In Review: Cinebook Recounts The Wright Brothers

Cinebook return to their historically factual series Cinebook Recounts with the story of the first manned flight of a powered aeroplane at Kitty Hawk in America in 1903 with The Wright Brothers, written by J P Lefevre-Garros and illustrated by Marcel Uderzo.

Engineers Orville and Wilbur Wright had made their money printing newspapers in Daytona, Ohio and, by the turn of the twentieth century, had moved on to manufacturing the new craze of the day, bicycles. However their real desire was to fly and leaving their sister in charge of the bicycle business they used the winters to travel to the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, were they flew firstly large kites before moving on to gliders. With the experience of designing and flying the gliders, their next task was to design a light but powerful engine that they could fit to their aircraft to power it. But they were not the only engineers around the world with similar plans.

This book has a bit of tortuous history. It was originally published in Europe as Biggles Raconte Les Frères Wright in 2005, part of a series of factual aviation history books themed around WE John's pilot character but not actually featuring Biggles himself. Cinebook managed to release two of the books from this series, Biggles Recounts The Falklands War and Biggles Recounts The Battle Of Britain, in 2007 and 2008 with Biggles Recounts The Wright Brothers due for 2009 but issues arose between the estate of WE Johns and Lombard, the original French publishers. This lead to Lombard loosing their Biggles licence, meaning that Cinebook could no longer release any Biggles titles. While this stymied further releases in their fictional Biggles series, as the character was not in the factual series they retitled it as Cinebook Recounts and started again.

With Battle of Britain and The Falklands War rereleased under the new series title, The Wright Brothers is the first of the "new" Recounts books, albeit with an English translation dating from 2008.

This was originally the sixth book in the Biggles Raconte series and by this point the French series had covered mainly war topics with their inherent action and adventure, so the tale of two engineers who designed big kites and then incrementally modified their designs until they reached a controllable, manned aircraft was a change of pace. This is not a dull book by any means but readers expecting a tale of adventure and daring pilots will be disappointed. Lefevre-Garros gives the background to the brothers work, setting the historical scene by mentioning some of the other people working towards manned flight at the time and even suggesting in the second panel of the book that a Frenchman beat them to it (Clement Ader did just struggle into the air in 1897 but it was an uncontrolled hop). While many others appear to have started by jumping in the deep end and building a powered aircraft that they didn't know how to fly, the Wrights started with kites to learn aerodynamics and then moved on to gliders so that they knew how to control an aircraft in flight before finally progressing to a powered aeroplane.

Backed up by Marcel Uderzo's detailed and accurate artwork, Lefevre-Garros takes the reader through the years of test flying the kites and gliders and the Wrights' redesigns on them as they found the weaknesses of each stage of their development before reaching the morning of 17 December 1903 when Orville Wright lay down in the pilot's position of the aircraft they simply called Flyer but we now refer to as Wright Flyer 1, turned the engine on and literally flew into the history books.

Cinebook Recounts The Wright Brothers is not an action packed tale of daring pilots but it is a detailed and well illustrated account of the logical design steps of two engineers that lead up to a moment in history - and that is what makes it worth reading.

There are more details of Cinebook Recounts The Wright Brothers and the other titles in the Cinebook Recounts series on the Cinebook website.

There are more details of the original French Biggles Raconte books on the International Biggles Association website.

In Review: Cinebook Recounts The Battle Of Britain

If you are looking at the cover of Cinebook Recounts The Battle Of Britain thinking that it looks a little familiar that is because this is the third time that it has been published in the UK. The first time was by Red Fox in 1995 while Cinebook themselves published it in 2008 - but in 1995 it was entitled Biggles And The Battle Of Britain while in 2008 it was Biggles Recounts The Battle Of Britain. With there being an issue between the original French publishers and the WE Johns estate over the character of Biggles, we should probably consider ourselves lucky that, since he is not actually a character in the story, it was relatively easy to retitle the book and avoid the issue.

First and foremost this is a history book, which relates the events of that summer 70 years ago when the Luftwaffe attempted to wrestle air superiority of the southern English skies from the Royal Air Force to allow an invasion fleet to sail from German occupied France. They were unsuccessful and Hitler moved on to open up a second front against the Russians instead.

Written by Bernard Asso and illustrated by Francis Bergese, the book relates the story of the battle in 22 pages which is then followed by 20 pages entitled The Bombing Of Germany (1943 - 1945). Asso tells the story briefly but succinctly including many of the characters from both the British and German sides to humanise the story although in translation from French to English Air Vice Marshal Leigh-Mallory looses part of his rank which also happens to German Grand Admiral Raeder who's surname is also mis-spelt.

Unfortunately, it is not the only issue since the problems begin right in the first panel in which we are told that the British Expeditionary Corps were evacuated from Dunkirk - it was the British Expeditionary Force. This tends to show that the original French version has been translated too literally into English without checking the correct British terms so, for instance, the twin engined Messerschmidt Bf110 fighters are described as "bi-motor".

For a fictional story the odd instance of this can be forgiven: however, in a factual book such terms should be correct and all too often in the Battle of Britain story they are not. The other mistake in that first panel is one that Cinebook have made before in Biggles - Spitfire Parade, referring to the British World War 2 military who fought for King George VI as 'her majesty's forces'. The lack of knowledge of RAF terms also seen in Spitfire Parade is also evident here, with inaccuracies as to how squadrons and groups are numbered.

As with Spitfire Parade, this book really needed a proof reader familiar with the subject.

