In Review: Thorgal - Ogotai's Crown

Thorgal - Ogotai's Crown picks up directly from where the previous book, Brand Of The Exiles, left off. However this Thorgal title is very different to the more traditional Viking tale of exile and slavery of the preceding book as writer Jean Van Hamme and artist Gzegorz Rosinki give readers a major dose of time-travelling science fiction.

After Thorgal lost his memory, the treacherous Kriss of Valnor convinced him that he was a merciless pirate called Shaigan as well as her husband. Shaigan and his men have been roaming the seas terrorising all travellers, including Thorgal's own people, the Vikings, ever since. When one Viking survived to tell his tale, Thorgal's true wife, Aaricia, was branded an exile and with his two children Jolan and Wolf Cub, set out to find him. When Aaricia was recognised by Kriss, Kriss had her and Wolf Cub imprisoned and taken to Shaigan's castle as slaves. Meanwhile the young Jolan buys a boat and with two friends sets out to rescue his mother and sister.

Losing his boat and friends to a storm, Jolan is washed up on an island with a man who seems to know rather too much about him - a man who turns out to be from the far future and who uses a sword-like device to time travel. He displays his ability by retrieving the lost crown of Ogotai. a device that increases Jolan's own psychokinetic abilities giving him a fighting chance to free both his mother and sister from Shaigan's castle and also to free Thorgal from Kriss' influence.

As with the previous Thorgal time travel story, The Master of The Mountains, the plot gets very complex very quickly as time lines are crossed and and an older Jolan is recruited to help his younger self. However at the core of the story, and its strength, is Jolan's single-minded determination to rescue his family from the injustice foisted upon them in the previous book.

It is worth pointing out that for all the stylistic differences between this and the previous Thorgal book, they are two halves of the same story and you really need to have read The Brand Of The Exiles to appreciate fully what is going on in this book. It may not be as brutal as the 'one story = two books' of Van Hamme's modern day series Largo Winch, but like the Largo books it gives him plenty of time to set up his situations and secondary characters which is always to the benefit of the story.

As the second part of the story begun in The Brand Of The Exiles, Thorgal - Ogotai's Crown was not how I was expecting the story to continue yet, as ever, Jean Van Hamme weaves a masterful story with more than enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing its outcome right through to its conclusion.

• There are more details of the English language Thorgal books at the Cinebook website.

• There are more details of the French language Thorgal albums at the official Thorgal website (in French).

In Review: Thorgal - Brand Of The Exiles

Cinebook may have completed Jean Van Hamme's XIII series of books but they still have others from the bandes dessinee master and one of them is the Viking fantasy series Thorgal. Illustrated by artist Gzegorz Rosinski, The Brand Of The Exiles takes readers back to some characters the series hasn't dealt with for a while, Thorgal's wife Aaricia and their children Jolan and Wolfcub.

In their village the women, children and old men wait for their men to return home from a raiding expedition with food and treasure but instead a lone survivor of the ships appears. He tells the story of their ships being attacked by a pirate known as Shaigan The Merciless who killed or enslaved all but him, a pirate that he recognised as the missing Thorgal.

Because of this the women of the village turn on Aaricia demanding blood money for their dead menfolk. She is tried under Viking law and literally branded an exile, the brand on her cheek meaning that she must forever be shunned by all. Taking her children, Aaricia has no choice but to leave and make the dangerous trek to the coast in an attempt to find Thorgal and understand what has happened.

It has been some four books since we last saw Thorgal with Aaricia when she gave birth to Wolfcub and, in that time, while we have been following Thorgal's adventures, his family have been getting on with life, so it is good to have Van Hamme return to these characters. Indeed it is also good to see one of his books written from the underdog's perspective and, with her very visible branding, her young children, winter weather, and little rations, Aaricia is most definitely the underdog here.

As we discover more about the situation when the ever treacherous Kriss Of Valnor appears, it is Thorgal's son Jolan who comes to the fore and quickly becomes the hero of the piece. As his mother is captured and he is faced with the choice of watching her and Wolfcub sail off into slavery or attempt to free the Viking slaves to help him, he shows his resourcefulness.

Rosinski's rich artwork shows off the Viking village and its population before the story moves on to the family's trek through the forest and mountains, before he his given the chance of a night-time battle between the slaves and their jailers. As ever Rosinski's artwork reminds me of John Ridgway's colour work and it never disappoints.

While Thorgal himself appears in only a single panel of The Brand Of The Exiles, this should not put potential readers off as this is a book that shows off Jean Van Hamme's ability to write just as well for his secondary cast of characters in this series as he can for its hero.

• There are more details of the English language Thorgal books at the Cinebook website.

• There are more details of the French language Thorgal albums at the official Thorgal website (in French).

In Review: Thorgal - The Sun Sword

Writer Jean Van Hamme and artist Grzegorz Rosinski return to their sword and sorcery adventurer in the tenth Thorgal book to be published in English by Cinebook, The Sun Sword.

