Po napisach

BEST 2025 COMIC BOOKS ->

It has grown bleak in Filip Jędrzejewski’s work. True, even in the first part of Nawet nas tu nie ma (winner of the MFKiG award for best debut), the central motifs already followed those sorrowful tracks, but back then the reader was at least occasionally thrown into more melancholic regions. Something still flickered beneath that depressive shell. Here? From the very beginning Jędrzejewski keeps adding weight, and at some point it becomes difficult to lift.

And I caught myself no longer thinking of Nawet nas tu nie ma as a sci‑fi comic. Perhaps it was never meant to be one? This time I read it — after Kid’s (the comic’s protagonist’s) return to Earth — as an existential drama about a young man unable to find his place in the surrounding, persistently rotten reality. Not only that: every event (and every illustration) struck me as exceptionally dispiriting.

I know why, but I wouldn’t want to open up that much. It’s enough to say that at times I could see myself in the comic as if in a mirror. What’s most unsettling (though not “interesting” in any pleasant sense) is that I saw myself both through Kid — revisiting my own distant past — and from somewhere above it all, now watching my teenage children slowly crossing the threshold of adulthood. Damn it, Filip, that’s a low blow…

I won’t write long about this comic. It’s overloaded with text, but every bit of it matters. Every dialogue (whether with parents or with friends) carries weight, and it doesn’t so much reveal the protagonist as show how desperately everyone needs therapy. Which, unfortunately, no one mentions. Or perhaps in this world therapists and professional help no longer exist?

So what is the second part of Nawet nas tu nie ma about? In cases like this it’s hard to separate the artist from the work. I don’t know Filip personally, but after reading this I have the impression that as an author he exposed himself quite deeply.

It’s a comic that only seems to step into sci‑fi territory. Filip uses the genre to talk about a future no one wants, yet everyone — paradoxically — keeps moving toward. It will become noticeable on a global scale: this strange lethargy, the general burnout of empathy, the inability to see another human being. On a world scale it’s a serious problem, but it always begins with you, with the individual, with an ordinary conversation.

These are difficult matters, and they’re difficult to convey — just as difficult as conversations between parents and children. Filip shows that too. There’s a lot of truth here about the struggle to understand one another and the trouble with conversation itself. Worst of all, everyone, from their own perspective, wants to do good, believes they’re right, and acts — in their own eyes — in the best possible way.

Sad, Szopa, Bear, Wiraż, Kundzio — on the surface everything matches, and yet everything feels different. The hangout spot is the same, the familiar moves, the slang, the grimaces. If you’ve met them before, you can safely walk up to them in the second Swoboda, slap a high‑five, bum a smoke, ask for some change. They won’t punch you in the face — whatever’s bad, it’s never on them. But the rest? The rest feels just a bit more dangerous.

I won’t say it’s all bright and cheerful, even if Osiedle Swoboda 2 literally has colours now. It’s colourful the way your street is colourful near the stairwell of a prefab block. It’s the shade of corridors, puddles, the pavement, the paint on the elevator door and the flakes peeling off the drying rack. You know — when there’s still a bit of green left, but underneath it’s all rust. Those are the colours of Osiedle Swoboda 2. And because of that, it feels somehow sadder. I preferred the sharp black‑and‑white linework of the first estate, even if the biting wit, the dark humour and the whole arsenal of verbal tricks are still intact.

What next? Next comes the genre that has walked onto the estate. Of course — we get a bit of crime fiction. It was there before, in a way, but now it’s fully stirred up, more threatening. Throughout the album it’s funny‑scary, with the emphasis on the “scary”.

Michał “Śledziu” Śledziński has deliberately shifted the convention away from the mostly humorous, slice‑of‑life estate antics that I previously read as close to Clerks. That’s how I wrote about the first collected volume: “There’s a lot that connects the author of Osiedle Swoboda with Kevin Smith. Independence? Sure. But also a certain narrative character — comic, amusing, yet always slipping into everyday prose. Jay and Silent Bob would fit right in outside the liquor store on Swoboda, and Sad and Szopa could easily spend a few hours standing in front of a video rental in New Jersey.”

