her parents. She is adopted by a secret transvestite and his husband, and in the early years of her life she is heavily influenced by a certain Lafayette , a friend of the mother of her adoptive father, who would later become known as the founder of Scientology .
  • Roland : a domestic pig, which Mac acquires in barter from headhunters in the story Shukumeï as Tim's playmate and which accompanies the trio from then on. Roland gets her male name from the three friends due to a mistake that is only cleared up when she gives birth to a litter of piglets in sewers , but is not renamed afterwards.

content

Code name Triple Zero ( Matricule triple zéro )

The three "heroes without scruples" managed as US soldiers during the Second World War to avoid the fighting while under military arrest. Well, in peacetime, Mac is supposed to take part in a boxing match for his general , in which he has no chance. The general plans to spread the rumor in the troops that the fight has been postponed so that he can be the only one to bet against Mac and win with it. But it doesn't get that far, because the boxing match ends in a mass brawl.

A short time later, the trio was released from military service. They are based in New York , a private detective and are employed in a conspiracy of the FBI involved, which has the murder of the Governor of New York to the goal. The planning of the attack is reminiscent of the assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy , but it goes wrong because the assassin got drunk after his wife left him. The three heroes are now entrusted by the guilty with the clarification of the case, as they underestimate them and want to cover up the background to the governor. Mac, Tim and Tony manage to solve the affair at least partially. Since they are no longer safe about their lives afterwards, they grudgingly decide to undertake military service again in order to be able to go underground.

Shukumeï

Mac, Tim and Tony are assigned by their general for a military secret mission under the direction of a captain in the jungle of Borneo . The latter's secretary sneaks under the material because she is in love with Tony. After a first encounter with local headhunters , the troops hit the mission's objective, which had been veiled by the captain: a crash-landed B-29 bomber with a deserted crew. On August 10, 1945, the day after Nagasaki , they were assigned to drop a third bomb on Tokyo . Now the crew should be punished and the bomb recovered, but the three heroes help the deserters instead. They had already got rid of the bomb over the Philippines trench. The secretary, disappointed by Tony, joins the captain in the unsuccessful pursuit, while the heroes drift into the sea in a rubber dinghy . There they are picked up by the black captain Mulligan's smuggler ship, which will bring them to Hong Kong .

The Hong Kong Cycle

  • Adventure in yellow ( Aventure en Jaune )
  • The skull of Father Ze ( Le crâne du père Zé )
  • Ching Soao
  • Purple lotus ( Au lotus pourpre )
  • Alix-Noni-Tengu

The ship Torquemada wrecked in October 1949 in the port of Hong Kong. It was robbed of a valuable cargo by the pirate Ching Soao, who, like Mulligan, belongs to the “ Triad of Yellow Ox”: urns which, as it turns out much later, contain the lost fossils of the Peking people . Both the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek and the GAJ of Kang Sheng are interested in this find. The latter instructs Alix to establish contact. This falls into the hands of Colonel Lychee, who is an independent third party that knows about the polls but does not know their content. During a break from Lychee, his minions screw up while trying to torture Alix to talk. She is then also believed to be dead by Lychee. While trying to get rid of the supposed corpse in the port, Mac, Tony and Tim get in the way. The three of them now operate a barge in Hong Kong , which they also use to transport contraband goods between Mulligan's ocean liner and the mainland. Alix is ​​hidden on the tug, but one of Lychees lackeys recognizes Mac, as he frequently visits the brothel Crimson-Lotus . Lychee follows "Rosenblüte", one of the prostitutes , to the cinema. Since she is in love with Mac, she refuses to betray him and is killed by Lychee. Mac, on the other hand, begins an affair with Alix, who promptly becomes pregnant. “Schmalztür”, the manager of the brothel, who was very fond of “Rosenblüte”, developed a hatred of Mac.

Alix, who has fallen out of favor because of her relationship with a “ class enemy ”, is given a second chance to convince the workers of a fireworks factory of communism . Since these are exclusively children who do not take them seriously, and the plant manager sexually coerces them , she simply blows up him and the factory and fakes her death. In search of Mac she wants to go underground in the purple lotus , but "Schmalztür" locks her in the rat-infested cellar to get revenge on Mac.

