I was introduced to Virginie Augustin.  She has such a charming style

The first two Archaia volumes were fantastic, really developing atmosphere and the tension of just waiting for a target.  The next two volumes get very political, and while I would still consider them very good comics, a lot of the philosophy and despair of the first two volumes were sacrificed for more action.

So, let's start with
I.R.$.  #2: La stratégie Hagen (2000) (translation: The Hagen-Strategy (or Stratagem, I'm never really clear on the distinction between those two)).

by Stephen Desberg and Bernaderd Vrancken



About the creators: Stephen Desberg, I know (and like far more) from his series Gaspard de La Nuit (which made my Top 50) and The Scorpion. He has a long list of very diverse titles (30+ titles spanning different genres and styles). His brother Philippe is an artist and the two of them worked together on the series Sienna.

Bernard Vrancken is a little less prolific, I can find only 2 series for him: this series and Sange Noir (Black Blood, haven't read it, but looks to be a period drama), both written by Desberg.

About the title: It's probably one of Desberg's most succesful series as he has also written a spin-off series: I.R.$. All Watcher. The main series has 13 issues, all illustrated by Vrancken, the spin-off has various artists (7 issues, 5 artists). It is focused on I.R.S. (this time written without the obnoxious $) agent Larry Max, who investigates large scale tax evasion (drug cartels, billionaires etc.) I only have 2 issues from this series (#2 and #3, with #3 being the first part of a multi-part story) and decided I didn't like the series that much to continue. Therefore onto the issue itself:

This issue: Larry Max is involved with the investigation of billionaire Mosje Geldhof, an Auschwitz survivor. Geldhof is arrested at the beginning of the story, suspected to be involved in the murder of Luc Cretier, but you can't just arrest a guy that has a 7 billion bank account without some people at the top leaning a little on you, so he gets released. Larry Max decides to use Geldhof's daughter, Lenni, to approach her father. We see Lenni first in an ice-hockey game. She has bribed the referee to take the place of her brother and beats up another player during the match. Charming lady. Max scares off her boyfriend at gunpoint and tells Lenni that her father sends him:



Max sleeps with Lenni, but has to leave when her father gets home and sends some bullets his way. Max also finds out the mention of the Hagen Strategy: named after mythological German figure Hagen, a character in the Ring der Nibelungen, who pretended to be Siegfried's friend to get close enough to murder him in the one spot that was not invulnerable. Basically, at the end of WWII, many SSers see things going badly for them so they take over the identity of Jewish concentration camp victims that they physically resemble and use that identity to get their hands on the bank accounts the victims (and friends and family of the victims had)*. I haven't seen the term used anywhere else, so it's possible that Desberg came up with it, in but it fits nicely with the Nazi's use of mythology, so cudos to Desberg for that if he came up with it. Once the name of the story is explained, the plot basically unfolds as you'd expect.

Like I said, I'm not a big fan of the series: Desberg is a great writer, but this series doesn't really surprise. Larry Max is also a very uninteresting character (to me): he shows absolutely no emotion during the whole story (sleeping with a beautiful woman, hearing the story of a Holocaust victim, shooting some mook in the face with a shotgun, jumping from a moving vehicle or sitting in a meeting: Larry has the exact same blank expression all the time). Part of it is also Vrancken's artwork: he researches backgrounds and vehicles well, but his people remain rather unlifelike (again to me. YMMV) unlike a Vance or Philippe Francq, who use a very similar style, but are able to breathe some life into their characters. Then again, their characters Winch and XIII are also far more likeable: Max lies to Lenni and sleeps with her for pretty much no reason (and I'm pretty sure that sleeping with the daughter of the guy you're investigating is a big No, no matter which part of the government you're in.) Max also has a strange relationship with Gloria, a woman who works for a phone sex line (named after Gloria Leonard? In which case, again cudos to Desberg for research), whom he calls repeatedly during the series just to talk. I'm sure there is a point to it if you're following the complete series, but so far it doesn't help to humanize Max or anything in this single issue.

*= one big problem I have with this plan: how gullible would the America or Soviet troops have to be to buy that a rather healthy young male has been in a concentration camp for years? Not even mentioning having to deal with other prisoners and guards that may identify him? Kill them all doesn't sound feasible?  I'm thinking too much about this, right?

So all in all not a series I really enjoyed, the other issue "Blue Ice" had a more interesting plot, but still some of the flaws I mention here. I might check out I.R.$. all watcher at one point to see if a different artist helps, because as I've mentioned I've liked other titles by Desberg.

One of my all time favorites, Michel Plessix.

His work alone on the adaptation of the The Wind and the Willows is nothing short of stunning.





I also enjoy his Julien Boisvert series as well.

My relationship with Gaspard was pretty much the same. When I was 7 or 8, it was just a weird comic in Wordt Vervolgd (literal translation: "To Be Contiuend", which was a dutch anthology series that published weekly/biweekly a couple of pages of various comics. Similar to TinTin or Spirou magazine. It has had several incarnations and restarts over the years. It currently is named Eppo, which is the name it had in the early 80s.). At the time I found it interesting but a bit weird (also my parents didn't get all issues of Wordt Vervolgd so we obviously missed huge parts of the ongoing story, but it always stuck with me. I think only a few years ago I finally got the final issue.

I know him from RAW--love the clean style.