La Revanche des Fils du Ciel

This is a graphic novel about death and suicide… but not in the way you think. It’s about death that can be reversible, when and if the right angels are looking. The dead person here is Catalina, a self-absorbed student who kills herself out of heartbreak. The angel is Karmen, an angel of the facetious, unusual sort. Her capacity for empathy is so great that she leads “her” dead on a journey toward redemption and, believe it or not, back to life! Full of surprises, metaphysics, and beautiful women, this graphic novel is tender and not devoid of humor.

France, 1944. Julien Sarlat made his escape from military service, and now, through a series of uncanny circumstances, is believed dead. Not many people can say they’ve attended their own funeral. Julien has. He’s now left with no choice but to hide himself away in his home village of Cambeyrac, where only his aunt is aware of his survival. He spends his days gazing down longingly on the life from which he is excluded. That is, until the lovely Cécile, his childhood sweetheart, finds him curled up in her barn…

Jean-Paul is a shy, slightly gawky young man leading a rather unremarkable life in which his oppressive mother is all too present. As the anniversary of his father’s death approaches, he feels increasingly dissatisfied with his life, and increasingly aware of his loneliness. It’s time for things to change. So, without telling anyone, he embarks on a singles cruise and takes his first steps in a brave new world.

This story takes place on a tiny, far-flung island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, whose nearest neighbor is Madagascar, 500 kilometers away… In 1760, the Utile, a ship carrying black slaves from Africa, was shipwrecked here and abandoned by her crew. The surviving slaves had to struggle to stay alive in this desolate land for fifteen years… When this tale got back to France, it became the cornerstone of the battle of Enlightenment to outlaw slavery. More than two hundred years later, the artist Sylvain Savoia accompanied the first archeological mission in search of understanding how these men and women, who had come from the high mountains of Madagascar, had survived alone in the middle of the ocean. This is the story of that mission, through which we’re exposed to the extraordinary story of the slaves themselves.

England, last century. A castle: Blacktales. Every seven years its proprietor, the frightening Monsieur Noir, comes over to sign the new lease with his tenant. In Blacktales, two unrelenting opposing clans fight a ferocious and cunning struggle over the possession of a pen: the lease contract can be signed only with this pen, the signature giving absolute power. Into this troubled atmosphere arrives the recently orphaned Fanny: the pen, missing for two years has been located. It is in the hands of the two creatures whose ruthless sadism terrorises all the inhabitants of the place…