Here, that’s no longer the case. The atmosphere has changed. It’s still a comedy tinged with drama, but the drama is often dirty — or at least smudged. More serious dilemmas appear, real danger appears. Oh, Śledziu probably wouldn’t hurt his characters, but… but yes — things are a bit more serious now.

Before going to the cinema, I knew nothing about the new film by Spielberg. I knew the genre, but nothing about the plot, I hadn’t watched the trailers, I didn’t know who starred in it. Not bad, right? But it’s Spielberg — certain standards must be upheld, don’t you think.

Whatever one might write about Spielberg, he was one of those who laid the foundations for the image of global cinema. I will never claim he is the “best” of the “best” filmmakers. As a representative of mainstream cinema, that’s the kind of work he creates. It’s always meticulous craftsmanship, but interestingly, it turns out that everyone — literally everyone — can find in his filmography a title they genuinely liked.

For example, fans of genre cinema, the ones with that refined taste who might scoff at E.T. (because it’s sentimental sci‑fi for kids), have their own Jaws, The Sugarland Express, or Duel. Enthusiasts of war films have Saving Private Ryan. There’s a whole crowd of viewers who return to Indiana Jones once a year (or even several times).

Let’s not forget the people for whom Jurassic Park is a religion. And next to them stand all those who say, “Munich — that’s the truly underrated Spielberg, the only good film.” And I still haven’t listed all the Spielbergian fan subcultures, because there are also those who to this day post that one frame of the girl in the red coat from Schindler’s List on their social media accounts. Let’s not forget them.

So Spielberg means cinema, but somewhere at its core there has always been sci‑fi — probably his greatest love. And today we return to his cosmic obsessions with a screening of Disclosure Day.

Here, Spielberg is again that boy staring at the stars. Few filmmakers long so deeply for real contact with extraterrestrial intelligence — you could always feel that in his sci‑fi films. And he never ran from that encounter; he allowed it. If anyone stood in opposition to those enlightened, open people who truly aren’t afraid, who can reach out their hand in greeting — it was the government, institutions, secret agents, and the whole array of state organizations. Yes, that hasn’t changed here in Disclosure Day either.

The film touches on the same motifs that lay at the heart of Spielberg’s dreams of contact. He expressed them in E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The only obstacle on humanity’s path to the stars was other humans. As always.

But there are several other guiding themes. It seems the film was made mainly out of a need to reckon with an era in which information became currency and truth — a tool of pressure.

And as always, Spielberg is naïve in that charming way of his, which nevertheless comes straight from the heart, with all the variations of the New Hollywood adventure cinema. Again, there is a small group of rebels, revolutionaries, empathetic and simply good people, and there is the other side — not entirely evil, rather walled in by their own ignorance. Spielberg says that anyone can be reached; you just need to find the key.

“Axe to Grind” and “Hell to Pay”, together with the set of bonus materials, form the second collected volume chronicling the adventures of Owen – a man with a curse on his back and an axe that serves as his moral compass. Sort of. Let me remind you: “Owen the Barbarian has been cursed, and the curse is of a particularly spiteful nature for a brute like him. He must do good, he must consult his axe about every killing, and the axe is at once a moral guideline and a list of commandments one must first study and then let the blade slurp blood over.” That’s what I wrote in my review of the first book. Nothing has changed here. Or has it? Keep reading.

Book Two goes harder, faster, louder – in line with the unwritten rule that governs every creator when making a second film, novel, or comic. It’s not codified anywhere, but most sequels follow it instinctively.

I also have the impression that Bartosz Czartoryski, the Polish translator, tightened the screws even further. And that’s where I have to start – with the translation, which in this second book carries the story beautifully. It’s punchier, it’s vulgar, but always within the exaggerated heroic‑fantasy convention, where the axe lives its own life, rips things apart, and spits black humor. Actually, not spits – it gushes with it uncontrollably.

