Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec

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Cover of Adèle et la Bête (1976)

Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Dry-White) is a Franco-Belgian comics adventure series written and illustrated by French comics artist Jacques Tardi. The first story was initially serialised in the newspaper Sud-Ouest in 1976, prior to album publication by Casterman.^[1]

1 Synopsis
2 Publication
- 2.1 Albums
- 2.2 Translations
3 Sources
4 External links

[edit] Synopsis

The adventures, set in Paris in the years before and after World War I, revolve around the protagonist Adèle Blanc-Sec. A cynical heroine, she is initially a novelist of popular fiction, who turns to investigative journalism as her research and subsequent adventures reveal further details of the mystical world of crime. Themes of the occult, corruption, official incompetence, and the dangers of patriotism suffuse the series. One interesting feature is the hiatus which separates Adèle's first exploits, taking place in 1910s Paris, from later ones, instead set in the post-WWI milieu. The separation is explained with her having been cryogenically hibernated following a grave injury. The expedient was deemed necessary by Tardi to avoid her entanglement in the First World War. In an interview he declared: "Her feisty nature made it impossible to provide her with a place in the war. She would not have been allowed to fight, and could no more have settled for being a nurse, than she could have remained home rolling bandages".

[edit] Publication

[edit] Albums

Adèle et la bête (Adèle and the Beast) (1976)
Le démon de la tour Eiffel (The Demon of the Eiffel Tower) (1976)
Le savant fou (The Mad Scientist) (1977)
Momies en folie (Mummies on Parade) (1978)
Le secret de la salamandre (The Secret of the Salamander) (1981)
Le noyé à deux têtes (The Drowned Man with Two Heads) (1985)
Tous des monstres! (Monsters All!) (1994)
Le mystère des profondeurs (The Mystery of the Abyss) (1998)
Le labyrinthe infernal (2007)

[edit] Translations

The first five stories were translated by Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier. They were published first by Dark Horse Comics in their Cheval Noir title and then released in book form by NBM Publishing (1990-1992).^[1]^[2]^[3]