La montagne magique

Jack, a little boy with the uncanny ability to turn into any animal he wants, isn’t doing so well these days. He’s worried about his parents and their money problems, and he’s been feeling sick. Then he remembers hearing about a big treasure hidden deep inside the mountain, and he and his friend Gladys embark on an adventure to find the treasure and come to his parents’ rescue. But between dragons, nasty little creatures and hunters with evil intentions, that’s not going to be easy. To top it all off, Jack has been keeping some secrets that he’s going to have to reveal sooner or later, if he doesn’t want things to keep getting worse…

Everybody’s noticed that Campbell’s been acting strangely. What they don’t know is that his destiny on the high seas is catching up with him, despite his best intentions. Times are changing, and the golden age of piracy is threatened by a different kind of lawlessness; one driven by power and politics, conducted from high society drawing rooms. How far will Campbell have to go to defend the freedom that pirates stand for?

Young Alice wants nothing to do with the religiosity and social ambitions of her immediate family. What’s more, she finds their daily lives unbearably dreary and depressing. Her sole desire: leave them and join the animals in the Valley of the Wolves. For ever since her youth, she has been fascinated by the wolves and the legends associated with them. Alice will abandon her stuffy inner world in favor of the magical creatures of the woods. The drama that unfolds when she meets a boy who’s been wandering ageless in the Valley for a thousand years is the crux of this majestic graphic novel.

Life lessons dispensed by a rabbit who’s no dummy. Boni is a cute, sweet, innocent little rabbit living in a hostile world. His best friend Milo can hardly see and is kind of an idiot, forever hitting on Brigitte, a she-rabbit who openly despises him. His nemesis, Bruno, has only one means of expression: punching people in the face (especially Boni). His grandpa is a sadistic, contemptuous old grump. His babysitter, Ms. Popo, was awarded the prize for worst childcare practitioner in the world, a prize that required zero effort on her part to win.

Boni’s most admirable quality is his ability to retain his good humor and enthusiasm in a world where some huge disaster befalls him approximately every three panels – much to our amusement.

François has no interest in choosing between dream and reality: he wants both! Like all ten-year-olds, François has a lot of questions–but he puts his imagination to use to try to find the answers.

Harmony now remembers the details of her previous life as the subject of scientific experiments aimed to control her telekinetic powers, and, though aware of the tremendous danger it poses, is determined to go back to the research center to get her friends out. All hell breaks loose as the children try to run from their heavily armed captors, and they must put their special abilities to the ultimate test to escape. But a couple of mysterious newcomers with equally strong special powers make an entrance, further complicating matters and raising more questions about the program and the people in it.

What do you do when you hate your wife and you’re sleeping with your stepdaughter? If you’re ostrich farmer Pep, you beat your wife’s head in with a shovel when your stepdaughter asks you to. You might do it some rainy night, and toss the body down a well for good measure. You might even think you’re getting some money out of it. But if you’re hapless and unlucky as Pep is, you might find yourself trapped in a hell of your own making, endlessly wondering: how many times do you have to kill someone before they’re really dead?

François has no interest in choosing between dream and reality: he wants both! Like all ten-year-olds, François has a lot of questions–but he puts his imagination to use to try to find the answers.

Six years ago, Harmony was a young orphan who was part of a research program conducted by Doctor Torres, due to the signs of special brain powers she had manifested. She has by now developed an incredible talent for telekinesis, which has unfortunately attracted the attention of a private military organization. They plan on setting up a training camp, as a means to their own ends, in order to develop the capacities of Harmony and others like her. Will this organization really be able to make war machines out of these children? And will Doctor Torres to be able to save Harmony from this horrible fate?

Prolific comic book author Pierre Christin, who penned the game-changing classic sci-fi series “Valerian and Laureline,” switches to autobiography here to bring us the thoughtful, enlightening tale of two vastly different lands, the American West during the civil rights movement and the counter-culture phenomenon, and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, as seen through the eyes of an inquisitive French artist and journalist with a love for travel, intellectual query, gypsies, and jazz. Christin and his faithful road companion and “Valerian” co-creator Jean-Claude Mézières drive across landscapes ranging from Utah to Bulgaria in a series of cars each more dilapidated than the next, encountering people and adventures of all kinds in a story that is part travel journal, part geo-political documentary, and part artistic coming-of-age.