The three "heroes without scruples" have taken the missionary Father Ze, a Jesuit , on board, who carries the alleged bones of St. Francis Xavier in his suitcase and wants to transfer to his leper colony on the island of Coloane . The suitcase gets lost on the way and it turns out that it was stolen by an Englishwoman who traveled as a stowaway. After her discovery, she makes it clear that the alleged relics are in fact part of the ominous cargo of fossil Peking people. The group decides to drop the father off at his colony, the Englishwoman with whom Tim lost his innocence, but to Hong Kong with the supposed Franz Xavier. On the way, however, they are kidnapped by Ching Sao. Since she soon doubts about getting a ransom for Mac and his family , she leaves her to her “master”, a snake, to “play”. But Tim bites off the snake's head and then eats it, which is why Ching Sao sees him as the new master. She soon succumbs to him sexually and throws the jealous English woman overboard, who is picked up by other pirates. Their captain has an unfinished business with Ching Sao because she locked him in a narrow bamboo cage for 28 years after he had failed during the sexual act. Therefore he is now physically crippled, moves on all fours and is called "the dog man". He learns Ching Sao's current whereabouts from the English woman and decides to attack her. Meanwhile, Colonel Lychee has hired the smuggler Mulligan to establish contact with Ching Sao, who belongs to the same triad. With them is the old garbage woman Schais, a communist agent who was always jealous of Alix. She had persecuted Lychee for the Beijing people charge, but was discovered and captured by Mulligan because of her foul smell. Mulligan also hopes for an intimate adventure from meeting Ching Sao and is somewhat horrified when he finds her with Tim. When the "dog man" appears, the three heroes can escape with Roland, Lychee loots the urns, and Mulligan finally gets his adventure with Ching Sao.

Colonel Lychee wants to hide the urns for the time being and lets the men of the "dog man" bury them on Coloane of all places, so that after Lychee's departure they fall into the hands of Father Ze and his colony. However, this is observed by Schais. Lychee meets with Kang Sheng at his junk to sell him the urns. He also assigns him to kill the traitorous Alix, which Lychee gladly accepts, just to regain his reputation after she has escaped him once. Kang Sheng reveals to him that she was submerged in the purple lotus . A little later, through Schais, Kang Sheng learns that Lychee no longer has the fossils and can get hold of them. His junk was shot down by Chiang Kai-shek's submarine shortly afterwards . But Kang Sheng triumphs by urinating on the urns, causing Kai-shek to lose face or see his ancestors dishonored. He sinks his own submarine and crew, as does the junk, in order to evacuate the urns into an uncertain future without any witnesses.

Colonel Lychee wreaked havoc among prostitutes and suitors of the Purple Lotus . The dying "Schmalztür" confides in Mac that Alix has given birth to a daughter who was sold by "Schmalztür" to a temple. When Lychee starts a fire and a burning woman runs up to him, he takes this for Alix and wants to stab her. Mac knocks him over so he rams the knife into his own stomach. The charred remains of the woman are transferred from Mac to Mulligan's ship to turn her back on Hong Kong. Only then does he notice the mistake and identify the body as one of the prostitutes. Meanwhile, Tim has bought up all the girls in the temple and brought them to the ship. Except for one that smelled strangely like cigars and which was recently adopted by a childless couple .

The Korea Cycle

  • Cloacae ( Cloaques )
  • Bronze doll ( Poupée de bronze )
  • Is-without-chin ( pas-de-mâchoire )

The three "heroes without scruples" were drafted into the Korean War. The troop captain hires Mac to organize a concert by Marilyn Monroe . In the meantime, the “Gong-An-Ju” has commissioned the shaman “Bronze Puppet” to prepare an assassination attempt on General MacArthur by programmed American prisoners of war. The plan becomes obsolete when the general is released and the prisoners of war are executed . The GAJ had previously taken again Alix caught and "Bronze doll" has acupuncture and at Voodoo reminiscent of the rituals Tengriasm gained control of them. Her K'i is trapped in an "Ongon", a kind of totem , her body an "Ani", a willless tool controlled by a bronze doll via the "Ongon". The "Ani" is now supposed to kill Marilyn Monroe, but during the operation Mao orders not to strive for a quick end to the Korean War. The head of the GAJ then shoots into the "Ongon", causing Alix to collapse lifeless in front of Mac's eyes.