Having saved a young girl from a bear, a girl who subsequently ran off, a bearded Thorgal is betrayed to Orgoff, the cruel local lord who keeps his people and slaves in check with a light weapon called the Sun Sword. While enslaved Thorgal is able to turn that power against Orgaff and he escapes to join the local rebels lead by a woman with whom he is already very familiar. To defeat Orgaff and set the locals free of his tyranny, Thorgal must put aside his differences with the rebel leader and help her rebellion.

Thorgal has had an uneven time in the English language. There were 3 books translated and published by Ink Publishing in America in the late 1980s and early 1990s while the album Au-Delà Des Ombres was translated by Diana Barton and published as Beyond The Shadows over six issues of Marvel UK's bi-weekly Strip comic in the summer of 1990, eighteen years before Cinebook published their version of it. However Cinebook have had the dedication to start his adventures and, having published his out-of-sequence origin story, they have kept them going in their original French publication order.

Jean Van Hamme as writer on any of Cinebook's titles is normally a sign of top quality but I personally prefer his contemporaneous series like XIII, Largo Winch and Lady S rather than his more historical series such as Thorgal or his version of Blake And Mortimer. I don't have a thorough grounding in Thorgal's previous adventures and this book, using as it does characters and technology introduced in much earlier stories, comes across as one for the fans because of that. Without that background the book can still be read and understood, but I suspect that it would have been better if I had known already known those characters that Van Hamme reintroduces here.

The story is basically a Conan-style tale with a science-fiction twist, the Sun Sword of the title, as Thorgal is enslaved by a tyrant, escapes, is captured by rebels, conveniently knows their leader and then helps to lead the revolt against the self same tyrant. There is a nice B-story of a peasant boy befriending the girl of noble birth that Thorgal saves at the beginning and how the unlikely pair interact on the sidelines with the other characters in the tale including Thorgal. It would have been interesting to see the entire story written from their perspective rather than have them dip in and out of the action but this is Thorgal's book and not theirs.

Rosinski's artwork remains as pleasant as ever to look at. I have said in a previous Thorgal review that his style reminds me of John Ridgway's coloured art and this book only serves to emphasise the thought, especially having seen John's coloured art for Strip Magazine's similarly themed tale The Age of Heroes written by James Hudnall.

While Thorgal - The Sun Sword may not be the best Thorgal for a new reader to start with, I suspect that it will be something of a treat for those readers who have stuck with the series so far.


• There are more details of the English language Thorgal books at the Cinebook website.

• There are more details of the French language Thorgal albums at the official Thorgal website (in French).

In Review: Western

Every now and again Cinebook translate a Franco-Belgian bandes dessinee into English that isn't, like the vast majority of their titles, part of an ongoing series. Written by Jean Van Hamme and illustrated by Grzegorz Rosiński, the team behind the Thorgal series, Western is a one off story originally published in French in 2001 and set in Wyoming over a number of decades beginning in 1868.

Ambrosius Van Deer has travelled to Fort Laramie with his young daughter Cathy to meet Jess Chisum who claims that he has found Van Deer’s missing nephew Edwin who had disappeared after his family was killed in an Indian raid years before. However the meeting is a set-up to extort money with Jess Chisum's brother Nate pretending to be young Eddie and, as it descends into gunfire, only the two children, Cathy and Nate, walk away.

Years later Cathy is the owner of a large cattle ranch while Nate, having lost an arm due to the gunfight, is surviving on odd-jobs and his marksmanship. After returning home and, by chance, saving Cathy's life during a bank hold-up, she employs him to protect the ranch not realising his part in the shooting of her father. Nate then decides once again to pretend to be her missing cousin Eddie.

We may be more used to his James Bond style antics of Largo Winch or the sword and sorcery of Thorgal, but this shows that Jean Van Hamme can really turn his pen to anything and make it work. From the short sharp gunfight sequences to the languid passing of time in others, Western is a richly told story that provides a lead character in Nate Chisum who is both sympathetic yet will stoop to deception to improve his life.

For all that this is a one off book it actually feels quite episodic especially since Rosiński provides two page "centrespread" oil paintings every ten pages or so throughout the book. There are five of these taking up ten of the story's 62 pages and they are wonderfully moody, often tying in with a pause in the narrative. His main story art is done in muted sepia-like colours with painted backgrounds that does much to set the tone for Van Hamme's tale of death and deception.

If you have never read a Jean Van Hamme story before then this is an impressive one to begin with and Grzegorz Rosiński's artwork for it makes it a delight to look at. So if you are looking for one Van Hamme book to sample having become weighed down with Alan Moore's heavily referential style or Mark Millar's high speed action and brutality, there is no need to worry about the back story from previous books or how more volumes there is to come as Western is a gem of a one-off book that shows just how good Franco-Belgian bandes dessinees can be.

There are more details about Western on the Cinebook website.