And Bartek Czartoryski is right there on the front line, clearly having fun with this translation and, I suspect, drawing some wild joy from it. He’s as creative as the people behind the best Pixar dubbing scripts. A strange comparison, perhaps, but you get the idea. This isn’t a 1:1 translation – it’s a living linguistic game, crafted to convey the essence smoothly, but in a blunt, expressive form that would be flattened by literalism.

The second volume unfolds like a series that knew from the start what it wanted to be: a brutal, ironic deconstruction of fantasy, but also a commentary on the nature of violence, guilt, and the endless cycles of revenge.

We also get more backstory for the characters, and thematically the narrative circles around the question of whether a barbarian can be good if his only tool is force. The pages are dense, often overloaded, but I never lost my way in the panels. Whatever is meant to be at the center of the action – stays there. The lines are sharp, dynamic, and the action flows in a rhythm reminiscent of axe strikes.

The artwork varies: sometimes it’s breathtaking (the entire opening story, Axe to Grind), and at other times slightly puzzling (the next episode, the single issue included in the album). Odd, since the artistic team is the same – colorist and illustrator. In places it feels more modest. Or maybe it’s just a deliberate short artistic pause? Either way, it’s noticeable, though it doesn’t affect the overall experience.

The narrative shifts between the albums, however, are significant. Axe to Grind is a classic of this universe: Owen and the axe, feasting on a hearty, bloody meal, leap from skirmish to battle, from battle to epic carnage. No one here knows restraint – not the writer, not the artist, not our translator. The finale reshuffles the deck and descends into hell – literally. Hell to Pay opens the series to new registers. The introduction of a hellish setting isn’t just escalation – it’s an attempt to confront the consequences of earlier choices.

The central motif of both volumes – the relationship between Owen and his talking, blood‑drinking axe – still works as a comedic counterpoint, but also as a metaphor. The axe is a conscience that knows no compromise. Owen is a man who knows only compromise. Their dialogue is, at its core, a conversation about whether morality can exist in a world that constantly mocks it.

I’m delighted by the humor (credit goes where it’s due), even if toward the end a bit of fatigue creeps in – every monster is bigger than the last, the bestiary endless, a bit like the Saga effect.

Wojtek is a guy you’d call one of your own. In 1994 the band Illusion recorded a song about him (he’z da same again / this guy got da brain, etc.), and now Karol Kalinowski has made a comic about him. Okay, it’s a different Wojtek, but after reading the book I can’t shake the feeling that a potential trailer for Quartz Fingers could easily use Illusion’s “Wojtek” as its soundtrack.

Quartz Fingers — that humour, the clever wit, the way the story is told (a crazy one!) immediately brought back all my wonderful adventures with Tadeusz Baranowski’s albums. Yes, those were the moments of creative comic-book madness that, I feel, Karol Kalinowski pays homage to (and is certainly an enthusiast of!).

But this is no imitation. Quartz Fingers is a fantastic authorial invention, a fully independent work, as delightfully bonkers as the best episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Yes, I have a feeling Kalinowski would fit right into that troupe.

And what a beautiful title it is — and how freely the author treats everything contained within it! On the surface we’re in Poland, the 19th century, yet the language is heavily modernised, and on top of that we get threads full of technicalities straight from our own era. But it’s not really about the landscape, nor about any particular attention I, as the reviewer, might pay to its outline or scenery. What seems most important is the form — and how good the reader feels with these fingers.

Chaos? Sure, but fully controlled, because Karol Kalinowski is a bit of a one‑man band here — he sings, recites poetry, kicks off a party in a castle, builds two neat labyrinths (which, incidentally and quite unexpectedly, also involve the reader), cooks up a handful of charming wisecracks, and above all creates a whole cast of endearing characters, led by one in particular: Wojtek. Wojtek (a young boy with a wild mop of hair) receives a gift from visitors from outer space, strongly tied to the titular quartz — and the rest is a creative sprint of wild ideas. Kalinowski takes off at full speed, he’s inventive, and readers need to stay alert if they want to savour the adventure to the fullest.

