Here’s a nifty, noirish 5-tome series originally published by Epsilon / Verlag. The author “Erik” is a German graphic designer who seems to have worked outside the typical comics publishing format, and as a result I find there’s a certain unconventionality to both his art and storytelling. Style-wise, the Dédé books remind me of Blacksad and Jérôme K. Bloche in that they’re all a fairly casual mixture of pastiche and tribute to the genre, with traces of satire thrown in. This one happens to be my favorite of the three, having good pacing, wry humor, and being the least pretentious.
Almost an obligatory scene, but here’s how it’s handled in this series.
It’s usually raining in Dédé’s world, because of course.
Here we see our detective’s usual haunt, the café below his apartment.
…His girlfriend Yvette and a shot of his standard-issue office.
These come from his first adventure, which has some horror overtones. Dédé’s hired by an anonymous caller to check on a series of elderly ladies, all of whom he discovers to not only be deceased, but somehow mummified as well(!)
At this point I want to mention the art. While it has some ‘LC’ characteristics, it’s also cartoonily expressive, visceral, and perhaps even self-indulgent. Facial expressions are usually over-exaggerated, female characters are built from the same toolbox, and color gradients are downright nonexistent. To be fair, the rather monotone color scheme is clearly meant to stack on the ‘noir’ concept, and does so pretty nicely. And while I’m nitpicking individual qualities which otherwise might annoy me, I did find that on the whole, the art works quite well. Some won’t like it of course, but that’s also where Erik’s unconventionality comes in, which is worth a couple bonus pts for originality, I think.
Alrighty then…
Like Rodney Dangerfield, Dédé’s typically in short supply of respect.
Speaking of the art, I like the isometric framing here, complete with angular rain. In terms of this particular adventure, someone’s been leaving body parts around a little resort town. The inset faces represent some of the onlookers who might double as the perp.
Another almost obligatory scene. Despite his generous build, our detective’s not really a fighter, and has been worked over hard. Now he’s headed home. Unfortunately he has to pass the café on the way there, and it doesn’t go well.
Still, he can put his foot down when necessary.
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of info out there about “Erik” and this series. It seems to have been translated to Dutch, but I’m not sure what else, nor where to get it. Scanlations perhaps, if you’re in to digital comics. The GCD has a little info, if that helps.
OTOH, Erik’s site is still up, and he generously offers six-page previews of all his books, provided you can read German. There’s also more about his background:
Interesting, thx. The drawings remind me of Soda, which is another (very good) take on the noir genre.
