Return to Albertine

In 2018, I wrote about my visit to the Albertine Bookstore, a French bookstore across the street from the east side of Central Park in Manhattan. The cover image you see on top of this screen is from that visit. That display is still there, but it’s all different books now.

This past weekend, I made a second pilgrimage to the store. I spent way too long in front of the two tall bookshelves filled with bandes dessinées, but I had a lot of fun leafing through the books and looking for old favorites and potential new discoveries.

In the end, I didn’t buy anything. I couldn’t pull the trigger.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, to be honest. I think I was hoping to find something collectible that I can’t get anywhere else, like one of the Asterix Artist’s Edition type of books, or an integrale collecting an entire series, or anything by Jose Luis Munuera.

I didn’t find any of that.

There were some books that looked interesting, but that I didn’t have the patience to even think about translating myself. They had multiple volumes of Pico Bogue, for example, which is a series I adore and that doesn’t have much translated into English. There are a lot of words in there, though. While I was able to work my way through some panels while standing there in the shop, I also saw a lot of work ahead of me to get there.

There was an entire shelf dedicated to Lanfeust books written by Christophe Arleston. Too bad they didn’t have any of his unrelated “Ekho” volumes. I would have snapped one of those up without thinking twice.

They also had a volume from the “Undertaker” series, but it wasn’t my favorite and it had some bumps and bruises on the cover. I’m not a condition fanatic, but this was a bit too much for me to pay full price for. In the back of my head, I know I could always order these books through eBay for a very similar price, if not lower.

The One That Got Away?

I did have one potential regret. It’s the one decision that I went back and forth on in the store. I’m still not sure if I made the right decision.

They had volumes 6 and 7 of “The Old Geezers.” I love that series, but they stopped translations after the fifth book. The pages look beautiful in print. The colors don’t sink into mud on the page. The oversized (album-sized) pages show off the art well. More North American publishers could learn a thing or two from the French.

But, again, there are a lot of words on those pages. As much as I would love to read the two books, I put them back. Even 1300 days into Duo Lingo, I’m not that fluent…

Wait, Print is Better than Digital, After All?!?

I’ve been a big proponent of reading comics digitally over the years. As so many North American companies seek to cut costs by using cheap paper or just don’t understand how colors shift when ink hits paper, digital comics have been the best way to reproduce the images that creators intended.

Also, the 12.9″ screen of my beloved iPad Pro is larger than the average serialized comic book/trade paperback, so you get the art (and the lettering) larger.

There is, however, one big shortcoming to digital that I was reminded of during this visit. It’s the one drawback that can’t be overcome on a single tablet’s screen.

I saw it when I found “Long John Silver” v4 on the shelf. It was only the fourth volume, though, but if you’re looking for a Lauffray artistic tour de force, this works well. It has big ships and landscapes and characters in action.

There’s one double-page spread in the book that almost sold it to me immediately. It was this one:

The sheer scale of the wide image and Lauffray’s composition sold the book as an object worth reading from.

You can’t get the magnificence of a double-page spread like this on a tablet. It doesn’t even work on a desktop monitor because Comixology shrinks the DPS down to fit on a single page.

If you can get the page size right (large) and the colors printed well (not muddy), books are as good or better than backlit screens. Unfortunately, those two caveats are not so easy to overcome. We see it all the time in publications.

Having said all that, now I’m fixated on buying a French print edition of the series. From what I can tell, there was one “integrale” published as a limited edition that puts all four albums under one cover. It’s not easy to find, unless you want the Spanish edition. Oddly enough, I can find that online in a couple of places. The French one is forever locked up in all the collections that bought it right away.

There was also a two volume integrale, with each book collecting two volumes from the series plus some extra materials like interviews and Lauffray’s process work. The first integrale is easy enough to find. [That’s an Amazon Affiliate link.] The second is harder and more expensive, but not impossible.

You can buy the individual albums at a slight markup, also. That might be the easiest way to go.

