French Doors Opening

 

Just a quick preview for something coming up in 2013 (probably around May, I believe): 'The Zen Fusilier'. It's a 6-page story due to appear in 'Massacre For Boys Picture Library', a new anthology produced by the much-vaunted Massacre For Boys team of Chris and Steve Denton. (And yes, this page indeed appeared as a preview on their blog last year, but hey, as publication looms, there's no harm reappropriating it and parading it over here. Any excuse to show off John Caliber's remarkable art.)

The year is 1901, during a time of French Colonial power known popularly as the Belle Epoch, and our hero is the inscrutable Captain Appollinaire Sartre, Fusilier Marin and Gallic devotee of the Orient. Sartre is stationed in Hue, Vietnam, then part of French Indochina, and is accompanied by the redoubtable and yet perpetually anxious Ensign Chaput. As for who those tree-creepers are (and what, precisely, they have dangling from their nostrils) - well, I'm not giving everything away yet.

Art (and lettering) are, as noted, by the ridiculously talented John Caliber - having seen the whole thing, I can tell you that he's delivered an absolute blinder. Colourful, beautiful, terrifying - it's an absolute feast for the eyes.

But not, sadly, for the nose. Well, unless those things in the trees get their way.

Happy New Year! (Though it won't be a particularly pleasant one for most the people on that page.)