Jean-Pierre Pécau is Delcourt's specialist in historical comics but, with the last dragon, he embarks on heroic fantasy with The Return of the Drakon. Discover how the arrival of dragons turns the medieval world upside down.
From bad to worse
The whole beginning of The Last Dragon tells how to get out of a city with a treasure worth the price of ten Empires. In Damascus, mercenaries led by Amaury found the last dragon egg in a fortress. This discovery may change the balance of power in the East, but Westerners are locked in jails. The witch Draga and the dragon boat Umas intervene by planning the theft of this unique object and the release of the mercenaries deemed invincible. Everything is planned except that, as always, everything goes wrong when the princess kills the sultan in his harem. The two then have to improvise and succeed in saving their employees. This group of mercenaries, the white company, will have to show originality to flee from the castle with the egg because they are stuck in a wing of the castle. Archers block the exit. They will be helped by an Arab who has transported the egg to the sultan's castle. The different threads come together in this last volume. As this summary shows, the screenwriter Jean-Pierre Pécau builds in The Last Dragon an uchrony by mixing history and fantasy. The landing of the Crusaders in the Muslim port of Tyre is interrupted by the air attack of dragoons. Within seconds, the entire armada burns. The domestication of this rare animal is therefore a strategic military asset. This mixture is also found in the drawing of Lajos Farkas. The very realistic landscapes make us travel to the Orient. We often recognize the influence of orientalist painting as a harem but also the first comics of Alix of the 50s. We also think of the historical painting of thenineteenth century. This very classic style reinforces the break with scenes that are epic: the escape attempt where the group is chased by a whole squad.
A new historical comic
Not only does the last dragon feature knight fights but also an air attack and dragon fight. The mixing of genres is pushed very far. A group of sailors, close to eighteenth-century pirates, find themselves in the context of the crusades with dragons. Does the cocktail seem indigestible to you? You haven't read The Last Dragon yet or you'd change your mind. This mixture is found in the dialogues with words borrowed from medievalism (occis, postern) and other contemporaries (nichons). The last dragon also offers more modern aspects. It is two women, a princess and a magician, who come to save the men and not the other way around. The series escapes the civilizational opposition between East and West. On the one hand, we find the different communities living in the Levant during the Crusades: Western knights, Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Berber nomads… On the other hand, if mercenaries are at the service of Westerners, they seek above all their own profit. They organize the egg hunt… as long as it doesn't put their survival at stake. On the contrary, Draga is willing to sacrifice them all for the mission. In this disunited group, no one trusts each other in the group and this creates tension. To top it off, there's a thief inside. By daring to mix heroic fantasy and historical comics, Jean-Pierre Pécau offers us in The Last Dragon a pleasant reading that concludes with a temporary end in this fourth volume. Be on your guard because there will be many victims in the meantime. No one is spared If you are interested in historical comics, you will find columns on Marshall Bass and A People's History of France.