It seems to me that Creature from the Black Lagoon is, within the whole Universal gang, more of a second‑tier celebrity. There are, after all, certain (theoretical) limitations to this figure. It operates strictly within its swamp, and in general no one really knows what it wants (blondes tend to have an easier time with it). It’s part nature’s guardian, part menace, a legend not unlike the Loch Ness Monster.

It first appeared on the big screen in Jack Arnold’s 1954 film. It’s a remarkably successful picture on many levels: excellent underwater cinematography, an unforgettable costume designed by Disney animator Milicent Patrick, and inside it a skilled swimmer, Ricou Browning.

I once wrote about Arnold’s film this way:

“Fast‑paced action and plenty of weighty moments piercing through the entertainment‑driven plot. A classic, one of the foundations of the monster‑movie tradition, which filmmakers around the world still draw from when it comes to solutions and ideas.”

Creature from the Black Lagoon has never been exploited as heavily as its monstrous siblings from Universal. Dracula, released in this cycle by Lost in Time, captivated with its imagery but also with its approach to the subject. I wrote about that comic that it was “solid in terms of script, with a strong idea of the vampire as a figure who is present yet always in the shadows, always ready to strike (like a true predator), and with a beautiful approach to epic, bloody horror.” My only complaint was the format — with illustrations that striking, it really could have been larger.

Let’s return to the second episode of Universal Monsters. Here, I won’t complain about the format. Matthew Roberts’s artwork isn’t dazzling in terms of linework, but it fits this album size perfectly. The colors by Dave Stewart and Trish Mulvihill are applied solidly, without rising above the standard. The script, however, is excellent and engaging — it blends the old with the new, legend with emotional thriller. It’s a story I’d love to see on the big screen.

In the album we follow Kate Marsden, who heads to Peru in pursuit of a serial killer. A rotten story from the United States finds its finale at the Black Lagoon. At that Black Lagoon.

In an era when pop culture freely reinterprets the classics while simultaneously undermining its own foundations, Ram V and Dan Watters were given one of cinema’s most archetypal monsters. Instead of recreating the legend, they modernize it and add the genre elements it needs.

The comic grows out of two traditions. The first is, of course, the legacy of the Universal Monsters, where the creature was always a figure of fear and desire, a projection of what humans repress. The second is the contemporary school of storytelling: dense, psychological, built on loops of trauma and on characters who cannot distinguish their inner demons from the external ones.

I have a handful of very vivid memories connected to Rork from my teenage years. It was a formative time, and the title itself meant a great deal to me.

When the turn of the decade came—specifically in 1989—I was like Bastian from The NeverEnding Story, except I wasn’t sitting in an old antiquarian bookshop but rather tucked away in my own room. I was reading comics. The following year would bring the TM‑Semic Punishers, but let me remind you that in this little story it’s still 1989, and I’m flipping through an issue of Komiks Fantastyka—that was my first encounter with Rork. I must have walked away from that session transformed, because Rork, or more precisely that reading experience, stayed with me for decades. I probably devoured Rork many times during that crucial period of my reading life. But since then, we hadn’t met again.

A few single images remained in me like tattoos on memory—the levitating Rork, the stain, the great townhouse unfolded like a puzzle, and finally that house built on a cursed spot, on a high seaside cliff, with a torn‑out fragment of wall.

And when I picked up the collected edition now (Book 1), I felt that wonderful sensation of returning images. As if someone had carefully washed and backlit those memory‑tattoos. Yes, everything became sharp again. The white‑haired gentleman in a black coat once more tries to tame mysterious forces, piece reality back together, avoid stumbling in this labyrinth of unsettling events.

Today I look differently at Andreas’s work, at the chain of meanings, at Rork himself, and at the illustrations and their many inspirations. I have the knowledge that came from reading other books, from film screenings, and—speaking colloquially—from life.

