French espionage is not limited to the clumsy comedy of OSS117. On the side of hell , a new two-volume spy series at Glénat demonstrates that espionage at home can also be very dark.
Between France and Algeria
Du côté de l'enfer sends the reader to Paris in the 1950s. The France was then plunged into the throes of the Algerian war. This series by screenwriter Noël Simsolo, cartoonist and colorist Dominique Hé follows the dark secrets of the French special services. Their agents, sometimes nicknamed the barbouzes, carry out legal murders because they are ordered by the state.
We discover it through Dan, a former agent who has sided by becoming the owner of a bar. He began as a resistance fighter before being recruited after 1944 to kill exiled French Nazis and then resistance fighters from colonized peoples. That's when he stops. Ten years later, his past hit him with a bang. Indeed, this first volume opens with a shabby robbery in a small bar for coaches. The two attackers are put to flight by the bartender. However, more than money, they came to deliver a message. The special services need Dan and he has no choice but to return. He was responsible for executing an arms dealer from the Algerian independence movement in Belgium. But Dan has changed. Like in a Clint Eastwood film, On the Side of Hell follows a weakened man who must return to his past. Over the course of the missions, Dan sinks and loses the meager ideals he had retained when he left. However, Dan is a paradoxical man who dreams of great love but sleeps with a married woman… who is with his former boss in espionage moreover.
An atmosphere of Tontons flingueurs
On the side of hell certainly happens during the Algerian war but it is especially the context of the post-Second World War that appears. The mobster of the first attack is an American deserter turned killer for the underworld, the bartender and the owner are former resistance fighters.
The series does not only have a historical setting but the screenwriter, adept of the noir novels of the time, seeks to find this atmosphere in the comics. Noël Simsolo and Dominique Hé have already found it in Les Miroirs du Crime. The dialogues are reminiscent of Audiard and the script takes up classics of the time. The vision of individuals is very gendered. Men are tough guys and women are dangerous vamps driven by sex. Du côté de l'enfer makes you visit red-light districts in Paris and Ghent by Dominique Hé's palette. However, the drawing is far from being the first asset of the series. The background lacks detailed scenery. We only see flat digital colors.
The series also reflects changes in the perception of the Resistance in comics since Once Upon a Time France. They are no longer presented as heroes. On the side of hell demonstrates that morality does not exist for the state. Everything is good to maintain the empire and this Machiavellianism runs through social groups. A politician, a big bourgeois, does not get his hands dirty but does not hesitate to order murders through a crime lord.
On the side of hell Series is a series that thrives on action. This first volume multiplies the twists but each new action pushes the main character even deeper. Dan is trapped in the torments of a time far more troubled than World War II. The France is on the side of the oppressors and refuses to let this be known. Even if it means killing to maintain secrecy.
On Justfocus, you will find the chronicle of volumes 2 and 3 Doctor Radar by the same screenwriter
