Another gorgeous European comic to discover : Yoko Tsuno

[sarahtasher]

TLDR : Yoko Tsuno is a bande dessinée about an incredibly wide variety of SF themes (from time travel to space travel), published from 1972 to 2019 (still ongoing), the work of a single person and maybe his wife. The artist, Roger Leloup, now aged 85, have understandably seen some decline in quality in his drawing in the past decade, but hey.

The plots, well, it's a kid serie, and let's just leave at it, it shows. What is amazing is the machines that Leloup draw-there are entire sci-fi franchises with less creativity and originality (the only thing jarring is the color of the various spacecraft-Star Wars or Star Trek it is not)

(Leloup started as an assistant to Hergé, charged of drawing airplanes or trains-Leloup really likes to draw machines)



Large colonization ship



Sentient database...again, drawn in 1972.



Submarines

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

Yoko Tsuno has long been a big favorite of mine.

It is true that the quality of art has declined a bit (understandable given the author's advanced age), which shows mainly in the characters appearing stiffer, but mecha design and landscapes remain gorgeous, although I liked better the early, hard sci-fi looking designs compared to some newer ones.

Some of the best books have been translated in English. My favorite are definitely the early Vinean stories : The Curious Trio, The Forge of Vulcan and The Three Suns of Vinea. The first time-travel story, The Time Spiral, is also remarkable for its world-building and designs.

I haven't checked the latest issue yet, but I haven't been a fan of the direction the later stories have been going (heroine shift, side-kicks being side-lined, weird turn of recent Vinean stories, more time-travelers). IMHO, I feel that starting in the 90s, the stories started suffering increasingly from plot-holes issues.

[Fantomen]

To our non-European readers, most Europen made comic is in the "graphic novel" model, ther the artist take years to make a album, and old album is routinely re-printed. Its made for children like the Smurfs to somthing that make Games of Throne bluch like The Companions of the Dusk and everything in between.

There are also a culture difference, album that is marketed to teen and older, have no problem to include nudity, drunkenness or violence, but they do not revels in it and it is intregrated into the plot.

[Daedius]

Pretty sure I got one of their old comic books, a book of numerous short stories from the 80s, lying about... such as creating small humans to live on some alien planet, a travelling zoo of sentient creatures working there, some story that reminds me of ET of a furry creature that gets killed out of people's fear and such.

The cover's a brownish orange, with a robot or a person in a suit in the foreground entering through a circular door in some terrestrial wasteland.


Honestly loved comics of old.

[sarahtasher]

To our non-European readers, most Europen made comic is in the "graphic novel" model, ther the artist take years to make a album, and old album is routinely re-printed. Its made for children like the Smurfs to somthing that make Games of Throne bluch like The Companions of the Dusk and everything in between.

There are also a culture difference, album that is marketed to teen and older, have no problem to include nudity, drunkenness or violence, but they do not revels in it and it is intregrated into the plot.

While Yoko got herself in some minimalist outfits over the year, Yoko Tsuno is very kid friendly.

[Fantomen]

While Yoko got herself in some minimalist outfits over the year, Yoko Tsuno is very kid friendly.

Yes Yoko Tsuno is in the kid frendly part, but I still think some album is quite brutal then you realy think about, like in the devil's organ the villan is run over by a train in the end

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

Yes Yoko Tsuno is in the kid frendly part, but I still think some album is quite brutal then you realy think about, like in the devil's organ the villan is run over by a train in the end

Most of Yoko's stories have some antagonists meeting a gruesome death at some point, sometimes with a few side characters, and even Yoko herself took a bullet in the abdomen at some point. But I'd say this is standard fare in Bande-dessinée, even those aimed for kids : you'll see the same thing in the arch-classic Tintin, which has always been marketed for "readers from 7 to 77 years". Of course those are not meant for small kids : for those you get the Smurfs or the line of Boule et Bill.

[sarahtasher]

Most of Yoko's stories have some antagonists meeting a gruesome death at some point, sometimes with a few side characters, and even Yoko herself took a bullet in the abdomen at some point. But I'd say this is standard fare in Bande-dessinée, even those aimed for kids : you'll see the same thing in the arch-classic Tintin, which has always been marketed for "readers from 7 to 77 years". Of course those are not meant for small kids : for those you get the Smurfs or the line of Boule et Bill.

There is some pretty dark themes too : the Canon de Kra episode, one of my favorite, had in backstory the Khmer genocide, there is a very well made treatment of kamikaze in La Fille du Vent. The Vineans backstory is pretty horrific when thiking about it.

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

There is some pretty dark themes too : the Canon de Kra episode, one of my favorite, had in backstory the Khmer genocide, there is a very well made treatment of kamikaze in La Fille du Vent. The Vineans backstory is pretty horrific when thiking about it.

