Jour J: a french AH-themed comic series

One of the most striking aspects I found of living in France is the amazing quality and quantity of homegrown comics, specially compared to Spain,where there are only american superhero comics (boring), manga (boooooring) or artsy comics for hipsters (BOOOOOOOORING). Meanwhile I am fascinated by the amazing quantity of military, detective and adventure-themed comics you can find in France. All bookshops have gigantic sections devoted to french and belgian comics, with american comics usually demoted to a single shelf in a corner, usually smaller than the manga shelf. Exploring said section at the local FNAC yesterday, I found this new series of AH-themed comic books. Only two have been published at the moment:

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They're what it says on the tin. :p Both use the AH setting as a background for a story, but there are appendixes at the end explaining the divergence. There are three other titles in preparation, about the US president being murdered in Dallas in 1973 instead of 1963; the germans reaching Paris in September 1914, and anarchists taking over the russian revolution in 1918.
 
Damn... What the hell did they dare do to the Eiffel Tower in the second comic?! :mad:

Besides that, thanks for pointing that out. I think that next time I do a detour at the FNAC, I will get a look on those comics :).
 
Wait, so Paris has skyscrapers surrounding the Eiffel Tower yet only the tower itself gets damaged? That means that the tower was destroyed specifically.

Assholes :mad:
 

Deleted member 2186

It also could be that the skyscrapers are in Allied control Paris, while the soviet Control their side, and the Eifel tower was destroyed either by the Germans during fighting ore when the soviet liberated the city.

According to what i have manage to find out is that in June 6, 1944, the D-day fails and another is in Provence, results that the Allies don’t manage to get beyond Lyon, leaving with Red Army to cross the Rhine , liberating Paris, after the third Reich surrenders, France is cut into two with the border being the Seine and Paris divided into two blocks.
 
I get the impression that the Eiffel Tower was probably destroyed before those skyscrapers were built...so it might not even have been them that did it. And it seems to have been incorporated into the general street layout as an arch...

Anyway, great find, will look for them when I'm in France next week.
 
That's funny; last Saturday I was at the FNAC (at Ternes...) specifically to pick up some 'bandes dessinées' (BD; I always do that when I am in Paris) when I saw the Jour J series for the first time. I bought the 'Russians on the moon' album and was thinking of putting up a message here, but was beaten to it.

So all I can add is the link to the editor; if you are careful you will find that the cover image hides a few pages, which give you a taste of what the BD are like:

http://www.editions-delcourt.fr/catalogue/bd/jour_j_1_les_russes_sur_la_lune
 
I get the impression that the Eiffel Tower was probably destroyed before those skyscrapers were built...so it might not even have been them that did it. And it seems to have been incorporated into the general street layout as an arch...

Anyway, great find, will look for them when I'm in France next week.

Judging from the picture, the Soviets control the North Bank of the Seine (where all the major landmarks are, sans tower, Invalides, Latin Quarter and Notre Dame), with the Tower standing over the no mans land between the checkpoints.
 
Judging from the picture, the Soviets control the North Bank of the Seine (where all the major landmarks are, sans tower, Invalides, Latin Quarter and Notre Dame), with the Tower standing over the no mans land between the checkpoints.

That's the impression I got: a parallel to the Brandenburg Gate.
 
Heh here some more info on the comic

Basicly Apollo 11 blow up after landing and the russian land on the moon sometime in septemper (a few months I found that rather hard to believe) , the synopsis talk about Nixon basicly giving NASA carte blanche so that they establish moon base and it look like it will become a new battleground

The cosmonaut say upon landing on the moon "Long live the USSR, home of all the free beings of the galaxy" I found it rather cheesy

-

About the other one, the allies mop-up D-Day and essentially France get split into two becoming a nids d'espion
 
You do realize that "manga boooooring" = "comics made by Japanese people boooooring", right? I've seen some pretty awful Manga, but I'm not sure I'm ready for so sweeping an indictment... :D

I consider myself a pretty open-minded guy, but I consider them boring and chock-full of extremely lame cliches, no small feat seeing how they cover a pretty wide range of themes.

Or maybe it is just that I find their online fans extremely annoying in their mindless worshipping of all things japanese regardless of actual quality. The saddest thing is, consider myself a fan of Japan, at least in regards to architecture, art, design, literature and traditional aesthetics, but this has become something quite embarrassing to admit lately, lest I want people to think I am into comics that rehash the same plot again and again, usually involving schoolgirls and eldritch abominations.

Judging from the picture, the Soviets control the North Bank of the Seine (where all the major landmarks are, sans tower, Invalides, Latin Quarter and Notre Dame), with the Tower standing over the no mans land between the checkpoints.