Andreas, a creator of German origin working mainly in the Francophone sphere, entered a phase of intense experimentation in the 1980s. You can see in this volume a fascination with the European comics avant‑garde, but also traces of American horror and fantasy storytelling. I felt Lovecraft here, because I sense that unimaginable terror of something powerful behind the wall, in a parallel world, something that can break through just like that, unceremoniously, yet remains suspended in a state of waiting. And Rork can look into those places—now I understand that. He grasps everything, ignores nothing, is often perplexed and, like the reader, has no answers to many questions.

Andreas bends the medium almost impossibly—he tests how far the boundaries of readability can be pushed. He doesn’t worry much about our perception, yet he always succeeds, because horror and mystery (in this form!) defend themselves without exception.

It’s also a demanding album, but a fascinating one, and far ahead of its time. I read and look at it carefully after several decades, and I’m still amazed at how creative Andreas is—not only in his narrative acrobatics but also in the way he stages action. I probably don’t need to mention the quality of the illustrations—he’s a master of the delicate line, and his unmistakable technique remains captivating to this day.

Returning once more to today’s reception and emotions, I feel they are built not through the characters’ expression but through the construction of space. Empty panels, sudden shifts in perspective, recurring architectural motifs—all of this creates a sense of unease. Yes, the word “unease” should appear most often when describing an encounter with this album.

The collected edition includes several stories. We didn’t get the “complete” Rork in the 1990s—Bartek Kurc explains the publishing turmoil in detail. And the additional materials included here are excellent as well—a great introduction by Arkadiusz Królak, a wealth of extra illustrations, and of course Rork’s adventures: “Ghosts,” “Fragments,” “Passages,” “The Cemetery of Cathedrals.”

Great cover, pleasant linework by Juan Luis Landa, but the content offered by Jean Dufaux intrigued me only in part.

The landscape of events in the first volume of Ogre is the Hundred Years’ War — a long chain of conflicts between England and France. At this particular historical moment depicted in Ogre, France is in retreat. The English dominate, spread fear, and the alliances that form are extremely fragile, as uncertain as the entire situation on the continent.

This album overwhelmed me with its narrative layer, and I think I’m drifting further and further away from historical comics. The multitude of names, the relationships between characters, the side plots, the mentioned alliances, and the political turbulence knocked me flat. There is simply a lot of it — as a reader, I stopped absorbing the handfuls of facts (some characters are historical, along with dates and places) mixed with fiction.

Of course, the comic grows out of a fascination with an era in which war was a natural state and violence the language of politics. Jean Dufaux, a Belgian comics writer, feels perfectly at home in such constructed works. These historical, more or less epic tales are his specialty — that’s where he thrives. I’ve read his Crusade (with art by Philippe Xavier), and I’ve also read Fox (a title with a stronger adventure tone). The pattern is similar. Here too, in Ogre, the backdrop is anchored in a specific place and time, and historical events flow smoothly into those that are purely fictional.

From this era, from this bombardment of names and surnames, I managed at least to extract the essence — the titular ogre everyone wants to catch. He is surrounded by many ghastly stories, sometimes fabricated (within the comic’s own logic), sometimes true. This thread is genuinely interesting. It ties well with the metaphor he embodies — a figure that becomes an allegory of war, famine, and everything associated with wartime crisis. And into this motif steps Joan — not yet a saint, but already capable of illuminating every darkness with her presence.

The graphic layer speaks its own language. I’m not familiar with Juan Luis Landa’s other works, but the ones in Ogre complement the story well. Landa does not get lost (unlike me) in the flood of information — every character has a distinctive look and can be quickly recognized. Several battle scenes come out really well; it’s worth examining the battlefield more closely there. The illustrator skillfully draws the chaos of combat — piles of bodies, knights in convulsions, clashing soldiers. It’s all solid, though it doesn’t rise above the norm. Hard not to appreciate it, but just as hard to be amazed.

