Do burglary, love and politics make a good combination?

This is the overriding question that this album, in the great tradition of the serial stories, tries to answer. The story is set in a country quite like France, the Navarin, during a period quite like the early 20th century. There is a democratic government, with a president – Honorin Rouflaquet – and a slightly backwards cabinet. In the salons, the aristocrats are rather modernist. We have ‘The Great Cause’, an ultra conservative secret political movement that wants to impose a dictatorship, and then ‘The Rebellious’, who are against all forms of power.

Amidst all this, there is Ariane Liftier, a young lady of good upbringing (although in reality, her parents were smugglers) who is fascinated by the exploits of the ‘mystery man’, the thief of the modernist baronesses, whose exploits the journalist André Valentin (who is in fact a woman) narrates every day. Ariane is so fascinated that she’ll end up becoming ‘ the thief of Old Man armchair ‘, in an attempt to seduce this ‘mystery man’.

A fantasy-romantic story, completely crazy, with some very borderline remarks that make for a very good pastiche of the great masters of the serial stories. enchanced by artwork that’s quick, elegant and full of movement.