Luc Besson’s film adaptation of LES AVENTURES EXTRAORDINAIRES D’ADELE BLANC-SEC captured our heart and soul. Our brain and fingers began working overtime trying to find copies of the French comic that we can read while waiting for a movie company to buy and distribute the film.
Sadly, we’re finding that Jacques Tardi‘s English-translation is slow going at best.
Note this clip from an interview with Kim Thompson:
TOM SPURGEON: Why aren’t you doing the Adele material? Isn’t there going to be a movie adaptation of that soon? It seems that would be a great tie-in.
KIM THOMPSON: First, I wanted to start out with something fresh and previously unseen in the U.S. (which is why I put War of the Trenches third instead of first), and the first couple of Adele books have been published here. You can still find them on Amazon. Second, there is what I call the popularity paradox, which is that sometimes the most popular French work is the hardest to sell as compared to the “art” comics because the more mainstream work loses some of its “alternative” audience without replacing it with a “mainstream” audience. So Adele, with its playful Euro adventure tropes, is in some ways less accessible to American readers than, say, Trenches. It’s why we can publish a successful Epileptic in the U.S. but not a successful Lucky Luke. (Granted that some books straddle all categories, like Persepolis, a classic “art” book and mainstream success all at once.)
That said, Adele is on my long-term list, but I’ve got at least three or four more books beyond the first three I’d like to do first.
While we could argue this dubious point made by Thompson until the cows came home, we’d rather not. Results are what is craved Fantagraphics. Results! Hopefully, the fact this interview happened March 2009 and the movie in question releases in France this April 2010 has altered the playing field somewhat.
We will scan the Jacques Tardi category on your site until the desired result is revealed. That result being an D’ADELE BLANC-SEC comic translated and in our greedy Euro adventure loving hands.
UPDATE!: Guess what @Fantagraphics told us.
(via full comics reporter interview, Fantagraphic Books, Jacques Tardi)
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