“Druuna Vol. 2: The Creature. The Predator” is the album in which Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri stops pretending that his cycle is merely a post‑apocalyptic survival fantasy. In this second collected volume he reveals the true nature of his universe: an extraordinarily capacious science‑fiction horror, with those very genres dominating the album.

Of course, no matter how many conventions we identify here, that bold eroticism pulses through every moment. Serpieri never abandons his greatest obsession—corporeality, which on the artistic level, in the rendering of Druuna, her many companions, bodies tangled in debauched poses, remains unmatched. The illustrative style is the foundation. Serpieri draws with maniacal precision. Every muscle, every fold of skin, every architectural detail matters. And although we leave behind the pure post‑apocalypse fused with sci‑fi (“Druuna Vol. 1: Morbus Gravis. Delta”) and move deeper into hard science fiction, many elements—especially structural ones—remain in place.

Narratively, Serpieri transitions between events in his albums in a rather peculiar way. This time we accompany the crew of a spaceship lured to a specific point in space. It is already Druuna’s world, almost a living organism where fantasies, nightmares, and visions blend, only occasionally solidifying into something more real. The characters’ consciousness—captain included—seems to balance on the border of two orders. The key, of course, is her—Druuna—who, unfortunately and as usual, appears trapped in a constant lethargy, suspended in her unreal existence.

Serpieri remains bold, though he stumbles over the number of meanings he wants to implant in his work. He fuses pulp aesthetics with metaphysics, grotesque with lyricism, corporeality with philosophy. Sometimes he gets away with it; sometimes—when he tries to explain the state of things more clearly—the panels buckle under the weight of the text (though admittedly, it is not difficult to read on a literary level).

Mocny tytuł, bardzo zwodniczy, a odczytuję go jako wyjątkowo pozytywny. Debiut Natalii Legutko jest tym kalejdoskopowym zapisem całego szeregu wspomnień, przefiltrowanych najczęściej przez dziecięcą (autorki, czyli jej własną) optykę. Ja pozwolę sobie swoje wrażenia przedstawić w nieco rozchwianej formie (jakby kiedyś było inaczej).

Pierwsze uczucie, jakiego doznałem w trakcie lektury, to… ciepło. Tak, z całym tym przypomnieniem wydarzeń z mojego dzieciństwa lub raczej już dorastania (jestem starszy niż Natalia) przyszło ciepło. To dobre uczucie, bezpieczne, przypominające o komforcie tamtych czasów, gdy złe rzeczy (nawet jeżeli istniały) były najczęściej w telewizorze, gdzieś obok. A nawet nie chodzi o złe rzeczy, tylko te wszystkie, które mogłyby zmącić beztroskę - nie martwienie się o śniadanie, obiad, rzeczy do ubrania. Zdaję sobie sprawę, że to przywilej. I Natalia miała dobre dzieciństwo (to wnioski po komiksie), i ja takie miałem. Bywa różnie, każdy mógłby przecież mieć własną historię.

Nostalgia tutaj, jak i na przykład w innym komiksach, choćby w "Sezonie spadających gwiazd", to te przykłady wspomnień, przy których dobre i ciepłe obrazy wypierają dramatyczne niekiedy historie poza kadr. Nie wątpię, że każdy miał smutne chwile, ale beztroska, zapach świąt, rodzinnego domu - to przeważa w naszych powrotach. Szczególnie gdy od tamtych czasów się oddalamy.

I Natalia Legutko tak właśnie działa ze swoim debiutem. Nie będę oceniać, zresztą rzadko to robię. De facto pewną niesprawiedliwością byłoby ten komiks ocenić, bo to przecież jej życie, Natalii. W faktografii wszystko się zgadza - też tu mieszkałem, też jadłem mniej więcej w tym samym czasie pierwszego McDonalda, oglądałem telewizję z dekodera i tak dalej.

