Yans, a warrior and father
The time traveler settled down and focused on doing good in the City that he had managed to free from tyranny. Was it finally getting ready for a quiet position as a hero-resident? For at least a few reasons it doesn’t seem possible – first, the living hero-savior is nothing more than trouble (as the main character of The Lost Fleet knows best ). Secondly, the new regime will not have time to solidify and earn a tribute to the academy, because it will be immediately attacked by Queen Ardalia, sweet as honey and predatory like a wasp. Some have met her before and have no illusions that she can hurt her opponents.
I will not tell you how the fight for the City ended, and you do not need to know this to hear about the next notebooks. Yans and his beloved Orchid will find themselves in an environment similar to those from Harrison’s famous Death Planet . Endowed with will, fighting anyone who finds them. Well, almost everyone, because it would probably be willing to agree to harmonious coexistence with the new inhabitants. What really is a globe discovered by chance by two travelers, you will find out later. The most important thing is that the baby shown on the cover of the volume, little Mahonia (this name also comes from a flower), is born on it. She will face a lot of hardships in The Children of Infinity, another notebook in which Yans and his family return to the bosom of civilization to face completely new threats … or rather old ones like the whole of humanity? In this series, it is the characters and their actions that create the plot, practically nothing happens by accident.
Yans loves freedom, fights for equality before the law for those who live in or outside the City. He does not pay attention to stereotypes, race and color, he values nobility of character, loyalty and courage. Orchidea can be saucy, cunning, decisive, although she spends some chapters at home waiting for her husband and daughter. In turn, the latter, of course, has the makings of a rebel, but for now it is primarily a tasty morsel for numerous evil and dad’s opponents.
Classic or old?
The second volume of Yans is full of deceptions and sudden plot twists, ominously scheming enemies and groups of friends quickly forming around the title hero. Former opponents may turn out to be allies here… don’t look for any deeper psychological coherence here, though. The facial expression looks great, emotion or anger are shown reliably, from frame to frame everything keeps sense – but this is a bit old-fashioned art of storytelling, in which anyone can suddenly change (apart from Yans and other true heroes). The dialogues can be delightfully ridiculous and are a bit too often used to tell the story. In turn, the way children speak is as unnatural as in the Thorgalsfrom this period. Not surprisingly, at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, mass culture may not have been so much interested in the spoken language, and readers were also used to some kind of artificiality. However, I must mention here that the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century gave us Trainspotting or the second Terminator , so Yans here represents the style of an earlier period, very consistently maintained from the first notebook.
The drawing has a similar consistency – although Rosiński was responsible only for the covers of some notebooks from the 1990s, the aesthetics of the comic did not change. As Patric Gaumer explains in the introduction, this is exactly what the artist wanted. So he proposed another Pole as his successor, whose line did not have any influence on any of the French schools of comics, was not too simplistic, and did not turn into a caricature. It was also one of André-Paul Duchâteau’s requirements when he was working with Rosiński on the first pages of Yans . First of all, the choreography has changed for the better, the running or jumping figures no longer look like photos where someone pressed the shutter a bit too late.
Egmont has already launched the second edition of this well-prepared collective issue on the Polish market with good, detailed introductions. This time you will get to know the history of Francophone science fiction and its strong connection with crime fiction and BD – comic book loved in France (French bande dessinée ). Compared to the first one, it has a slightly larger format and is shinier, from the cover to the page.
Yans will appeal to everyone who loves Thorgal , classic fantasy with science fiction elements, heroism and a plot full of twists and turns. Loving realistic drawing style. If the 1980s bore you, these volumes would only be of collector’s or nostalgic value for you. While reading, I realized that I know some of these stories, I remember some of the frames – as a child I had to keep on the shelf some books of this comic taken out of context, probably next to those few adventures of a certain Viking, which I clearly remember a bit better …
