Jour J - French AH Comics collection

LSCatilina

LSCatilina

Yeah, the collection tends to be less interesting overall, although La Vengance de Jaurès isn't as corny as I feared it could be, and I must confess I did like Napoléon Washington.

Red Dragon made me think about the Nixon-AH comics they did, and that was particularly laborious when it came to the intrigue.
Not that I don't like the AH tales that doesn't focus on "normal" stories in an AH background (at the contrary, I really liked The Kennedy Gang), but it's basically false publicity at this point.

Still, it's still vastly superior to WW 2.2 that I finished recently, and that save the first and fifth one, is increasingly bad and without any real coherence.

Which makes me think.

19. Jaurès' Vengence
11 April 1930 : SFIO have Raoul Villain, the murderer of Jaurès, assassinated

31 July 1914. Raoul Villain murders Jean Jaurès, socialist french leader. 1919, ends of the Great War, he's acquited. Freed, he decides to lives in Balearic Islands...until his assassination eleven years later. The murder is quickly followed by a crime spree in Paris. Police quickly finds links between victims.

20. Red Dragon
1954 : A nuclear strikes save France at Diên-Bên-Phù

1955. With the tensions between USA and China, due to american intervention
in Diên-Bên-Phù, anti-chinese pogroms plague the Asian-American community. It's when a young and rich Chinese woman enter in Lawrence S. Ivory's office to ask him find his disappeared father. Ivory, lost cause's aficionado, accept the contract.

That said, there's two albums in preparation that can be really interesting.

Twilights of the Damned
1943 : French Fascist aviation fight its last against the Allies' landing

Apparently follows end ends the 14 (Oméga) and 18 (Opération Charlemagne), two albums that I appreciated, even if they are not the best.

Steppe Empire
1242 : after the burning of Rome by Mongols, Christian armies unite themselves to save the West

It's really a long awaited album, delayed, cancelled and reborn from ashes.
 

Color-Copycat

Well, I enjoyed Dragon Rouge as the film noir style detective story that it was, but you phrase it very well: it is huge false advertising. I do hope they get someone to make a proper alternate Indochina War story sometime.
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

Well, Pécau with Le Grand Jeu had a relativly interesting take on Indochina War (but the series finished so idiotically that it get sunk with the general mess) even if the "put everything more or less famous in the book" ruined a bit the general Lovecraftian/Pauwels atmosphere.
 

Color-Copycat

Le Grand Jeu was ok, but I didn't really like their Indochina War scenario. Since French rule over Indochina was never weakened by Japanese occupation and then American support for the Vietminh, the Vietminh never should have been able to get so far in the first place.
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

Oh, it's not perfect, but I still think it's the best take on Indochina War.

French colonials wars are a bit of a taboo for french-speaking AH (and virtually unknown elsewhere, so same results), mostly because (in my opinion) it would go really quick to colonialism apologism.

Not that it's not possible to propose something interesting, but giving the existence of opinionated idiots pulling really vicious accusations...

I can understand someone thinking that such controversy is not worth it enough to still attempt writing it. Which is a shame, giving francophone AH is really blossoming since more than a decade (it existed before, but wasn't exactly a popular thing) in comics, books or even other supports...
 

Spengler

Banned
John Farson said:
Thanks, you're too kind.:eek:

Aha, so Germany is back in a pre-1870 situation then? Or else it's a rump state, having lost the Rhineland to France and Bavaria and other southern parts to Austria. Perhaps Poland too would ask for dibs in such a situation.
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Sounds like a situation where Stalin could make a deal with the more radical nationalists in Germany to restore the reich while he gets the rest of europe.
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

Spengler said:
Sounds like a situation where Stalin could make a deal with the more radical nationalists in Germany to restore the reich while he gets the rest of europe.
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Well, there's sequels to Oméga (Opération Charlemagne, that I didn't read, and another one which is to be published later) but for the situation at this point.

