Ekho v4: “Barcelona”

Short on cash to pay the rent and desperate to save her framed friend/colleague, Fourmille heads to Barcelona, where the art world takes a criminal turn. Yuri and Sigisbert tag along, of course.

Previously on “Ekho”…

And now…

Cat’s Credits

The Story

The agency work that Fourmille does is suffering greatly. Bills are piling up, and the landlord is coming up to the office in an effort to reclaim his last six months of rent.

But bigger problems await — Fourmille’s friend and colleague, Grace, has been framed for an art heist with some planted evidence over in Barcelona.

The artist in question, Maestro, creates small orbs that capture living people. He’s a madman who’s responsible for numerous reported missing persons cases.  But when his collection is stolen, all hell breaks loose.

Fourmille gets involved and then starts acting like — a cat?!?

It’s Just a Fantasy

Obviously, this series is set up as a fantasy.  It features flying dragons and talking squirrel-like creatures and all the rest.

But this is the first book in the series that felt full-on fantasy to me.  It wasn’t just that that set-up — a world without electricity relies on unconventional means to do everything — was fantastic, but the crime in this issue that Fourmille gets dragged into is also a fantasy.  It’s an artist who covers his subjects with a kind of paste that allows him to turn them into fairies and lock them inside a marble, basically.

This isn’t a simple murder investigation.  This one goes beyond that.

Arleston grounds it a little bit with the references to Schroedinger’s cat, which is unexpected and, honestly, very funny to me. It came out of left field, even after the cat gets trapped in a box very early on.

I liked The Maestro as the artistic villain of the piece.  He’s completely over the top.  Nothing is subtle for him.  He chews up scenery wherever he goes with his wild movements, wide-eyed looks, and extended accent.

Arleston knows what he’s working with when it comes to the Maestro and uses all of that to humorous effect, often tweaking his own character with the interactions and reactions of others in the story who have to deal with him.

He also does a great job with the humor in this volume.  There’s a sequence early in the book where Fourmille has to dodge her landlord, to whom she owes lots of back rent.  Playing out like a vaudeville routine, with the help of Yuri, she turns the tables and winds up borrowing more money from him before convincing him to walk out the door without a dime towards the rent.  (The bills are so bad that Yuri organizes them into piles.  The oldest ones he throws out because he figures the creditors probably forgot about them by now.)

Fourmille’s transformation in this book is different than in the others.  This time, she’s invoking the spirit of a cat instead of a wronged (and dead) human.  This leads to some funny sequences of her acting just like a cat, jumping across rooftops following after some cat suitor, only to be pulled back by the lure of cat food.

Arleston ends the book with a direct move to the next volume.  This book is still complete in and of himself, but it’s obvious that he knows where he wants to go with the story next.  He’s plotted this out, and the realizations of the last couple of pages — about the on-going mysteries of the Preshauns and Fourmille’s place in this world — are leading to something directly in the next book.

The Art of Barbucci

Barbucci plays with Fourmille’s cat transformation in fun ways. He changes her whole body language to match, including having her straighten a leg to lick it clean, and her manic way of eating food.  The prancing across rooftops also works.

Yuri’s attempts to stop her during that rooftop sequence also gives Barbucci a great chance to show what he’s capable of when it comes to physical humor.  Yuri’s unsure rooftop antics are the stuff animators usually come up with.

For more subtle humor, reference that scene with the landlord again.  It’s three people in a room talking, but Barbucci sells it with his careful staging of the scene and the facial expressions of everyone in the room.

And, of course, he still draws amazing and fantastical architecture in the world of Ekho in this book. The skyline of New York City — complete with the Preshaun of Liberty off to the left — is impressive, as is his rendition of the La Sagrada Familia, which you might remember from the great “Ghost of Gaudi.”

As usually happens with each new location in the series, there are a lot of specific Barcelona locations in here, all of which have been transformed into new things due to the nature of the world, and they all catch your eye.

On top of all of that, I can’t ignore the coloring work done by Nolwenn Lebreton. It’s beautiful, with a color palette unlike anything else in comics today. It’s warm, soft, and blends gradients together with textures in a way that doesn’t look like the artist just discovered Photoshop. This is someone who knows what they’re doing.  The color themes of each scene are great.  It’s a very orange-and-blue type of book, but there’s a reason that color scheme is so popular — it works well.

This is some of my favorite coloring work in comics today, particularly in how much is adds to the already detailed artwork from Barbucci.  Lebreton still adds so much to every panel.

Recommended?

Yes, if you’re already into this series.  If you’re not, you should really start with the first book.  There’s some call backs to that one here.  (And a reference to volume 3, as well.)  Arleston explains it as the book goes along, but you’ll appreciate it more if you already know it.

If you’re a series fan already, there’s much to recommend here.  It’s not just a retread of the same formula. Arleston is mixing things up a little bit.

And he’ll mix them up even more in volume 5….

— 2018.099 —

Buy It Now

“Ekho” is not available in English in print, nor is it carried by Izneo, but you can still get the entire series through Amazon/Comixology.  (That Amazon link is an affiliate link. It won’t cost you a penny more, but the Amazon kickback from your purchase will help keep this site up and running.)

Bonus Panel

Wait, is he talking about me?  That cad!