There’s also a tiny hope that Lauffray will be “discovered” in North America and someone here will pick up that license and make that “omnibus” in the right format with proper printing techniques to preserve the coloring, but I’m not holding my breath.

English Reprints Continue to Disappoint

I walked away from Albertine without any books. It’s not their fault. It’s mine. I could have picked up a half dozen books if I wanted to buy something just for the sake of it. But I’m trying to keep my collection neater and tidier these days. I need more reasons to buy something than ever before.

I wound up at Midtown Comics across from Grand Central Station after that. I like to peruse the top shelves of their collected editions shelves. That’s where you find the most oversized books. You’ll get lots of Humanoids books up there, some Magnetic Press books, NBM titles, maybe even an Ablaze book or two. I picked up a lot of Asterix books from those shelves back in the day.

Everything is arranged alphabetically by title, not publisher, so I have to work through the entire store to pick out a few highlights.

Funny enough, after walking empty-handed out of the French bookstore, I picked up a translated edition of a French book at Midtown Comics. It’s the Magnetic edition of Frank Pé’s “Little Nemo” book. I fell in love with his style on “The Beast” (a Marsupilami reimagination), and loved what I saw in here, too. Expect a full review of “Little Nemo” at a later date.

Quick aside: The long-awaited second volume of that Marsupilami book is due out in a month in France. Here’s hoping we get an English translation of it!

The thing that drove me crazy, however, were the books that weren’t on that top shelf because they were reprinted at a smaller size. Leading the charge there is Ablaze’s print edition of “Animal Castle.” It’s tiny: 7″ x 10″. I get that they probably think this is an important book for a YA audience. Those tend to be a smaller size.

But did anyone there look at the pages of this series? It’s filled with narrow panels packed with word balloons. The art deserves better. It’s not as detailed as, say, “Blacksad” or anything Francois Schuiten draws, but the cartooning work is special and deserves to be seen at a better size than Ablaze’s reprint. Very disappointing.

Ablaze also has “Elle” at 6″ x 9″, but the art isn’t terribly detailed and the audience they’re aiming for there would be younger. That size kind of feels right even if I don’t think it does the art any favors.

And, of course. Cinebook continues to stick with the standard North American comic book sized albums, usually printed a little darker than they should be. I saw a recent Largo Winch book at Albertine and the difference in page size is remarkable.

The more I learn, the nit-pickier I become, yes.

When Did Comics Distribution Get So Weird?

I haven’t visited a comics shop regularly in years. I’m completely out of the month-to-month and week-to-week flow of the Direct Market. I’ve followed the business, but not all of the details.

So you can understand my surprise when they slipped these two things into my bag:

That’s Marvel and DC’s solicitation catalog/comics/magazines. It’s their own special version of PREVIEWS. It even says “Free Previews” on Marvel’s cover. Remember: Marvel doesn’t directly solicit through Diamond anymore. “Previews” is a Diamond catalog. “Previews” is generic enough of a word used in context here to not be confusing, but still.

Marvel’s solicitations magazine runs 128 glossy full color pages. That’s… insane. For one month’s worth of books?!? The entire checklist for the month fits on two sides of one page at the end.

And they just give it out for free?

It’s an impressive catalog, but my wrists got tired from flipping through all the pages about halfway through the catalog. This catalog, alone, is going to cause 1 degree of global warming in the next year.

As ridiculous as it sounds, it also feels like the paper is of higher quality than some of the Marvel comics I’ve felt in recent years.

The DC companion runs a mere 56 pages while managing to include actual preview pages of comics interiors. Imagine that — people might want to buy a comic based on more than just a cover!

Meh. I’ll just stick to my little corner of the Franco-Belgian world over here. I don’t need a thousand variations on Venom and Deadpool in my life anymore.

That’s How I Roll

I visit a French bookstore and buy nothing. I buy a translated edition of a French book at an American comic book store.

Then — plot twist! — I order a French book online that’s shipping from overseas and will be coming next week. I’m sure I’ll be talking about that more once I have it.

That’s my tease for the day. Feel free to play along and guess what I bought in the comments below, though.