The second half of the book is given over to the allied bombing campaign in Europe in the later stages of the war. This does not suffer in translation the same way as the Battle Of Britain section does, perhaps because it has fewer specific terms in the text, but it does get the Cinebook censorship treatment on the "good girl" art that adorned the aircraft. Strangely, this is a little inconsistent with the female figures only being removed in close shots while if the same aircraft is smaller in the next panel the figure remains.

Yet for all these issues Bergese's artwork remains a delight. His aircraft are accurate and detailed, even down to the mud splatters from the Hurricane tail wheels appearing on their rear fuselages, and he is as good at illustrating bombers as he is with fighters, be they German, British or American.

This is a reissue of one of the earliest Cinebook publications, which may explain away a little of the dodgy translation but for those into their aircraft then it must be bought to see Bergese's excellent artwork.

• There are more details of the Cinebook Recounts series on the Cinebook website.

• There are more details of the original French Biggles Raconte series on the International Biggles Association website.

In Review: Biggles - Spitfire Parade

James Bigglesworth, popularly known as Biggles, is one of those fictional characters that has entered the British public consciousness whether or not they have read any of the novels or short stories written by Captain WE Johns. The first Biggles book, The Camels are Coming, was published in 1932 in which he was a World War 1 pilot in the Royal Flying Corps and he would progress through various jobs and adventures in the inter-war years before returning to once again defend the country from the Germans during World War Two despite having barely aged along the way.

Spitfire Parade was published as a hardback collection of thirteen related short stories in August 1941 when the imminent invasion of Britain had receded but King, Country and Empire still stood alone against the Nazi war machine. It tells the ongoing story of Biggles taking charge of the fictional Royal Air Force 666 Squadron in Summer 1940 and building a disparate group of pilots into a fighting team. Operating Spitfire fighters, they take on the Luftwaffe fighters and bombers as well as trying their best to outdo the neighbouring Hurricane fighter squadron.

This is an often tongue-in-cheek and unashamedly pro-British story which is only to be expected considering the book was written for children in the darkest days of the war. All but one of the RAF pilots return unscathed to their base no matter what happens to their planes whilst the Luftwaffe aircraft crash and burn.

In the Cinebook graphic novel of Spitfire Parade, writer and artist Francis Bergese adapts around half of Johns' original short stories into 52 pages of comic strip that was originally published in France by Claude Lefrancq Editeur as Le Bal Des Spitfire in 1992. The comic strip story moves quickly without appearing to skip much of its source material while Bergese's art is clear and accurate despite the large number of aircraft types he has to illustrate - Spitfire, Hurricane, Blenheim and Tiger Moth on the RAF side and Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Bf 110, Junkers Ju88, Heinkel He111 as well as the inevitable Stuka on the German. He even manages to get a Matilda tank in on the action as well.

Bergese’s accuracy even extends to the British military serial numbers of the RAF aircraft. Most of the aircraft serial numbers are readable and, considering that most artists would ignore them or simply make them up, he uses serial numbers that are historically accurate for the types of RAF aircraft involved. While that might be totally irrelevant to the vast majority of the book’s readers, it shows an impressive dedication to accuracy by the artist.

British publications of Biggles graphic novels have been sporadic over the years but date back to artist Pat Williams' 1955 hardback "Biggles strip book" adaptation of the 1933 novel Cruise Of The Condor, while Hodder & Stoughton published various translated Swedish Biggles albums by Bjorn Karlstrom in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This is not the first time that this particular bande dessinee album has been published in the UK, the previous edition being published by Random House’s Red Fox imprint in 1993, but the Cinebook version is a new translation by Luke Spear.

This does beggar a comparison between the two translations and while the Cinebook version probably remains more faithful to the original French text, it does feel a little clunky in comparison to the more naturalistic translation by Adam Robson in the Red Fox version. A few differences between the two do occur, such as Flying Officer George Ferris being from Liverpool in the Red Fox version while the Cinebook version has him from Wales - but the biggest change is in the nickname used by the characters when referring to the Germans. The Red Fox version calls them "Huns" and is at pains to point out in an editorial note that this is used in a familiar rather than a derogatory sense(!), while the Cinebook version goes uses a wider variety of nicknames although they do retain "Hun" as well. However parents considering giving this book to younger children should be aware that Cinebook have included “bastard” as a description of one of the German pilots.

The Cinebook translation also tends to show a lack of RAF knowledge with Coastal Command being referred to as “the Coastal Command” and the squadron’s A Flight and B Flight being renamed the distinctly un-RAF Flight A and Flight B. At one point a Spitfire is described as belonging to Her Majesty's Government, however the biggest clanger is their description of one of the RAF pilots ejecting from a Spitfire, years before ejector seats were fitted to British aircraft. The Red Fox version more accurately described the pilot as having bailed out, as shown in the artwork.

Despite this, Spitfire Parade is a bright, often funny, boy's-own romp through English wartime skies. Just don't expect this to be a war story along the lines of Darkie's Mob or Charley's War - it is still Biggles after all.

• Spitfire Parade is the latest Biggles graphic novel to be published in the UK. The first UK Biggles graphic novel was Cruise of the Condor in 1955 and you can read Jeremy's review of it on Steve Holland's Bear Alley.

• More details of Biggles - Spitfire Parade can be found on the Cinebook website

• More details of foreign language Biggles albums that have been published in English can be found on the Euro Comics translations website.

• All the foreign language Biggles editions in print are available from the International Biggles Association Online Shop