Frnk v3: “The Sacrifice”

Well, THAT was a faster release than expected. On the other hand, now we’re all caught up with Europe, so no more quick releases of this series.  Volume 4 is due out in August in French. I’m hoping we see it translated in September.

The Story So Far

Frank, the orphan, falls through time and lands in a pre-historic jungle, where he meets up with a family of what we would call cave people.  They don’t speak with vowels, they have strange rabbits that cast hypnotic spells, and grandma is a monkey.

This is the story of Frank coming to terms with living in this new situation.

The Hunt Is On!

In this book, in particular, he’s learning how to hunt. If he wants to eat and be part of the family, he has to earn his keep.

But killing an animal?  That’s not easy for Frank, no matter how hungry he is.  This is especially true when the animals are all super cute and super young.

Eating salads won’t solve all his problems, either.

Olivier Bocquet’s script balances the dynamics of humor and drama very well.  Frank has a hard time dealing with this hunting issue and he acts believably. Bocquet adds the right amount of humor to lighten the mood to keep this book from being about an annoying angsty teenager.

The biggest trick Bocquet pulls in his script, though, is starting with a serious dramatic situation, and then ramping it up before ramping it up again.  Can Frank kill to have something for himself to eat?  Would he do it to feed others?  Can Frank kill an animal to save others’ lives?

Hilarious, right? “Frnk”is a funny book, but much of that comes from the high stakes drama. This isn’t Bocquet writing a gag a page here.  This story has real teeth.

With each step, the internal calculus Frank uses to make a decision has to be figured out anew.  It leads to a horrible decision that Frank has to make, where there is no clear winner, but he will do what needs to be done, at last.

This book is filled with gut-wrenching moments, wrapped up in a book that’s basically a YA or Middle Grade graphic novel series.  It looks fun and exciting, but there’s a real heart and dramatic core to it, as well.

Frank’s Unfair Advantage

Frank may not be a kid genius, but coming from the future means he’s more familiar with some basic scientific concepts than the cave people are.  That leads him to see things in a different way. He understands a bit more of why certain plants help with certain sicknesses, and where they might be coming from.  He can also piece things together, as he does effectively in this book at a crucial time.  Olivier’s script puts everything into place for a satisfying ending, even if– well, I’m not going to spoil anything.

We also see how the things he brought with him to the new world are still seen as magic, and how the bad people want to exploit that for their own gain.

But, really, how magical is a smart phone when the battery is nearly dead and there’s no LTE signal around?

No, really, what is that thing?

(Quora has some answers, of course.)

Still Looks Great

I’m not sure I have too much new to say here about the art of Brice Cossu.  It’s perfect for this book, and it’s well done, overall. He has a great style and it plays well to the comedic parts of the book.  He uses the manga-inspired faces to add the visual extremes to sell a joke, but he can also do broad physical humor, like in this sequence where he’s trying to push a baby mammoth out of harm’s way:

The coloring by Yoann Guillo matches up well.  It’s bright and easy to read. It looks like someone took the color palette from a brightly-lit animated series and juiced it up to fit a comic book style.  There’s more care taken to the shadows and with the gradients. There’s an even better sense of physical space from the lighting and the patterns of light.

Bonus points to the original letterers, too, who pushed the balloons out to the borders and often broke the borders with them.  I love that open look to the lettering, and it fits this series, too, including the balloon tails that zig zag to the speaker.

Recommended?

Yes!  It’s for many of the same reasons as my recommendation of the second volume, just ramped up a few notches. This book, in particular, pushes the borders of its comedy and its drama, while maintaining the same artistic flair. Cossu is not getting tired of drawing this book yet.

By the way, volume 4 just started its serialization in the pages of “Spirou” this week.  And then there’s this tweet from writer Olivier Bocquet from April 17, 2018 that has since been deleted:

J’ai tellement hâte que vous lisiez ce tome 4, bon sang…

L’éditeur dit que c’est ce tome 4 qui l’a convaincu de signer pour la série.

Il y a plus de trois ans.

— Olivier Bocquet (@levraiO) April 17, 2018

The automated translation of that is:

I can’t wait for you to read this volume 4, damn it…

The publisher says it is this volume 4 that convinced him to sign for the series.

More than three years ago.

That’s a very good tease, indeed…

— 2018.039 —

Buy It Now

  qdqdqss

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