When the cover shows a fur animal styled as Marilyn Monroe and a monkey in a stylish pilot jacket, we hardly expect to end up in the middle of macabre noir cinema. Does the comic have anything else to offer apart from the element of surprise? Let's check.
American embarrassment
With the second volume of the comic book Sky Harry Étienne Willem invites the reader to the extraordinary world of Hollywood, the city of actresses drunk with illegal alcohol and handsome men in stylish tailcoats. This time the star role goes to Harry Faulkner, former Lafayette Squadron pilot. From the first volume we can learn that the humanoid pilot has a lot of merit: he managed not only to thwart the terrorist aspirations of Lydia Lessing, the jazz vocalist at the head of the pirate commando who tried to hijack the WAKANDA airship, but also to destroy samples of an extremely rare mineral called Z-03.
Source: egmont.pl
Behind the maid’s uniform with a rope
Unfortunately, as is usually the case, the noblest exit is also the least profitable one – as a reward for his heroic deeds and enormous courage, Faulkner had to give up his job as a pilot. There’s no time for boredom in Harry in the Sky: temporary unemployment results in even more dangerous adventures that begin at the Paramount Film Studios, where Faulkner begins working as a stunt pilot. The second volume of the comic book Sky Harry. Holywoodland, however, is not only the courageous deeds of the main character – his two beautiful companions are not inferior to him: the sensual movie star Clara Palmer and the long-legged journalist Betty Laverne, both on the trail of a great scandal.
A comic zoo
Both the script and the drawings in Sky Harry were taken care of by Étienne Will, an author known, among others, for the comic book The Sword of the Ardennes. The artist is famous for his passion for solo work, which results in an extraordinary consistency of the text and graphics. Willem fills the pages with a whole galaxy of animals that show the human world in a crooked mirror – here we find an influential film director in the guise of a fluffy French bulldog or a serious agent of government forces presented as a phlegmatic anteater. The comic is complemented by funny dialogues – in this matter the main character’s assistant – Lumpy deserves special recognition. The edition of the comic itself does not raise any objections – the hard cover in combination with the chalk paper allow for comfortable reading,
Source: egmont.pl
Noir cinema for fun
The publishing note on the back of the comic tempts the reader with the possibility of plunging into the dark atmosphere of cinema noir, but this promise is only partially fulfilled. We will definitely find here many elements present in black cinema, among which the main character should be mentioned, who quite by accident ends up in the middle of a political and gangster intrigue, captivating Clara Palmer in the role of a femme fatale, a pinch of perversion and quite a lot of firearms. Comic characters, however, make Sky Harry. Holywoodland is far from macabre, it seems rather grotesque, which, as it turns out, is not its disadvantage.