Ilustracyjnie to styl ikon i piktogramów, bardzo prosty, ale przecież już Łukasz Wojciechowski w swoim "Dum‑Dum" pokazał mi, że nie realizm świadczy o umiejętności przekazywania odpowiednich nastrojów i emocji. Natalia Legutko tylko to potwierdza. Proste i schematyczne rysunki, z dobrze dobraną kolorystyką, zawsze miłą dla oka, ze wspomnieniami, które są jej - małej bohaterki - ale i nasze, całej reszty rodaków.

Niech będzie! To dobry komiks, kawał zapisu ważnych czasów - i nie chodzi tu tylko o dzieciństwo, ale ten szalony okres dla kraju, gdzie w tym króliczym pędzie połknęliśmy wszystko, co nowe. Nawet nie patrzyliśmy na metki, tylko prosto do gęby: żucie i przełykanie. Tak było w latach 90., tak było na początku dwutysięcznych.

Może szkoda tylko, że autorka bardziej się nie odsłoniła. Brakuje trochę czegoś bardziej osobistego, ale widocznie nie miała na to jeszcze ochoty.

Polecam, bo to przecież fajna rzecz - raz jeszcze zerknąć na przeszłość, którą też miałeś lub miałaś. To zresztą po trosze niesamowite, że wszyscy byliśmy tak daleko od siebie, a jednocześnie, przez ten szereg wydarzeń, rzeczy, polonezów, autobusów ogórków, wyjazdów do Ustki, byliśmy tak blisko siebie.

Ach, tytuł "To był najlepszy koniec świata", bo rzeczywiście tamten świat już się skończył, ale przecież był najlepszy. I jadąc dalej, cytując fragment z "Finlandii" zespołu Świetliki:

Unexpected blow. Absolutely. I simply couldn’t assume that a sci‑fi comic that looks so modest would hit with such force. Of course, I know where it comes from — mainly from the construction, in which a thriller and a family drama, above all a father‑focused one, unfold on the same plane. Perhaps I’m already revealing too much? In any case, whenever a story touches on the relationship between a father and a daughter at a moment when one of them is on the verge of leaving (work, travel, divorce, growing up), something in me always cracks. This time was no different, and that’s only one layer of the album.

Pelaez (the writer) builds the story like a puzzle, where every panel may be a clue, so it’s worth reading attentively. This is not a linear tale about a space mission but a record of identity disintegration. The protagonist, Daniel Nikto, is a man, an astronaut, who begins to lose trust in his own memories.

There is a mission to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons — that’s the central theme. There is guilt (because Daniel’s expedition is supposed to last two years), there is a fracture in the marriage, an illness has occurred, and all of this is only the beginning. The writer does not spare Daniel, but in doing so, he does not spare me, the reader, either. I felt all of it deeply — which speaks well of the reading experience.

I wrote about modesty, and indeed that’s the case, but beneath the narrative and stylistic surface lie two creative temperaments — Philippe Pelaez’s precise, cinematic thinking and Guénaël Grabowski’s cool, realistic drawing. Their collaboration had already matured earlier; I first encountered the duo in the comic Nine — the moods were similar, though the emotional register was less intense.

The genesis of the album is rooted in a fascination with science fiction as a genre that can function primarily as a psychological space. It is precisely on the psychological level that the aforementioned thriller strikes so strongly, blending bluntly with other currents. It works very effectively — events unfold quickly, but nothing is rushed. Thanks to the narration, we can piece everything together ourselves; it works because the narrative brackets close naturally, nothing feels forced, and there are no gaps. The blows fall evenly, the protagonist bends under their weight gradually, until the finale, when the writer no longer needs to inflict further painful experiences. Everything plays out within the grip of uncertainty.

Grabowski, meanwhile, reinforces that uncertainty visually. Realistic drawing brings coldness, sometimes symmetrical compositions. In the space sequences, black, blue, and metallic gray dominate — colors that not only build atmosphere but also emphasize the protagonist’s isolation.

Yes, I definitely need to go back to the previous Bouncer albums. Could I, as someone entering the world created by Jodorowsky and Boucq for the first time, feel out of place here? Not at all. Above all, this is a universal story, rooted as deeply as possible in a genre whose task this time—alongside all its usual attributes—is to expose the rotten core of human nature.

