#garulfo

A) One thing I actually quite enjoy is how Garulfo actually goes against the "muddy-colored Middle-Ages". I mean, it is expected given Garulfo sets itself in a continuation of a very colorful French fairytale cinema (a la Jacques Demy's Donkey Skin), but still, it depicts this vivid, polychromic Middle-Ages filled with colors EVERYWHERE that is probably truer to reality than the "American mass media Middle-Ages" all in brown, black and grey.

It also helps that in Europe we remained very much in touch with our Middle-Ages. The Americans have this true disconnection but in Europe we are still surrounded by preserved medieval art, and reproductions of medieval books (with their illustrations), and all these medieval texts talking about the colored knights and the brightly-dressed kings and all that... So in European media there's a tendency to preserve the polychromic Middle-Ages idea. Anyway.

I will conclude (so far, because there's a lot more to say) this look at Franco-Belgian comics with THE most famous BD series when it comes to fairy tales. I speak, of course, of Garulfo.

Published in six volumes between 1995 and 2000, created by Alain Ayroles and Bruno Maïorana (with colors by Thierry Leprévost), Garulfo began as a two-part (two volumes) humoristic retelling/parody that many summarized as "What if the tale of The Frog Prince had been told by Voltaire"? Garulfo is a talking frog living in a pond in a fairytale realm. And he has enough of living among wild and savages animals in a dirty, uncivilized swamp. He is endlessly fascinated and obsessed by humans, that he believes to be the epitome of beauty, biology and civilization: he dreams to become one. As such, hearing about stories of princess' kisses turning frogs into princes, he goes to a fairy so she can cast such a spell on him...

Problem is the "fairy" Garulfo visits is a witch - and quite open about her witchcraft, but Garulfo believes fairy and witches are all the same. So she does put the spell on him, but with the warning that it will only bring bad things... And indeed, as Garulfo is kissed by the princess of the realm and welcomed as a prince by the court, the naive frog ends up causing the most massive chain of "butterfly effect" you ever saw within the kingdom. Because, as he comes to learn, the world of human is filled with corruption, cruelty, lust, hypocrisy and other manipulations, and the arrival of an innocent, mysterious newcomer starts a whole series of events - courtly conspirations, assassination attempts, peasant rebellion, old secrets brought to light, tragic misunderstood identites - all culminating, of course, with the arrival of a dragon...

This humoristic, though cynical, BD proved such a success it was extended by four more volumes for a series of six tomes - the second "arc" of Garulfo exploring the relationship between the nice Garulfo the frog, and the human prince who he "took" the shape of, who turns out to be a selfish, arrogant jerk. The two end up again entangled in a set of transformations and identity swap, as a tournament is organized to win the hand of the princess in marriage - and this journey of the naive and the jerk learning from each other for personal growth gets derailed when an ogre kidnaps the princess and makes her a prisoner of his castle. But the rescue mission reveals that the story might not be so much "The Little Thumbling" as rather a bittersweet "Beauty and the Beast"...

As I said before, Garulfo is considered the number 1 BD when it comes to fairy-tales in the Franco-Belgian comics. And one of the classics of humoristic fantasy in BDs.