Germany is still not divided, but it's currently negociated.
Austria get Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony; Poland gets Pomerania (and probably Eastern Prussia and Silesia, even if it's not told clearly), Bade-Wrutemberg to Italy for whatever reason, the rest forming a new Confederation of the Rhine.

It's said that, indeed, not only radical nationalists would not accept that but that Germans would join them against; but that Britain is the only power that refused such plan at this point.

Furthermore, it seems the PCF (on Moscovite orders) didn't joined resistance networks in Oméga's France, being more or less passive, if it's an indication on USSR's policies in Europe.
 

Spengler

Banned
LSCatilina said:
Well, there's sequels to Oméga (Opération Charlemagne, that I didn't read, and another one which is to be published later) but for the situation at this point.

Germany is still not divided, but it's currently negociated.
Austria get Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony; Poland gets Pomerania (and probably Eastern Prussia and Silesia, even if it's not told clearly), Bade-Wrutemberg to Italy for whatever reason, the rest forming a new Confederation of the Rhine.

It's said that, indeed, not only radical nationalists would not accept that but that Germans would join them against; but that Britain is the only power that refused such plan at this point.

Furthermore, it seems the PCF (on Moscovite orders) didn't joined resistance networks in Oméga's France, being more or less passive, if it's an indication on USSR's policies in Europe.
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That just seems unrealistic, the Soviets were always looking for people they could turn, and with Hitler discredited I suspect many revolutionary conservatives would look to Russia as a new ally.
 

Goldstein

Banned
Michel Van said:
I Know the eerie and read it

It's a roller coaster ride true Alternate History some good some bad
like this good ones
1. Russians on the Moon!
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Sorry about the late answer, but excuse me? In spite of the huge butterfly net of some of them, in spite of the Science Fiction in its broad sense of many others, Russians on the Moon is the single one with a premise that cannot be in any possible world.

If they had chosen a much more clever PoD (Korolev doesn't suffer a heart attack, for example), I could buy that the Russians could pull that off. But the comic implies that, just because Apollo 11 fails, the Russians are able to recover the years of lost work after the still fresh launch accident of the N1, correct its design to make it workable, correct the problems of the Soyuz 7K-LOK, send an unmanned moon expedition complex, and then a manned mission that goes without incidents... all that in two freaking months.

Not only that, but the first human on the moon is Valentina Tereshkova. The Soviets decided not to send Alexey Leonov, and instead sent a woman who went to space a single time years ago without being allowed to touch anything, and that NEVER took part in the Soviet moon program. They could as well send my grandma, for that matter. Jesus, they literally had no idea what they were talking about in that one.
 
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Yorel

Goldstein said:
Sorry about the late answer, but excuse me? In spite of the huge butterfly net of some of them, in spite of the Science Fiction in its broad sense of many others, Russians on the Moon is the single one with a premise that cannot be in any possible world.

If they had chosen a much more clever PoD (Korolev doesn't suffer a heart attack, for example), I could buy that the Russians could pull that off. But the comic implies that, just because Apollo 11 fails, the Russians are able to recover the years of lost work after the still fresh launch accident of the N1, correct its design to make it workable, correct the problems of the Soyuz 7K-LOK, send an unmanned moon expedition complex, and then a manned mission that goes without incidents... all that in two freaking months.

Not only that, but the first human on the moon is Valentina Tereshkova. The Soviets decided not to send Alexey Leonov, and instead sent a woman who went to space a single time years ago without being allowed to touch anything, and that NEVER took part in the Soviet moon program. They could as well send my grandma, for that matter. Jesus, they literally had no idea what they were talking about in that one.
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It's been some time since I last read that album, but I vaguely recall the authors admitting that they stretched things out in regards to the POD.

Plus, I have a tendency to think that Jour J writers are more going with "rule of cool" than doing serious work in regards to the Alternate History.
 