Canon de Kra is one of the better "earthbound" stories, and probably one that would stand very well on its own due to the sci-fi being much toned down, similar to Message pour l'Eternité : real-world geopolitics sprinkled together with gorgeous aircraft rendition, including very plausible imaginary ones beside the ancient and modern ones.
I really liked La Fille du Vent, and it has aged very well considering its a 1979 story, but nowadays I find the pitch of Prof. Tsuno's last resort weapon a tad too extreme, although Aoki's ending was perfect.

In the early 2000 they released a kind of perfect collection, with several stories grouped thematically into big tomes, with supplementary material like artwork and comments from the author, and I recall him depicting the Vinean as very similar to social insects : emerging from pods, living underground with no inkling of private/family life and an overseeing intelligence being a recurring theme. The more recent stories are even more gruesome with the weird cyborg and genetic experiments stuff. I found it a disturbing choice that M33 adventures were done for... in one speech bubble pretty much.

Despite the loss of quality, I will miss new adventures for Yoko, for I don't see the author giving away his daughter to a successor (plus I doubt there would be one with a comparable touch for landscapes and designs).

[sarahtasher]

Canon de Kra is one of the better "earthbound" stories, and probably one that would stand very well on its own due to the sci-fi being much toned down, similar to Message pour l'Eternité : real-world geopolitics sprinkled together with gorgeous aircraft rendition, including very plausible imaginary ones beside the ancient and modern ones.
I really liked La Fille du Vent, and it has aged very well considering its a 1979 story, but nowadays I find the pitch of Prof. Tsuno's last resort weapon a tad too extreme, although Aoki's ending was perfect.

In the early 2000 they released a kind of perfect collection, with several stories grouped thematically into big tomes, with supplementary material like artwork and comments from the author, and I recall him depicting the Vinean as very similar to social insects : emerging from pods, living underground with no inkling of private/family life and an overseeing intelligence being a recurring theme. The more recent stories are even more gruesome with the weird cyborg and genetic experiments stuff. I found it a disturbing choice that M33 adventures were done for... in one speech bubble pretty much.

Despite the loss of quality, I will miss new adventures for Yoko, for I don't see the author giving away his daughter to a successor (plus I doubt there would be one with a comparable touch for landscapes and designs).

Khany pointed out in the very first book that the Vinean experience had been overall a crushing disappointment. In the ''Leloupverse'', inhabitable planets (including ones inhabitables by a specie mostly used to live underground) are so rare that there was less than 10 of them in the M33 galaxy. They took 2 millions years to reach one perfectly pristine one, and thanks to ''crazy computer'' they spent 400 000 years asleep, to find out that the promised land is occupied by a specie that outnumber them at least 10 000 to 1 (a side mention in one book says that the massive vessels carry a few thousands cryopods) and is catching up in technology. So they have to backtrack home, where they find a planet rivaling Warhammer 40k death worlds, where the Terran-Vineans are not biologically fit either.

And remember : the eleventh spaceship is the one that did the best. The ''Ultima'' one fared far worse, the nine others even worse.

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

Khany pointed out in the very first book that the Vinean experience had been overall a crushing disappointment. In the ''Leloupverse'', inhabitable planets (including ones inhabitables by a specie mostly used to live underground) are so rare that there was less than 10 of them in the M33 galaxy. They took 2 millions years to reach one perfectly pristine one, and thanks to ''crazy computer'' they spent 400 000 years asleep, to find out that the promised land is occupied by a specie that outnumber them at least 10 000 to 1 (a side mention in one book says that the massive vessels carry a few thousands cryopods) and is catching up in technology. So they have to backtrack home, where they find a planet rivaling Warhammer 40k death worlds, where the Terran-Vineans are not biologically fit either.

And remember : the eleventh spaceship is the one that did the best. The ''Ultima'' one fared far worse, the nine others even worse.

The scarcity of habitable planets is a bit inconsistent, given the number of alien races that get encountered beside the Vinean : the Titans, the "antimatter" creature from La Spirale du Temps, and the dragon from La Pagode des brumes, although given the La servante de Lucifer shtick we could assume the latter to be vinean technology...

As for Vinea being a death-world, Les trois soleils de Vinéa and Les Titans did show well the challenges of inhabiting a tidally locked planet, and promised us that we'd be looking for the other 10 ships whereabouts... but in the end its only several decades later that we, by accident, stumbled on one in La porte des âmes.

The last Vinean faux-trilogy of La Servante de Lucifer, Le Secret de Khâny and Le Temple des immortels made for a very confusing continuation of the Vinean storyline, essentially glossing over all the M33 developments for future stories, its almost as if Les trois soleils de Vinéa to La porte des âmes didn't count, and we're back to an odd continuation of La forge de Vulcain, where in the conclusion, IIRC Khâny was stating that they'd go deeper after the failure of their continent engineering scheme.

