Glénat continues to build a new collection, Log-in. Since June, we can now consult Survival Geeks.
Lost in dimensions
Sam, a fashionable and victorious woman, flirts with Simon at the end of the evening in a club. The next day, she wakes up in her worst nightmare, a roommate of three geeks. Worse, Clive the genius of the gang invented a way to travel through dimensions but lost the way back. She finds herself forced to live with Doctor Who fans and miniature collectors.
Each episode focuses on a new world that our geeks discover. As they say, it's the comic book version of the TV series Code Quantum, Cosmos 1999 or Sliders. The accident turns the lives of four very ordinary people upside down who find themselves facing green monsters with tentacles but also much more ridiculous threats – you have to flee dwarves riding mushrooms. Our clumsy heroes find in a steampunk world an avatar of the last absent roommate, a surfer whose daughter is in love. Sometimes, these other dimensions make us reflect on ours by the proposed inversions: women dominate, little mice dressed as Napoleonic soldiers got rid of men…In several worlds, they hope to achieve their dreams but, each time, there is a problem that makes the four heroes flee.
In the first episode, Sam's naivety in the face of interdimensional travel is very well seen – even when abducted by a dragon, she still doesn't believe it and makes fun of the barbarian leader's failed disguise. The confrontation between Sam's snobbish ideas and the three geeks is very funny. Each roommate is a different version of the geek: Clive is a cold scientist, Rufus a hash smoker, and Simon a nice guy who is a little offbeat in the real world. We smile at each box without taking our heads. Over the episodes, the writers teach us more about these strange characters: Clive speaks imaginary languages like Klingon but is unable to speak other real languages, Rufus, the funniest, is obsessed with women and ready to test any drug, Simon is jealous because he is crazy about Sam.
Excerpt from the mythical English magazine 2000AD, these fun stories are written by Gordon Rennie and Emma Beeby. Neil Googe allows by bright colors and a drawing in a very cartoon style to have fun following the story.
In search of the hidden reference
We can have two readings of this great comic: a first to have fun with the adventures of these interdimensional tourists and a second to identify all the references that dot their journey. The writers have fun punctuating the dialogues with references to SF, heroic fantasy or comics – we are talking about Tolkien, Xena, Star Trek, Star Wars… Far from channeling this profusion of jokes, the cartoonist adds visual allusions from the first episode in Simon's room and then it does not stop – a courtesan Elektra, a rebel speciesist Leia, the mask of Friday the 13th, a cosmocat sword… The reader becomes a treasure hunter in search of references. To understand everything, sometimes you have to heat up Google – but who is Milton Keynes? on one square, Rennie and Beeby list the worst apocalypse scenarios listed – Captain Kirk is in Star Wars, the UK is ruled by an all-party alliance government. It is these passages that make us understand that the episodes come from a British magazine.
In conclusion, Survival Geek is a fun read for the summer. If you don't want to take your head but have a good laugh on the beach, this comic is for you. For fans of the Big Bang Theory series, this is an essential baggage for the summer.
