Hi,

I'm searching more views about Fort Bow, best a good top view. I actually checked the albums Baby Blue and Captain Nepel, but there are so many differences which will be more difficult to compare because of the perspective and vewing angle.

Greets, Peppermint.

Hi there!

Well, I don't know if here are many others from my country, but that won't matter. Unfortunately I don't speak french, so I have to leave one page open in the Google translator and an untranslated to write own posts ;-)

Actually, it took about 26 years to take notice of 'Les Tuniques Bleues' ;-) I'm still Amiga user and of course I knew the game 'North and South', although I rarely played it, because I'm no gamer. But seeing playing computer vs. computer was still fun. A few days ago I noticed that there's a re-release, although it's again five years old. Because I love fankobelgian comics, I decided to take a look at the original. And this was no bad descision.

'Les Tunique Bleues' quickly turned into my faourite comic albums. The main characters are good, I like the drawing style, and although or because it's more a humoristic comic, the half-paged battlefield scenes with lots of dead people make a real impression. The inclusion of real events is also reocurring in the series. I never thought that the 'David' exists until I was checking the US civil war entry in the Wikipedia for other reasons.

Except of the first albums, the comic is very straight forward, the characters have their position, there are none of which you want to get rid of in the series. One of my main other comic series is of course Spirou and Fantasio, but it has a lot of problems. Because there are so many artists, there's at least one which drawing style you don't like. In my case, it's Morvan & Munuera which their action powered, manga-style version. They're much too over-actioned. I think album 46 (L'Homme qui ne voulait pas mourier) is the only one which contains a bloody injury, in Zantafio's face. There are also a lot of inconsistensies during the series, for example, try to find out the age of the characters using the first album and album 48 (Aux sources du Z) - which was also from Morvan & Munuera. Or the Duisenberg - which the Comte de Champignac owned since 1938 - didn't really fit in. The company went bankrupt in 1937, and it's rather unusual that he as an great inventor imported one from the USA. By the way, in the first album he had a very old vehicle. There are also characters in the series which don't fit in - Seccotine and yes - the Marsupilami. Why? Because they're too perfect. All other characters are living by their mistakes, mostly because their characters and other weird occasions. But Seccotine and the Marsupilami don't make mistakes, so they will quickly get unsympathic. That's why Fournier is one of my favourite artists, he has a good drawing style, no Seccotine and Marsupilami, and great new characters, like Itoh Kata, Kodo and the weird guys from the Triangel. And they all have their mistakes, except perhaps Ororea, but she brings a completely new side of Fantasio to life.

But that's all not the case in Les Tuniques Bleues, sometimes it's an advantage that there are only a few artists, no changing dates and new newer technology. And Blutch and chesterfield are really great characters, and although it doesn't look that they were friends, you still know it - although no one of them would admit it.

So, this is maybe a not an usual post - maybe the only Geman in an french forum, and he doesn't even understand french. He has read the comic maybe just a week ago or so, and his introduction contains as a comparison with the inconsistensies of Spirou and Fantasio - isn't this a fundametal sacrilege to fankobelgian comic history?

Well, let's see if there is some activity in this forum. I'm actually working on some blue projects, let's see how they will work out.

Greets, Peppermint.

...oh yeah, just forgot: Why the nickname 'Peppermint'? Maybe because the series is so fresh? But then it probably should be called 'Les Tuniques Vertes'. No, there's a reason. The publishing of the Bleues is rather weird in Germany. As usual, most of the fankobelgian comic series were first published in the most popular German comic magazine 'Fix und Foxi'. It was usual to give the characters new names these days. In the series 'Fix und Foxi Super Tip Top' the first three albums of the Bleues were published in 1972/73, and Sergeant Chesterfield got the name 'Peppermint'. Although it's a rather weird name for him, its an acceptable nickname ;-)