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As far as origin stories go, Émile Bravo's take on Spirou and Fantasio has been one of the most surprising. It's surprising because these two aren't exactly Batman and Robin, and we don't really expect to have origin stories for Belgian children's comic book characters, or really even need them. We didn't need one for Tintin and created around the same time - in 1938 - Spirou and Fantasio have remained largely unchanged throughout their adventures even as they are taken over and adapted inevitably with variations of tone by other creators over the subsequent years. What is so impressive about Bravo's work on Spirou: The Diary of a Naive Young Man , to say little about the brilliance of the following four-part sequels collectively known as Hope Against All Odds , is that the artist/writer takes the pair back to the period of their creation in the years just prior to the start of WWII and the German invasion of Belgium. It makes perfect sense them to re-imagin...

Books of the Year 2020 Like any personal best of list, the selections are inevitably limited by what one was able to have the time to read, watch or listen to, and it can in no way be definitive or comprehensive reflection of what was the best out there. As far as books go, there are plenty of literary awards with panels to choose from a wider selection, but for a single reader, the time invested means that you tend to stick with genres you are familiar with and writers who never let you down. Occasionally however, books come your way that are a delightful surprise precisely because you weren't expecting it. This year I read and reviewed 72 books for various places, of which 49 were English language novels, 6 were in French, 2 were in Spanish and 15 were graphic novels. My favourite 5 books (and one graphic novel) consequently consist of three favourite writers who didn't disappoint this year and two authors new to me in the literary genre that I wasn't expecting to impress...

Part 1 of the latest Spirou adventure Hope Against All Odds really packed a punch, returning a classic children’s comic book series back to the original period of its creation in Belgium in 1938, just as the country was about to be invaded by Nazi Germany. Without losing any of the charm or character, even borrowing a little from the clear line Hergé style of the period, it managed to deal seriously and subtly with attitudes and complex undercurrents that it can be difficult and misguided to understand or judge from a distant time. But on one level at least it’s made clear that whatever the prevailing attitudes of the time and whatever compromises needed to be made, ordinary people suffered and struggled under the Nazi regime. Before it gets to the atrocities that occurred – which we mustn’t underestimate as something quite extraordinary for a Belgian children’s comic series – Émile Bravo spends a large section of Hope Against All Odds – Part 2 detailing – in an unsurprisingly humor...

Spirou, like many characters in long running children’s adventure comic series, is essentially ageless, or at least never seems to get older. Since the series has been running since 1938, it would be a bit odd for the main character to still be wearing a hotel bellboy outfit when he is over 80 years old. Even though the series originates from this very period, it still comes as a bit of a surprise however to see Spirou - and indeed Belgium, since the series originates from there – getting ready for the grim reality of WWII. The sense of a culture shock is even more pronounced since Émile Bravo establishes a rather more serious and sober tone to its historical background than the Stasi hi-jinks behind the Iron Curtain in 1989 of the previous Spirou adventure by Flix,  Spirou in Berlin . “This isn’t an adventure Fantasio. This is war”, as Spirou observes half way through Part 1 of Hope Against All Odds . It’s not just that the tone here is markedly different but Bravo’s artwork also...