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The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec Vol. 2: The Mad Scientist and Mummies on Parade
Jacques Tardi
After establishing the world of the prickly heroine with the first two episodes of this classic series (combined in Fantagraphics' The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec Volume 1), Jacques Tardi plunges us back into Belle-Époque Paris for another double dosage of heroic derring-do, evil and crazy malefactors, mad actresses (yes, "Clara Benhardt" makes a return appearance) and monsters!
In "The Mad Scientist" the science that brought us revived dinosaurs now results in a pithecanthrope stalking the streets of the City of Light, climaxing in an amazing car chase involving a foe from the previous volume. Will the perpetually inept Inspector Caponi just make things worse? Probably. Then in the second episode, "Mummies on Parade," the mummy glimpsed in Adèle's apartment in previous episodes comes alive! The volume concludes with the sudden startling (and delightful) incursion of some characters familiar to Tardi fans, and a shocking climax that leaves the future of both Adèle and this series in doubt as World War I erupts. (It's the only story in the entire series not to feature an "in our next episode" teaser.)
The Extraordinary Adventure of Adèle Blanc-Sec Volume 2 is the lucky seventh book in Fantagraphics' acclaimed series of Tardi reprints, showcasing the rich variety of graphic novels from one of France's greatest living cartoonists.
Download an EXCLUSIVE 12-page PDF excerpt (2.1 MB) with the beginning pages of each story.
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"...Adèle Blanc-Sec is an extraordinary character in a quite extraordinary world.... The cartooning is really wonderful... The strong-willed and smart Blanc-Sec is charming in a fairly hard-luck, tough-as-nails way; all the more so for a woman having to go adventuring as a woman in the 1910-ish Paris, contending not only with the evil that men do, but with steampunk and cult/mystical elements. [Rating] 8/10" – Jeremy Nisen, Under the Radar
"The second collection of the Belle Époque exploits of Adèle Blanc-Sec sees the intrepid occult investigator confronting things walking the streets of Paris that shouldn't be: a prehistoric ape-man revived by a mad scientist and a reanimated mummy from her own collection of artifacts. With their wryly overwrought captions, melodramatic dialogue, and convoluted plotlines, the stories work both as gentle genre parodies and full-out fantasy-detective thrillers, thanks in great part to Tardi's lithe cartooning, which vividly evokes the period while sporting an entirely contemporary sensibility." – Gordon Flagg, Booklist
Praise for Vol. 1:
"Tardi's art well deserves the praise that he's a grandmaster of comics. It's detailed, expressive, authentic, and distinctive. His world-building is thorough, the setting established through both background art and scene selection. Frequent recaps keep the reader up to speed, while emphasizing how amusingly convoluted everything quickly becomes. Tardi knows the conventions of this kind of rollicking, complicated adventure, and the story points out how ridiculous they are at the same time it's engaging in them." – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"Several artists have the ability to capture some physical element of a city or a time; Tardi summons all of that with a fealty to detail and a consistency that eventually yields a more rounded, complete experience. Go all in, and by [Vol. 1]'s final 20 pages one can feel the air hit people in the face when they stumble out of doors, sense the temperature, smell the panoply of city-borne scents.... I could personally read 10,000 pages of this material, stopping to stare at the prettier parts, returning to such a book over an entire summer.... It's a rare work that makes you like it and wish others would, too, that's for sure." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter
"The stories are romping adventures that would appeal to a young-adult crowd, but have plenty of edge and playfulness for grown readers; they function both as an evocation and sly satire of classic adventure stories like Tintin. The clever stories, with hidden meaning always skirting around their simplicity, are perfectly complemented by Tardi's art; readers familiar with one of the greatest names in French comics will need no introduction, but newcomers will be blown away by his mixture of clean lines and rough edges, and his absolute mastery of mood as he delivers some of the finest illustrations of Paris ever crafted. [Grade] A" – The A.V. Club
9" x 11.75"