[Review] Brigade Verhoeven volume 1, an explosive launch

Published by Rue de Sèvres since January 10, Rosie is a police investigation adapted from Pierre Lemaître's bestselling novels. Pascal Bertho is the screenwriter of the first volume of this new series drawn by Yannick Corboz.

A terrorist mad about his mother

Jean-Claude Maleval has just joined the brigade of the famous Captain Verhoeven. On the same day, a bomb exploded in Paris. A young man presents himself at the police station as the perpetrator of this attack. He demands the release of his mother or more bombs will explode. Verhoeven is convinced that the affair is not limited to this filial love…

The starting pitch is very original with this filial terrorism more and more obscure over the pages. This psychological motivation brings back Captain Verhoeven's past. This offers us the chance to learn more about this withdrawn and very strange chef. The arrival of Maleval, the new inspector, is an ideal way to discover this team from the Paris judicial brigade. The team seems indeed very composite with a bald and very small captain, a commander Don Juan, an enarque policeman … The other members are partially discovered during this volume but they lack space to exist for the moment. The scenario also incorporates an interesting knot around a conflict between police sections.

The drawing makes it possible to follow the story pleasantly. The style is realistic but with a roundness inherited from the clear line. Corbo realizes sometimes very dynamic squares by making the onomatopoeias come out of the boxes to show the action.

The volume is of a good quality and Rue de Sèvres offers a good idea with this series.

Adapted without betraying

We find Pierre Lemaître's obsessions with the First World War, already present in the film Up There, also adapted from Lemaître. Indeed, the bombs come from old shells of the Great War. Even if the story is very pleasant to read, wanting to be too close to the original novel, the comic loses its nature. Indeed, the beginning of the story is a little slow. Some sentences of the novel do not go well in comic book dialogues. Fortunately, in the last pages, the pace accelerates with surprising resolution.

The Verhoeven Brigade is revealed in this first volume. Slowly Bertho and Corboz present a complex captain and a team that is just waiting to be revealed in the next issues.