The Hunting Party

Rating:
Summary: Eastern European history in a dazzling nutshell
Review: A group of old men gathers on an estate in Poland for a hunting party. It's the early 1980s...the Warsaw Pact is still in existence, but cracks are starting to appear. The men in the hunting party are highly influential members of each of the various countries' communist parties. A young French communist acts as translator, and he slowly discovers the story of each of these men, how their idealism eroded, how the Soviet Union loomed over them and their countries...
It's a fantastic story, outstanding writing by Pierre Christin and Enki Bilal's artwork is just extraordinary. Bilal uses color schemes as symbols, it took me awhile to catch on. See of you can figure out what his use of the colors red and yellow symbolizes.
Buy this wonderful, tragic story that ends on a strangely prophetic optimistic note, and get a painless education in how the countries in Eastern Europe after WW2 learned to hate/love
the Soviet Union.

Rating:
Summary: Analyzing Power with Enki Bilal
Review: I am SO GLAD that amazon.com finally has some Enki Bilal graphic novels in-stock. He is an amazing illustrator and he is very well-respected in Europe and Japan. Unfortunately, not many people have heard of him in the United States. He was born in Belgrade in 1951 but moved to Paris when he was 9. He published his first story in 1975 and has since then written and illustrated many graphic novels. His most famous graphic novel series is the Nikopol Trilogy. The last book in the Nikopol Trilogy called "Equator Cold" was chosen as the Book of the Year in France! It is the only comic book ever to recieve such a prestigous award.

The Hunting Party was originally published in 1983 and was written by Pierre Christin with whom Enki Bilal has done many other graphic novels. It is about ten of Communist Politburo's members gathering together for a short hunting party. Their leader is Wassily Alexandrovich, a man whose face is paralyzed and thus cannot talk. All of the other men start telling their stories and how they came to know Alexandrovich. Through falshbacks we learn much about the backgrounds of all the men. Finally, when the actual hunting begins, it turns out to be a game of assasination for a never-ending power struggle between C.C.C.P. leaders.

It is a beautiful story and it really demonstrates the de-moralising effects of power. Pierre Christin does a good job of mixing historical fact and political fiction.

The ART is absolutely marvelous. I can never say enough about the art. Really, you should see it for yourself. It is very realistic. The colors are mostly water color and thus the art has a "fluid feel" to it. Enki Bilal is truly, a master. I also like the size of the book. It is fairly large (12" X 9"). This is the typical size of European comics which I prefer over the small American comic pages. This edition of the book also comes with a series of illustrations and poetry done by Bilal and Christin in 1990.

I really like the Bilal/Christin collaboration. I plan to buy their other book together called "The Black Order Brigade" (it is the only one published in English besides the Hunting Party).

Finally, the translation is very good too. I have some other French graphic novels whose stories I still cannot fully comprehend due to the bad translations. But The Hunting Party reads well.