La larme de solitude

In the waning days of hunting and gathering, as settlements grow and flourish, humankind faces a stark choice: nomadism’s freedom and the hard life that goes with it, or sedentary society, with its refinements and hierarchies. These forking paths become more mutually exclusive, stirring enmity and conflict, but human squabbles prove petty in the face of natural disaster when it comes, towering and indifferent. In this Stone Age fable with curiously contemporary overtones, told with vibrant colors and a sweeping sense of story, Nicolas Puzenat touches on so many enduring mysteries, from religion to conscience to the anxiety of freedom.

A pebble and a riverbank are witnesses to the endless meetings of Mona, who came to forget Eko, and Eko, who after eighteen months away comes to make up with her. When she hurls a pebble into the water—a pebble suffused with her sorrow—Mona sends her friend into a time loop he alone knows about: a day without end that sees Mona tossing the pebble in and Eko doing everything he can to prevent her.

On a rooftop at night, three children dressed as superheroes flee from belligerent robots. The boy slips… and kills himself! How did Ziad, Louna and Billie (yes, it was them) end up like this? To understand, you have to go back to Louna and Ziad’s father’s funeral, when the brother and sister swore they’d never try to become superheroes again. A promise they didn’t keep for long…

But Ziad received a black cube sent posthumously by White Noise, the superheroine he was supposed to protect. Inside: a dead rat. Or more specifically: a meal for the snake in the vivarium of White Noise’s apartment. The three children decide to enter. But as soon as they enter, an army of robots attacks them…

Fleeing his wolf family, Mowgli finds refuge with Kâ, a bipedal snake whose transformation is not yet complete. In him, she finds a companion and, above all, a mentor who will accompany her on her quest for identity. During a solitary outing, Mowgli encounters the bandar-logs, rodents consumed by drugs and violence. Unable to use her to create the “paste” they’re addicted to, they decide to deliver her to Shere Khan… Mowgli will have to trust his human instincts as much as his new friends to get out of this predicament.

Stuck in 1917, Lucie and Dunk make plans to return to 2023. Dunk has signed up as a pilot with the Lafayette squadron to gain access to the planes, while Lucie, posing as Armance, her great-grand-aunt, is staying with her ancestors’ family. There, she worked on modifications to a reconnaissance plane that would enable them to activate the device that had sent them back in time. But in the midst of war, the authorities are suspicious… And Lucie’s family begins to wonder if Lucie really is Armance. The situation is made all the more delicate by the fact that one of her great-cousins works for military intelligence and is starting to ask a lot of questions…

Transferred for a year to a remote outpost in the middle of the pack ice, Lieutenant Bertillon pays a heavy price for the maverick methods he used during his previous investigation… The deceptively shy and incompetent inspector is not satisfied until the wreck of a fishing boat, the Sedna, suddenly bursts through the ice before his very eyes. The vessel, which disappeared with its crew thirty years ago in obscure circumstances, is about to stir up terrible resentments in the peaceful polar community…

In the middle of an intermarine exercise off the coast of Australia, Buck, Sonny and Tumbler are summoned by the U.S. General Staff. A satellite has disappeared over the Pacific. Our trio of pilots, known for their experience in “extreme” missions, are given carte blanche to find out what happened. Whether by plane or chopper, Buck and his friends will have to criss-cross the Australian coast. But if there’s no satellite, they’ll find enemies even more formidable than they feared!

Marcinelle, 1943. While the Nazis have banned the publication of Spirou, young Flup and his gang of “ADS” – Les Amis De Spirou – fight the occupiers in increasingly dangerous ways, such as transporting explosives for the Resistance… They think they’re following the precepts laid down in their favorite newspaper by Jean Doisy, its first editor-in-chief, who perhaps didn’t ask for so much… For Doisy, himself a member of the Resistance with his comrades from the Théâtre du Farfadet, is well aware of the dangers of armed struggle… What’s more, in their fight against Nazism, the ADS may have lost Spirouette, stabbed to death by a young Rexist militant. Will the ADSs find their friend? Will they escape the Nazis? Perhaps they can count on the unexpected help of a mysterious Palombian creature kidnapped by the Nazis, who has just arrived in Marcinelle…