So far this week, The Beat has offered exclusive Statix Press news leading up to San Diego Comic Con 2018. On Monday we delivered a preview of the upcoming McCay, an “invented biography” of seminal comic artist Windsor McCay slated for October, and Tuesday we gave you a first look at pages from Re-Mind issue 1 due out at the end of August. Yesterday we told you that Statix would offer the well-loved French crime thriller Wrath of Fantomas in January 2019 and gave you a peak at it’s interior art.
Today Statix is back with more comic work based on famous French literature. This time it’s Salammbô, Philippe Druillet‘s interpretation of author Gustave Flaubert‘s French historical tale of desire set following the Punic War in ancient Carthage. You might know Flaubert from his earlier work Madame Bovary, the infamous tale of a bored housewife’s dissatisfaction that her romantic life doesn’t measure up to unrealistic fantasies.
Salammbô is a very different sort of work, and the historical drama is enriched by Druillet’s psychedelic art. Druillet is a heavyweight of Franco-Belgian comics, cutting his teeth as a contributor to legendary comics magazine Pilote, home to everyone from Astérix to R. Crumb.
Salammbô is a continuation of what Titan calls the Philippe Druillet Masterworks series. We recently told you about their dual volume of Druillet’s Yragaël and Urm The Madman coming in August. In addition to his many award-winning albums Druillet also co-founded Metal Hurlant, known as Heavy Metal in the U.S., with Moebius.
We’ve got a slew of mind-bending preview pages from Salammbô, due out this November, below.
This looks absolutely stunning!
I must have missed the bit with the spaceships when I read Flaubert’s Salammbo some years ago… Maybe time to read it again.
Lots of noodling going on here, and the pages do really well as blacklight posters for stoners, but whether it’s good sequential art I’m not sure about.
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