A map in the background of the first pages shows the Seine as being the border of both Frances, with commie France arriving just until the Swiss border and being ruled by Maurice Thorez. The entirety of the soviet sector-the rive droite where the Champs-Elysees, Montmartre, the Louvre or Le Marais are- is still in ruins years after the war ended.

It is a shame that I have to leave France in a few weeks because I was curious with the last volume about french anarchists taking over the russian revolution. The cover, that I couldn't find online, represents a group of men raising a black flag over the Kremlin. :eek:
 
I consider myself a pretty open-minded guy, but I consider them boring and chock-full of extremely lame cliches, no small feat seeing how they cover a pretty wide range of themes.

Or maybe it is just that I find their online fans extremely annoying in their mindless worshipping of all things japanese regardless of actual quality. The saddest thing is, consider myself a fan of Japan, at least in regards to architecture, art, design, literature and traditional aesthetics, but this has become something quite embarrassing to admit lately, lest I want people to think I am into comics that rehash the same plot again and again, usually involving schoolgirls and eldritch abominations.

*sigh* Join the club. A lot of that garbage could be attributed to the shonen genre. However, there are gems among the junk, such as Cowboy Bebop
 

FDW

Banned
*sigh* Join the club. A lot of that garbage could be attributed to the shonen genre. However, there are gems among the junk, such as Cowboy Bebop

Seconded on that. Every genre has it's garbage, and gems too, but you gotta look to find them. Though my gem would be "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya".
 
As a fan of manga/anime, I have to say there are a lot worse out there than Haruhi and Cowboy Bebop. Take Kashimashi - Boy sees girl, gets close to her (supported by his three friends) and confesses. She rejects him, so he does what any other (rather effeminate) guy would do... GO TO THE MOUNTAINS AND PICK FLOWERS. However, there's a catch: AN ALIEN SPACESHIP CRASHES ON HIM. However, these aliens (which look rather a lot like us humans) are nice (if odd) and resurrect him, only they screw up and permanently make a women. GREAT FIRST CONTACT GUYS. Then it's explained why the girl rejects him: "I have a disease that keeps me from seeing boys, but I could see you even though you're a boy but feared that I might not be able to see you in the future". And then it's revealed his tomboy friend also had the hots for him, but she's tsundere, so she never tried getting with him, despite the fact that they knew each other for years and until disease-girl showed up there was no competition. Oh, and did I mention that the aliens move in with him, his parents apparently have a stash of girls clothes (cuz they wanted a girl, but got a girly guy instead), and his/her dad is a perv who wants to take a bath with him/her? And the story progresses poorly even from this MAGNIFICENT BEGINNING. He is now being pushed around left and right to chose his tomboy girlfriend or disease girl to be his girlfriend, but (s)he's so namby-pamby about it that, OF COURSE, a mistake occurs that causes disease girl to lose all control and starts not being able to tell girls apart from boys (see her disease, underlined above). So, after another episode of "why me, I just want everyone to get along sparkles and bubbles gloomy" BS, he/she finally decides to go with disease girl in an attempt to save her life.

ONLY NOT

The very next episode after what should have been the last episode has his/her new girlfriend dump him (also, no one but their friends/family knew anyway that they were dating, SECRET LESBIANS!) and they corner him/her into marrying his tomboy friend (administered by the aliens) and riding off in the moon on a cool Christmas night.

I shit you not, that is the series. WTF
 

FDW

Banned
FUCK YEAH

Oh, I know about that series, I checked it out because of my Gender-Bending fetish, but it ended up being kind of meh, so I never finished it. And besides it's a Moe Harem Slice of Life Manga, I don't really expect much more than a couple (probably badly hashed out) gimmicks from them. Right now, I'm reading a series that happens to be quite hilarious, it's called "Arakawa Under the Bridge" and I like it. I've also been meaning to get into a variety of other series such as "Bakemonogatari", "Black Lagoon", and "Bakuman".
 
So, in a matter of months, the Soviets overcome the whole "we're not even close! F**K!" issue, and lands on the Moon? And at some point in between decides to flip their flag?

Fun story, bad logic.
 
Oh, I know about that series, I checked it out because of my Gender-Bending fetish, but it ended up being kind of meh, so I never finished it. And besides it's a Moe Harem Slice of Life Manga, I don't really expect much more than a couple (probably badly hashed out) gimmicks from them. Right now, I'm reading a series that happens to be quite hilarious, it's called "Arakawa Under the Bridge" and I like it. I've also been meaning to get into a variety of other series such as "Bakemonogatari", "Black Lagoon", and "Bakuman".
Always a unique fetish. Never really hooked me really...

I'm the kind of person that will watch a series to it's completion, even if it's horrible. Like right now, I'm watching "Brighter Than a Dawning Blue," which based on a moe harem slice of life ecchi game.

Also, first anime I ever saw: Akira, when I was 8. That shit was so screwy.
 
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