Jean-Michel Charlier (1924–1989)

If there was ever a comic with very realistic approach to everyday life and challenges of modern combat pilots Tanguy and Laverdure series is exactly that.

Level of details (art by Albert Uderzo) is astonishing. Every airplane, every maneuver (including pilot ejecting or trying to land airplane while encountering technical difficulties) is so clearly depicted that it seems to be ripped from live videos.

Our two protagonists - Tanguy, serious part of the duo and Laverdure, walking-disaster :) show more (as one of their commander says - Laverdure you could wreck more havoc by just cycling into enemy territory than squad of bombers :)) - get assigned to famous Stork squadron and get to fly on the Mirage III fighters.

Reader is given insight into what actually takes to make modern warplanes do their job - always present ground crews, technicians and controllers. Without them, no matter how advanced, modern planes would forever remain grounded.

Industrial espionage, foreign agents always on a lookout for blueprints for the latest technology from France, blackmails, fights for weapon sales contracts, sabotage teams - these are enemies Tanguy and Laverdure will encounter on pages of tome #2.

Highly recommended for fans of thrillers, aviation and of course our courageous duo. show less

This book has a really awesome female (secondary) character, I was quite surprised. Especially for a book from 1949 about planes and WWII. That being said, it is also resoundingly racist. And the history behind the story is very interesting, but not very accurate (i.e. Americans are awesome in all ways, the Japanese very much less so). That being said, even though the art is not as nice as in later volumes and it has a lot of exposition, it's still a great read (and informative!).

From Jean Giraud/Gir/Moebius when he was 24 years of age came a new kind of anti-hero.
With scenarist Jean-Michel Charlier, Giraud was inspired by the style of Illustrator Jije in drawing a cow-boy/cavalry lieutenant caught in the middle of a XIXth century Apache uprising in the SouthWest U.S. While his scenarist, Jean-Michel Charlier dreamed going West for his next tale. This compilation of the first three comics in the Serie of Blueberry are "Fort Navajo", "Tonnerre A L'Ouest" (Thunder in show more the West") and "L'Aigle Solitaire" ("the lonely Eagle"). It is loosely inspired by events starting post-American Civil War until the arrival of General George R. Crook in Arizona to fight united American Indian tribes. One of the best scenes is Blueberry looking for a medicine to save the Colonel commanding Fort Navajo who was bitten earlier in the story by a rattle-snake. He arrives in the town of Tucson immediately after it was deserted by its inhabitants and at the very moment it is taken over by a large party of Apaches.

To give their comic-book anti-hero a truly distinctive face, the authors obtained permission of french actor Jean-Paul Belmondo to use his cinegenic broken nose profile to draw their lead character.
Giraud/Moebius who created some interiors for the science-fiction film "Alien" gives a Western hero this different look from other more conventional profiles of the U.S. Cavalry with Anglo/Irish faces.
This also gives Michael S. Blueberry his Indian name of "Nez-Casse" (Broken Nose). Another source of inspiration are Hollywood Westerns from Directors John Ford to Howard Hawks.
Blueberry is a Southerner who joined the U.S. North during the Civil War; he is sympathetic to the conflicted personality of Lieutenant Crowe who is half Indian and tries to stop the developing conflict between the Apaches and the Navajos united under Cochise against the U.S. army. Crowe knows it were not the Apaches who massacred a rancher's family and kidnapped his son but some renegade band of Mescaleros.
There the plot is clearly influenced by the 1956 film "The Searchers". One is not to look for too much accuracy in this historical chronology as the Mescaleros were also Apache Tribes whose reservation was recognized by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873 and the descendants of Cochise now live on the Mescalero Apache reservation in New-Mexico. However the accuracy resides in the western accurate details as rendered on paper by the frames drawn by Giraud.

Giraud is also a virtuoso at coloring by daylight or at night, the landscapes of Arizona. May be it is also research on his part and trying to give the feeling for the Apache belief in the dark side of life opposed to its light side. The horses the characters ride on have dynamic qualities that a Renaissance artist would not have renounced.
The originals were published weekly in the 1960s in the French comic book newspaper "Pilote". This edition has the first three adventures of the cycle of the Indian wars. show less

Inspired by real attacks on Indian lodges in the 1865 time period, Jean Giraud and his scenarist Jean-Michel Charlier create a cinematographic masterpiece. Use of monochromatic panels to add drama to the story, snow and ice landscapes, epic cavalry charges and last stands while sharing how old people, women and children were not spared.

The Anti-Hero Lieutenant Mike Blueberry is caught in the whirlwind of the Indian wars led by a Custer-like mad man. But with Giraud it is never all drama as show more Blueberry's companions provide comic relief to this monumental story. show less