At the end of spring, Éditions Soleil published the first volume of Au nom de la République, a new series of espionage, an action against a backdrop of geopolitical reflection. Written by Jean Claude Bartoll, this album benefits from the illustrations of Gabriel Guzman and the coloring of Silvia Fabris. Without renewing a very rich genre (see the excellent C seriesompte backwards), this beginning remains promising carried by an energetic drawing.
The President's Men
It was through the press that the French public learned in 2018 that the sponsors of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris would have been targeted by the France. The perpetrators of these attacks are members of a secret special forces unit (the alpha cells in real life) operating all over the planet. They report only to the president, operate undercover and a handful of high-ranking people know their true identities. Their new mission takes them on the trail of the last person responsible for the November 13 attacks, an obscure planner who was able to flee Raqqa and disappear. Until he was spotted in Istanbul buying weapons. The members of the unit were dispatched to the scene but the operation went off the rails. The Fox, an elite agent of the secret service decides to track him from Turkey to Morocco determined to arrest him and stop his future attacks. 
In the name of the Republic: the office of legends
This first album plunges the reader directly into the world of anti-terrorism. New technologies (drones, telecommunications espionage) coexist with old techniques. It is indeed necessary to observe, note the movements, infiltrate. No errors are possible. The slightest relaxation in the shadowing and you find yourself with dangerous suspects at large in our metropolises. The author places great emphasis on the constant cross-referencing of data. The services are not lacking in information. On the contrary, the challenge is to select the right index, to capture the right signal. Between terrorists and agents, everything is played at the level of cross-dressing. You have to be mobile, never betray your false identity. Both sides take advantage of the extreme porosity of Europe's borders to slip through the cracks. Thus, in the pure tradition of the Bureau of Legends series, each side plays the concealment card trying to infiltrate the opposing group. Both use the world of crime to advance their pawns. With a major difficulty for the intelligence services: compliance with the law despite the urgency of the situation. 
A side 24 hours chrono
The drawing of Au nom de la République is very much inspired by the series 24 heures chrono. It presents realistic scenes insisting on the importance of new technologies. They become real actors of the narrative offering even with drones chilling anticipations of threats to come. Gabriel Guzman also offers very beautiful action scenes alternating wide shots with tighter frames. This energizes a scenario that voluntarily multiplies the characters and points of view. The story is both very gripping and destabilizing. 3/4 of this first album are indeed devoured in one go. If there is nothing revolutionary (smugglers, mafias, false passports), the action is easily followed to the rhythm of changes of country. It starts from the first page and follows tortuous paths at will. The exhibition unfolds according to the paths followed by the investigation. What is surprising, however, is that at two points (the subway and the action of the special forces), the narrative knows very brutal shortcuts that leave the impression that an event is missing. As if the screenwriter constrained by time had resigned himself to savage cuts. 
This hell named Raqqa
This small defect of the narrative is made up for by the subtext of this first volume. In the Name of the Republic does not content itself with telling a chase, it depicts in substratum the horror of the so-called caliphate of the E.I.L. Massacres, torture, rape, everything is evoked in a very abrupt reality. The pseudo-idealism of the combatants is undermined, deconstructed to reveal the baseness of their enterprise. It serves to unveil a cancer of the minds that has infected all societies, starting with that of the Maghreb and Middle East countries. In this dive into the heart of the violence of the Islamic State, the authors were keen to describe the individual journeys of these jihadists. He is primarily interested in men. How could young Franco-Moroccans, sometimes from good families, become the armed arms of this totalitarianism? Some plates try to decipher this shift where social misery, human stupidity, cowardice and indoctrination intersect. This album also looks at the issue of women through this former member of the Islamic police. How could this woman become the torturer of members of her own sex and defend an ideology advocating the enslavement of women? This first volume of In the Name of the Republic isan effective introduction if not original. It lays the foundations for a series that can become a pillar of the genre. Find on our site other comic book reviews.
