Driven hunt (comic)

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Driven hunt (original title: Partie de Chasse ) is a comic text written by Pierre Christin and drawn by Enki Bilal , which was published as an album in 1983 by Dargaud . The political thriller previously appeared in two parts from 1981 in the French comic magazine Pilote . It was first published in German in 1985 by Carlsen Verlag . In the pseudo-documentation of the bloody striving for power , a group of disaffected leading old men from different Warsaw Pact states plans the murder of a rising member of the Politburo to prevent a relapse into Stalinism .

In 2008 the comic was republished together with The Sleep of Reason , another political thriller from Christins and Bilals under the title Fins de Siècle by Ehapa .

Through the mysterious stranger arrested at the train station, the comic is loosely linked to the Légendes d'aujourd'hui by Christin and Bilal.

action

In the winter of 1983 a Soviet train crossed the snow-covered landscape in the Polish Carpathians with the destination Krolowka. Vasily Alexandrovich Chevchenko, who fell silent after a facial paralysis, was a veteran of the October Revolution and a member of the Politburo and organized a hunt in the area. On the train with him are his confidante Yevgeny Golozov, a member of the Central Committee and a young French interpreter. During the trip, Golozov tells the French episodes from Chevchenko's life, his encounter with Lenin , his role during and after the revolution and his inner turmoil during the Stalinist purges when his great love Vera Nikolayevna Tretyakova was arrested and executed.

The other participants of the hunt gradually meet in a remote villa. They are comrades from the various socialist brother countries whose lives and fates are all linked to Vasily Alexandrovich Chevchenko. Their roles in the Hungarian Uprising , the Prague Spring , etc. are told in flashbacks .

On the evening of the first day of the hunt, the last two participants arrive, the East German Günther Schütz, a leading man in COMECON and Sergej Schawanidze, the designated successor to Chevchenko. In the following conversations it becomes clear that the two newcomers take a different attitude towards the party line than those present. When the Pole Tadeusz Boczek was rescued from an attacking boar by a master shot by Chevchenko during the wild boar hunt the next day, the Frenchman happened to find out about an event planned for the next day.

A bear hunt has been scheduled for this day, Chevchenko assigns everyone a place, Sergei Shawanidze is dissatisfied with his because he sees no chance to kill the bear from there. After a long wait and poor visibility, Golozov and the Frenchman, who have taken a stand together, see a figure. Golozov asks the French to shoot, which he does. A second shot was fired almost at the same time. They look and find the body of Shawanidses, who has left his position. Günther Schütz, who says that this was a planned murder and not a hunting accident, is forced to remain silent by the others.

On the somewhat hasty return journey on the train to Moscow, the reform communist Golozov is already considered to be Chevchenko's successor, the Frenchman states that he was only a useful idiot in the hunt, and Chevchenko shoots himself in his compartment.

obituary

In 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the authors expanded the comic to include a section entitled as an obituary (German 1993). In this, Günther Schütz reflects on the downfall of actually existing socialism, tells the further fates of the people involved and at the end blows up the villa with those who were still alive in the hunt in 1990, whom he considers complicit in the downfall of actually existing socialism.

“What we did was right. But nothing could save us from doing the wrong thing "

reception

In the list , the hundred best comics of all time Comic Speedline is Treibjagd ranked 49th

In the volume The Spirits of Inverloch in the Valerian and Veronique series by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières , the events described above are among those that worry the agents of the space-time service.

proof

  1. ↑ Publication in Pilote 1981
  2. ^ Publication in Pilote 1982
  3. ↑ Driven hunt at the German Comic Guide
  4. ↑ Marcel Feige: Das große Comiclexikon p. 69, Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin, 2001, ISBN 3-89602-285-7
  5. ↑ Pierre Christin, Enki Bilal Fins de Siècle Ehapa, Cologne, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7704-3244-8
  6. ↑ Pierre Christin, Enki Bilal Treibjagd p. 20, Carlsen Verlag 1993, ISBN 3-551-72259-5
  7. ↑ To determine the location: At the train station in the (probably fictional) town of Krolowka there is a sign to Strzyżów . Driven hunt p. 21
  8. ↑ Driven Hunt p. 87
  9. ↑ Driven hunt at Comic Speedline
  10. ↑ Valerian & Veronique Complete Edition Volume 4, p. 147, ISBN 978-3-551-02555-5

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