Naughty boy, you slept in history class? You have forgotten that, more than the arrival of Europeans, it was the invasion of magical creatures that upset America in theseventeenth century. This is in any case what offers at Delcourt, Colt & Pepper, the two-volume series of Macan and Cordey.
Zero points in History
The two Croatian authors, screenwriter Darko Macan and cartoonist Igor Kordey have settled permanently on historical comics thanks to the Marshall Bass series. With Colt & Pepper, they take a step aside by mixing history and fantasy narrative. This duo had also demonstrated their talent for mixing genres in We, the Dead between the zombie story and the historical fresco. Colt & Pepper is doing well in the Renaissance world. Igor Kordey proves this by the realism of the costumes, weapons and means of transport. But everything else is far from reality. Creatures from alternate realities and magic are the daily life of Americans. Human beings live side by side with werewolves or scarecrows. 
In the first volume, the reader became acquainted with Guard Captain Salomon "Pepper" Culpepper and his mixed-race nephew Colt. The latter awkwardly plunged into the meanders of the intrigues of the court of the Duke of Paragusa. More than heroes, they are men focused on their problems so they let a dragon threaten peasants. Colt regrets the world before magic. Although older than Colt, his clumsiness and arrogance are mortal dangers. In the second volume, this mismatched duo wants to find Lytha because Pepper has decided that the young woman will be the wife of his nephew Colt. But the bride is very far from being a perfect future wife because she is the leader of a gang of women. Threatening another troop of brigands, their leader Theophrastus Levi sold it to a devil.
20/20 in visual arts and literature
With Colt & Pepper, Kordey has fun multiplying baroque or surrealist scenes evoking in turn medieval engravings or surrealist painting. A double page on a human-sized chess game shatters the reader's retina by its beauty and the accuracy of every detail. Each page multiplies allusions to the fantasy of the past, as if the fantastic creatures of folklore around the world came to life: a creature from an Assyrian sculpture will threaten Colt. A magnificent but terrifying Chinese dragon threatens Spanish settlers will be found several pages later. It can sometimes be thought to be a detail but these elements of the setting create a parallel narrative about this world or reveal an aspect of the duo's character. The script is not behind this graphic madness. Indeed, Macan constructs a narrative pastiching the masterpieces of classical literature. The main characters are reminiscent of Don Quixote and Sancho and the many adventures are as exciting as an unpublished one by Dumas or Théophile Gautier. One may even wonder if Coltrayne is not a nod to saxophonist John Coltrane. Colt & Pepper is both a continuous narrative that follows these two anti-heroes and a series of short stories by proposing very different universes. Each chapter is the occasion of a very strange adventure: a city has lost its joie de vivre because the inhabitants have made a deal with a dark mage. This contrasts with the atmosphere of the series where humor is often very present. The last chapters, on the other hand, become grandiose to close the adventures of this duo in style. 
At the end of their adventures, Colt & Pepper prove that their creators Macan and Kordey have become major authors of European comics. The cartoonist proves that he is able to draw everything without ever losing the rhythm of the narrative while the scriptwriter demonstrates his baroque talent. He manages to live multiple adventures, all more delirious than the others while proposing touching main characters. You can find on this link our chronicle of the last volume Marshal Bass by the same artists orKarolus Magnus on the Vikings.