The heroes learn from a child of an old Korean shaman, a Mudang , called "has no chin". For her ritual, she needs a helper, a so-called nelegan, for which Mac agrees. In a trance, a miniature of himself emerges from him, which climbs into the "Ani" together with a childlike form of Alix. In the body, both are confronted with childhood fears of Alix and the ghosts of deceased opponents. Mac learns new things about his daughter from “Schmalztürs” spirit: In the vision he sees her together with her adoptive parents on Liberty Island in front of the Statue of Liberty . During the ritual, "Bronze Puppet" regained control of the "Ani" with the repaired "Ongon" and steered him to a US fort. “Bronze Puppet” plans to use the “Ani” to steal the pay of the US troops, but is beheaded by them after the “Ongon” falls into a minefield and is destroyed again. The ritual is completed, but Alix no longer remembers Mac. She has once again become a staunch communist who is disgusted by the “thick imperialist fat lump” and flies away in a helicopter . Mac doesn't want to give up on her, but first wants to look for their daughter.

The USA cycle

  • East of Roswell ( À l'est du Roswell )
  • North of White Sands ( Au nord du White Sands )
  • Southwest of Moscow ( Au Sud-Ouest du Moscou )

At a souvenir stand in front of the Statue of Liberty, Mac finds an uncollected photo with the three people from the vision in which “Schmalztür” appeared to him. Also in the picture is an elderly gentleman who happens to be staying on Liberty Island again. This, Colonel Bartholdi, turns out to be the father of Jade's adoptive father. He is a homophobic rancher from New Mexico who, after seeing him in a fight, invites Mac to his estate to test him on a secret assignment. Mac passes this test and is supposed to impregnate a supposedly extraterrestrial woman for the Colonel in order to breed a hybrid race . He doubts the coma lady is an alien. In fact, she will later turn out to be a Russian agent named Oxana, who crashed with the UFO located on the Colonel's ranch while trying to steal it into the Soviet Union near Roswell . At Jade's persuasion, the agent is "kissed awake" by Tim and is able to escape from the base. Colonel Bartholdi discovers that his daughter-in-law is a transvestite and then shoots his own son. Oxana later breaks his neck himself .

The Chinese also want to get hold of the UFO and send the re- indoctrinated Alix. She actually manages to hijack the flying saucer, but ultimately destroys it in a crash landing at the White Sands military base . As a result, she indirectly thwarted the plan to shoot a Wernher von Braun launcher with a hydrogen bomb at the moon for test purposes . A group of conspirators also wanted to misdirect the missile to Moscow. Ultimately, Alix can be persuaded to reveal her communist beliefs again in order to be reunited with Mac and Jade as a family.

Allusions in the series

In addition to the real people, events and modern myths listed in the list of figures and table of contents, there are a number of other historical allusions and references in the series.

