From Publishers Weekly
This volume collects the third and fourth installments of the series by Blain, a French artist of the "New Generation" of European comics. In the first volume, Isaac Sofer, a penniless painter in pre-Revolution Paris, left his fiancée, Alice, to seek his fortune at sea. In this second volume, Blain shows a man changed by his experiences returning home. He opens the book with Isaac stranded on a ship near the South Pole watching his pirate crew mates, mad with fever, slaughter each other. He manages to escape with Jack Ransom, the only other survivor. Jack and Isaac journey together through the Caribbean, cutting throats, robbing houses and chasing women. The innocence Isaac possessed in the first volume is now long gone; his life has become as crooked as his newly broken nose, and when he finally returns to Paris, Alice is gone. Blain's drawing appears cartoony at first, but on closer examination shows a deep portrayal of human emotion. The drawings' moody color and sketchiness add to the pall of darkness that fills the book, and Blain's landscapes convey all the squalor of the places Isaac visits. Blain's Isaac is an everyman who, exposed to the debauchery of the pirate life, willingly becomes an accomplice in the crimes he once shunned. (Mar.)
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Blain continues his genuinely picaresque chronicle of a young man's adventures among thieves, thugs, and reprobates. Isaac didn't begin roguish, but then the voyage of exploration he joined ran into mutiny-inducing hardships in the Antarctic, and now, as this book opens, mutiny succeeds mutiny, or at least the shelf life of captains keeps shortening. Isaac can stay alive without becoming just another rogue for only so long. Meanwhile, the moral resolve of his fiancee, Alice, is weakening, too, and wealthy Philip's attentions become irresistible. As this installment of Isaac's story unfolds, he teams with a young sailor, Jack, and goes to boozing, wenching, and burglary when they get away from the ship and make their way back to Paris, where Isaac then leads a double life as, after reconciling with his father, a none-too-dutiful son by day and burgling gang member by night. All the while, he keeps his eye peeled for Alice, whom at last he spots in an aristocrat's coach. Blain's caricatural, chiaroscuro drawing style complements the story perfectly. Ray Olson
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About the Author
After getting a degree in economics, Chris Blain joined the army and began to draw comics, developing a rough, dynamic style that has been widely praised and imitated. He is a contributor to the Dungeon series, and author of The Speed Abater.