There are no sentimental moments here, only raw meat. People are greedy, the Wild West swarms with killers, and nobility lies face‑down in the mud. What’s more, there’s only one (maybe two) brief notes referencing events from earlier albums. And the authors lay out the story so efficiently at the beginning that I step into the plot on the move and understand everything.

I feel at home in the western genre; I can recognize archetypal heroes and antiheroes. Bouncer, as the main protagonist, slips out of those brackets, even though he isn’t the dominant figure here. The story and the atmosphere remain the most important. And here comes another surprise: Alejandro Jodorowsky and François Boucq steer the narrative away from classic formulas—at first, it’s unclear who stands on the light side and who on the dark. The cards are dealt in the first act; only the players still need to fully grasp the rules.

As a writer, Jodorowsky shows no mercy. He introduces true horsemen of the apocalypse into the game, men who have set their sights on the gold stored in the bank. Classic, yet not entirely. That gold isn’t meant to stay in town for long. The bank owner is waiting for reinforcements sent by the U.S. government, and for now he and the townsfolk must make do with hastily dispatched protection. But something is wrong with that protection—they’re brutal, they trample into the lives of the locals, and a stench of death follows them. Bouncer is the first to understand it.

This is not the aesthetic of a classic western that loves the contrast of desert and sky. It’s an aesthetic close to revisionism. The atmosphere of the entire album stands near that of Eastwood’s Unforgiven—especially the finale: constant rain, a grim aura, death preparing beds for the incoming pack of corpses.

The color palette is muted, built on browns, greys, and dirty greens. In short—it’s the aesthetics of decay, something deeply depressive. Jodorowsky, whom I know mainly from his films and sometimes mystical narrative constructions, works here in a far more grounded register. Hécatombe has nothing metaphysical about it—it’s a western about consequences. About the fact that gold is always a curse, and violence is never a one‑time event.

I don’t know Bouncer well as a character, but he seems to appear here as a tragic figure (and I assume he was framed similarly in previous albums). Supposedly he has nothing to lose, yet he keeps losing something.

Whenever an answer appeared, several new questions immediately sprang to life. Locked in a room for ten years, Gotō spent four volumes trying to figure out what exactly he had done in the past (a distant past, since we’re talking about school‑day events) that made someone spend a monstrous amount of money to arrange such a peculiar spectacle.

For the main character’s adversary, this is the “project” of a lifetime. He sacrificed a great deal to build an entire network around Gotō. He deceived him, staged numerous fictional encounters. Now, after the fourth volume, I feel that Gotō is (at least somewhat) a counterpart to Truman from The Truman Show. Jim Carrey’s Truman also tried to break free from the trap; everyone misled him, and for a long time he didn’t know why he was being watched.

Among Polish readers of the manga Old Boy—or so I suspect—there’s a fairly consistent pattern. Most watched Chan‑wook Park’s outstanding film first, and only then moved on to the manga. That’s simply how the publishing timeline worked; there was no other way.

And both on the level of the film medium and on the level of manga storytelling, everything aligns. The two works function independently; the filmmakers used the skeleton and told the story in their own way. The atmosphere was preserved, because the manga by Nobuaki Minegishi (art) and Garon Tsuchiya (script) reaches a kind of mastery here—and that was worth holding onto. Genre‑wise, it’s an excellent urban thriller, with vivid characters, a whole gallery of shady types, and a protagonist we genuinely root for.

The urban labyrinth of Old Boy is an extremely unpleasant space—Tokyo is cold, empty, stripped of romance. It’s hard to grasp anything positive here; I had the impression that everything was sliding downward, and from chapter to chapter a fracture appeared in Gotō’s personality—the man was falling apart. Especially once he starts agreeing to everything—“in a week it will all be over,” which in practice means: let it end, quickly, however it must.

The entire road to the finale is tension built with genius—both in the foreground and among the secondary characters, who are so crucial to this story.