  • The Jardine and Matheson families play a major role in the Hong Kong cycle, albeit in a heavily fictionalized form: the houses only merge during the course of the plot, not as early as the 19th century.
  • In the purple lotus , "rose blossom" is said to have been an illegitimate daughter of Errol Flynn . In fact, she used every opportunity to see her "father" in the cinema and was killed during a performance of Robin Hood .
  • Walt Disney (despite his well-known conservative attitude) has to justify himself to the committee for un-American activities for the fact that " his mouse is wearing red pants". In order to refute this accusation, he allows himself to be broadly suggested to design a fictitious currency, so-called "Mickey Mouse Money", for use in Korea. According to Helden without scruples, this should have the purpose of preventing the black market in the theater of war. In real terms, the currency is reminiscent of the Disney Dollars , which are recognized as a means of payment in the amusement parks of the group.
  • Marilyn Monroe also comes into conflict with the committee. This had learned that she had received the "Russian book" The Brothers Karamazov from her friend (Groucho) Marx . That is the real reason that Mac could hire her to look after the troops. In fact, Marilyn Monroe went on a concert tour for the troops stationed in Korea, but only in 1954, after the armistice was established, not in 1951, the year the bronze doll was sold .
  • The Shukumeï bomb (Japanese for "fate") was nicknamed "Fat Girl" in the first two volumes of The White Tiger . This is a naming of the bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki (" Little Boy ") and Hiroshima (" Fat Man ").
  • The historical figures who appear in The White Tigress also include Butterfly Wu , Edward G. Lansdale , James Jesus Angleton , Ching-ling , Big Eared Tu , Kodama Yoshio , Hirohito , his brother and cousin, Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda.
  • According to Conrad and Wilbur, CIA agent Jack Y. Cannon is also of historical origin.

Reception in the press

In the Tagesspiegel, Lutz Göllner emphasizes the series' closeness to Franquin, Peyo and Morris and to École Marcinelle in general. He praises Conrad's talent for transferring the classic Spirou style into our times. He says to Yann that he knows how to capture a touch of romantic adventure in spite of all the anarchist cheekiness, sexist and racist jokes from which neither Europeans, Africans nor Asians are spared .

literature

Oriol spelling: A duo without scruples. Yanns & Conrads debut in SPIROU magazine . In: Heroes Without Scruples - Code Name Triple Zero . Finix-Comics, Hademar 2011, ISBN 978-3-941236-12-7

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reviews at Comicgate , Comicradioshow and Splashcomics . (Accessed on August 9, 2013)
  2. ↑ a b c d e Oriol spelling: A duo without scruples. Yanns & Conrads debut in SPIROU magazine . In: Heroes Without Scruples - Code Name Triple Zero . Finix-Comics, Hademar 2011, pp. 3–12.
  3. ↑ a b Conrad in Spirou on BD oubliées . Retrieved July 31, 2013 (French)
  4. ↑ Buck Danny in Spirou on BD oubliées . Retrieved August 10, 2013 (French)
  5. ^ Table with number and publication date of the Spirou editions . Retrieved September 2, 2013 (French)
  6. ↑ a b c Bedetheque page of the early album editions . Retrieved September 1, 2013
  7. ↑ a b Bedetheque page of the continuous album edition . Retrieved September 1, 2013
  8. ↑ Bedetheque side of the spin-offs . Retrieved September 3, 2013
  9. ↑ Carlsen editions in the German Comic Guide . Retrieved September 2, 2013
  10. ↑ Cover illustration with bow . Retrieved September 2, 2013
  11. ↑ Finix editions in the German Comic Guide. Retrieved September 2, 2013
  12. ↑ Finix program 2011/12 with image comparison on p. 7 (PDF; 4.9 MB)
  13. ↑ From roller coaster to diaphragm: Finix Comics (annual review of the publishers) in Comic Report 2012 p. 164f; Edition Alfons; Barmstedt; April 2012; ISBN 978-3-940216-13-7
  14. ↑ The white tigress in the German Comic Guide. Retrieved September 3, 2013
  15. ↑ Heroes without scruples , The White Tigress . Retrieved August 17, 2013
  16. ↑ Heroes without scruples , The White Tigress . Retrieved August 17, 2013
  17. ↑ Heroes without scruples . Retrieved August 17, 2013
  18. ↑ The white tigress . Retrieved August 17, 2013
  19. ^ Online version of the review from August 31, 2009. Accessed September 6, 2013

Remarks

  1. ↑ More generally, the term can be defined as an umbrella term for all comics with both humorous and adventurous elements. See the glossary in: Andreas C. Knigge: Comics - From mass paper to multimedia adventure. Rowohlt, 1996, p. 331.
  2. ↑ Of the 74-page album edition, a little more than eleven were not published in Spirou . However, in between the comic was rearranged, that is, the arrangement of the panels on the comic pages was changed.
  3. ↑ The only difference between the two editions is a sticker from Glénat.