Casterman BD: Hugo Pratt 3- Périples Eblouis

Périples Eblouis
Edition Cartonnée

Auteur :  Hugo Pratt

Collection : Univers d'auteurs

Serie : Autres albums de Pratt

Tome : 3

Hard cover

Black & white +colour

463 pages

Dimensions : 29x30.8x4 cm

ISBN : 2203038845

EAN : 9782203038844

Prix : 75,00 €

Date de parution : 20/11/2013

Après Périples imaginaires et Périples secrets, un troisième voyage très qualitatif à travers les bandes dessinées en noir et blanc du maître italien.
Dans le prolongement de Périples imaginaires, qui explorait le travail d’aquarelliste d’Hugo Pratt en 2005 à l’occasion du dixième anniversaire de sa disparition, puis de Périples secrets, publié en écho à la grande exposition Pratt programmée à Cherbourg au printemps 2009 et davantage orienté sur le dessin (encre de Chine, fusains, gouaches), voici le troisième volet de ces parcours dans l’oeuvre du maestro, intitulé Périples éblouis.

Edité avec un grand soin, comme les volumes précédents, ce copieux (300 pages) grand et beau recueil se focalise quant à lui exclusivement sur les bandes dessinées en noir et blanc de Pratt. Il est organisé sous forme thématique et, en une soixantaine de thèmes distincts illustrés chacun par des extraits d’albums, parcourt la totalité de l’oeuvre de Pratt en bande dessinée (Corto, Ernie Pike, Fort Wheeling, etc.), y compris certains versants inédits ou peu connus de sa création, comme sa «période argentine » antérieure aux années 60.

Dazzling Journeys

After the first two volumes in this collection, Imaginary Journeys and Secret Journeys, Casterman presents a third looking at the black and white work of the great Italian comics master, Hugo Pratt.

In the first volume,  Périples Imaginary, the water-color work of Hugo Pratt was looked at –this was in 2005 to mark the tenth anniversary of his death.  Then, in  Périples Secrets, a volume that was designed to echo the large Pratt exhibition scheduled in spring 2009, in Cherbourg, and focused more on hid drawing using ink , charcoal and gouache. This third volume of the work of the maestro, is entitled Dazzling Journeys.

Edited with great care, this book, like previous volumes, is an extensive (over 400 pages) large and beautiful collection focussing exclusively on Pratt’s comics in black and white. It is organized by theme, and sixty distinct themes – each illustrated by extracts from albums and covers the entire work of Pratt in comics  --Corto, Ernie Pike, Fort Wheeling , etc.. Including some unpublished or little-known sides of the creator, such as his "Argentine period" prior to the 1960s .

You can take a look at the book via Casterman’s video preview here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PTZuUiCIW4

This is top quality production-wise and one heavy book –I hurt my wrist lifting it!  (I am old, you know).

As for the contents.  Well, much as I would have loved to have seen the previous two volumes, I have this one and what a book it is. 

Firstly, there is a lengthy text feature and I looked at it and just thought that reading it for someone with my very basic French was impossible. As I flicked through I thought “I’m reading this very well”…then the penny dropped as we used to say in the 20^th century.  Captions to illustrations as well as the text feature are in English, French and Italian!!

Oh joy!

A great read and made it so much easier to find out more about Pratt’s work.  Ink sketches/roughs, samples from Pratt’s War, Western and historical comics. Milton Caniff influenced many comic book artists –Steve Dowling, the creator of Garth; Mike Western –British comics great amongst them— here that influence in Pratt’s work is discussed.  And I say “influence” because Pratt was a true and undisputable Master of black and white comics and illustration.

The incredible use of negatives meant that Pratt’s solid black inks was so precise and spot on that the white areas were almost a work of art in themselves. There is a balance between the black ink and white paper in panels that some get so tragically wrong.  Only one other artist I know really knew how to hit that balance –Alex Toth. You can literally drown a panel or page in black ink –study Pratt (or Toth) and you will see how greats work.

75 Euro is expensive as it works out, currently, as £62 or $101 US.  That said, if you are really –really- either into European Bande Dessinee or Hugo Pratt this is an amazing book.  And it tends to put to shame all those US published comic masterworks of ----- that you see (and, crazily, this book is cheaper than some of those!).

Very highly recommended.