Color-Copycat

An important distinction to make between Anglophone and Francophone AH is that to the French, AH is not primarily a technical thought experiment in plausible historical scenarios. To be pedantic, French AH is actually a subset of AH called uchronie. It is by nature name and ahistorical and doesn't place a lot of weight on plausibility of setting, instead the focus is on the narrative story and characterization. It's not so much "Rule of Cool" as it is the setting be molded to create unique circumstances required for the author to get across their message.
 

Imladrik

Color-Copycat said:
An important distinction to make between Anglophone and Francophone AH is that to the French, AH is not primarily a technical thought experiment in plausible historical scenarios. To be pedantic, French AH is actually a subset of AH called uchronie. It is by nature name and ahistorical and doesn't place a lot of weight on plausibility of setting, instead the focus is on the narrative story and characterization. It's not so much "Rule of Cool" as it is the setting be molded to create unique circumstances required for the author to get across their message.
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Anglophone AH is primarily a technical thought experiment in plausible historical scenarios ? No. Turtledove is the best example of that (or K. Dick for that matter, who didn't even bother giving it's work a proper PoD, on a similar note, why isn't 1984 considered AH ?). While there is a part of this board that prides itself in what you describe, it is not even shared by a large part of the board (Naziwanks... Naziwanks everywhere...). Yes a large part of French AH is (especially the Jour J series) more bout telling stories in a different setting and less about the setting itself, but the reverse exist (FFO for example).

Uchronie is AH and AH is Uchronie. Uchronie is only the name of AH in French (also because there is no difference between Alternate and Alternative in French, which leads you to the territory of Alternative History...).
 
MrGreyOwl

MrGreyOwl

An important distinction to make between Anglophone and Anglophone AH is primarily a technical thought experiment in plausible historical scenarios ? No. Turtledove is the best example of that (or K. Dick for that matter, who didn't even bother giving it's work a proper PoD, on a similar note, why isn't 1984 considered AH ?). While there is a part of this board that prides itself in what you describe, it is not even shared by a large part of the board (Naziwanks... Naziwanks everywhere...). Yes a large part of French AH is (especially the Jour J series) more bout telling stories in a different setting and less about the setting itself, but the reverse exist (FFO for example).
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Exactly. There is no difference between Francophone or Anglophone understanding of AH. I think the members of this board have just developed a rather high standard for what AH should be...

Jour J are one-shot stories, in a rather short format. They can't cram in pages and pages of minute details to justify a PoD, or the exposition would be longer than the story itself.
 

Color-Copycat

I just get #21 of Jour J, the last story in the trilogy about Omega France. I think it is probably the best out of the three editions in the series, tied with the first edition. Even though the cover makes it look like it will be about the aerial combats between French wunderwaffe-style jets and Anglo-American planes, the story is mostly about the collapse of the Omega state and how the provisional government tries to arrange a separate peace with the Anglo-Americans and secure France a place in the post-war order. And there is some side-story about the deposed fascist hierarchy escaping to Spain ahead of the advancing Ango-American armies, Communist resistance, and Soviets.
 
SGallay

SGallay

Color-Copycat said:
I just get #21 of Jour J, the last story in the trilogy about Omega France. I think it is probably the best out of the three editions in the series, tied with the first edition.
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It's not bad, but I really hated that they use the old Synarchy conspiracy theory out of nowhere.

But yeah, this "Omega" trilogy is probably one of the best of the series.
 

freivolk

They started the series in Germany now, but in a different order, The first one is the Nixon-assasination one, Is it good? Should I buy it?
 

Color-Copycat

Personally I don't like American domestic politics ATLs because I already have read every single variation of them all the time on AH.com Post-1900. IMO, the "Americentric" Jour-J stories are the most boring for that reason.
 

Nick Griffalco

Banned
Jour J is getting an English translation! It's an exclusive deal with Comixology, and it's going to be called What If? You can already preorder the first issue for $2.99 and they're bringing all sorts translations of great French comics, alternate history and otherwise, to Comixology.
 
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