The Terran-Vineans are an odd bunch, on one side they've been around for 400k years with a skeleton crew, and as such are shown as being both in stasis and "fresh" culturally and technology wise, then in Les trois soleil de Vinéa, we find the preserved survivors of the 7th City, which are pretty much the same people from the same epoch. Beside them we encountered the techno-barbarian flock of the Guide Supreme, which might as well have adapted in 2 million years and be a different specie then, but during those 2 million years several splinter Vinean societies were shown, all characterized with some form of cultural decadence despite sometimes more advanced technology :
-the exiles from La lumière d'Ixo, stated to have escaped the tiranny of the Guide Supreme, so one can assume not too long after the cataclysm and War of Cities. I don't recall if we were given which number was the last 5 year cycle of Shira.
-the denizen from La cité de l'abîme, which are mostly preserved people from right after the time of War of Cities, Gobol would be of the same bunch since he designed their androids. Beside them more techno-barbarian, even shown to have biologically adapted in the interval.
-the Ultima denizen which are time-hopping descendants of one Colonization Ship, with their weird cyborg and soul-transferance stuff (although as early as Les trois soleil de Vinéa we were shown that mind preservation was part of the classical Vinean kit).
-and then we get Lucifer's warband and their super advanced technology, which we can only guess have left M33 about 399k years later than the 11th Ship, but Supreme Power knows from where, given that Vinea was under the dominance of the Guide Supreme...
-and then we get the Mars exiles who would have splintered from the Terran-Vinean right after La forge de Vulcain yet are using androids similar to those of La cité de l'abîme...
-and then we get XIIth century Scots and their descendents in vinean-cyborg and vinean-underwater-techno-barbarian trappings...

[sarahtasher]

The scarcity of habitable planets is a bit inconsistent, given the number of alien races that get encountered beside the Vinean : the Titans, the "antimatter" creature from La Spirale du Temps, and the dragon from La Pagode des brumes, although given the La servante de Lucifer shtick we could assume the latter to be vinean technology...

As for Vinea being a death-world, Les trois soleils de Vinéa and Les Titans did show well the challenges of inhabiting a tidally locked planet, and promised us that we'd be looking for the other 10 ships whereabouts... but in the end its only several decades later that we, by accident, stumbled on one in La porte des âmes.

The last Vinean faux-trilogy of La Servante de Lucifer, Le Secret de Khâny and Le Temple des immortels made for a very confusing continuation of the Vinean storyline, essentially glossing over all the M33 developments for future stories, its almost as if Les trois soleils de Vinéa to La porte des âmes didn't count, and we're back to an odd continuation of La forge de Vulcain, where in the conclusion, IIRC Khâny was stating that they'd go deeper after the failure of their continent engineering scheme.

The Terran-Vineans are an odd bunch, on one side they've been around for 400k years with a skeleton crew, and as such are shown as being both in stasis and "fresh" culturally and technology wise, then in Les trois soleil de Vinéa, we find the preserved survivors of the 7th City, which are pretty much the same people from the same epoch. Beside them we encountered the techno-barbarian flock of the Guide Supreme, which might as well have adapted in 2 million years and be a different specie then, but during those 2 million years several splinter Vinean societies were shown, all characterized with some form of cultural decadence despite sometimes more advanced technology :
-the exiles from La lumière d'Ixo, stated to have escaped the tiranny of the Guide Supreme, so one can assume not too long after the cataclysm and War of Cities. I don't recall if we were given which number was the last 5 year cycle of Shira.
-the denizen from La cité de l'abîme, which are mostly preserved people from right after the time of War of Cities, Gobol would be of the same bunch since he designed their androids. Beside them more techno-barbarian, even shown to have biologically adapted in the interval.
-the Ultima denizen which are time-hopping descendants of one Colonization Ship, with their weird cyborg and soul-transferance stuff (although as early as Les trois soleil de Vinéa we were shown that mind preservation was part of the classical Vinean kit).
-and then we get Lucifer's warband and their super advanced technology, which we can only guess have left M33 about 399k years later than the 11th Ship, but Supreme Power knows from where, given that Vinea was under the dominance of the Guide Supreme...
-and then we get the Mars exiles who would have splintered from the Terran-Vinean right after La forge de Vulcain yet are using androids similar to those of La cité de l'abîme...
-and then we get XIIth century Scots and their descendents in vinean-cyborg and vinean-underwater-techno-barbarian trappings...

Lumière d'Ixo does give hard number. Each circle take five Terran years and the last dead in the necropolis is from circle 13 209 (their civ have been going for 66 000 years (1)

The ''War of the cities'' (the destruction of the cities/underground bases that occurs after the planet stabilize, at the instigation of the Supreme Guide, the final genocide that do what the cataclysm could not ) occurred in a relatively recent time frame (2), which make the return of the Terrans even more tragic ( ''Archangels', where in the intro flat out states that the 500 000 Cryo kids disappeared 2 000 years ago) : the cities and the civilization of Vinea were still working merely 2000 years before the return.

(1) Therefore, the Guide rule over a presumably ''thawed'' population lasted for say 64 000 years at the very least. We have another example of the cultural flexibility of Vineans, since it means that it took them 64 000 years to revolt against the dude that was supposed to wake up when the planet was habitable again. (64 000 years to realize this)

(2)Therefore too, the Ixo exiles were sent to their prison much before the War of the cities.