Year in, year out, during the summer, I try and brush up on my other languages, the ones I have fewer opportunities to exercise. French, for instance. I read books, to bring back the little fluency I used to have, and refresh my vocabulary and my grammar.
This year, instead of novels or short stories, I decided to take a walk down memory lane – and having acquired decent copies of the original 29 issues of the Yoko Tsuno series, by Roger Leloup, I decided to re-read them and see how they hold up.

I have talked about the series in the past, and this re-read will be an opportunity to read the original French for the first time, and also a way to see whether the series, that was launched in 1970s, still manages to deliver on the science fiction and fantastic thrills, and still manages to hook me – after all, I was 10 the last time I read these stories.

And as I am at it, then… why not write a few posts about it?
I plan to spend the summer reading the volumes in the evening after dinner. Maybe someone is interested in my views on the subject.
Let’s try.

Yoko Tsuno #1, Le Trio de l’Etrange, was originally published in 1972 – Leloup had been publishing short episodes in the Belgian magazine Fantasio since 1970s, but only in ’72 the character made her debut in the libraries.
For mysterious reasons, the English version of this first adventure was published as volume #7, but for this project I’ll be following the original order.
Covers were also slightly different (spot the differences!)

Le Trio de l’Etrange has all the markings of the pilot episode in a series – we are introduced to the characters and the setting, we cram in as much action and strangeness as we can, and we close with a promise of more adventures to come.
Tune in next week… or something.

The plot, quickly: Vic and Pol (about whom, more later) are two young men working fort the Belgian State TV network in Bruxelles. They meet Yoko Tsuno, a young Japanese electric engineer that came to Europe looking for work but is currently working as troubleshooter/consultant. The three decide to set up a company producing independent documentaries – Vic’s a writer/director, Pol is a cameraman, Yoko can take care of all the engineering aspects.
Their first gig is a documentary about a subterranean lake out of town – they will try and chart the underground river that aliments it, and pinpoint the exit point. But things get weird fast, and the three find themselves as guests (or maybe prisoners) of a hi-tech subterranean civilization. The blue-skinned Vineans are refugees on our planet after their sun went nova. Their civilization is managed by a super-computer, but apparently the all-powerful AI is slowly going rogue.
Yoko, Vic and Pol face the computer menace and bring back peace to the Vineans before returning to the surface and deciding to continue on their mission of explorers of the unknown, dubbing themselves .

Nice and smooth.

This being the first Yoko adventure, the art and the writing are still pretty rough.
The art style in particular follows the Marcinelle school, which is somewhat cartoony and highly dynamic, but can sometimes have crowded scenes. Later the series will shift to a Clear Line art, crisper and more stylized.
For sure, the Yoko we first meet in this comic looks and feels very different from her later incarnations – but it’s OK.

The characters … oh.
Vic and Pol are particularly annoying, and it looks like for the first half of the story Leloup is not sure whether they’ll be the main characters or simply support cast. The two work as straight guy & funny guy, and in his role as comedy relief, Pol is particularly irritating. Granted, this is comedy aimed at ten-years-olds, and a modicum of eye-rolling is expected from older readers. The two male characters certainly work as foil for Yoko, that is sharp, hyper-competent and resourceful. In this first episode we’ll be witnesses to her technical skills, but also to her aikido prowess and even get a bit of Zen meditation.

But talking about ten-years-olds – the hard-SF feel of the series is very grown up – and we even get footnotes to explain us what a Light Year is and other technicalities. The Vineans travel underground via what we’d call today maglev bullet-trains, and have a wealth of other hi-tech stuff – from instant translators to heat-guns to a huge computer-residing AI.
Everything is beautifully drawn, and this should not surprise us – before he struck out on his own, Roger Leloup used to do backgrounds and mecha design for Hergé’s Tin Tin comics.

All in all, The Curious Trio feels somewhat rushed and top-heavy, with A LOT of dialogue exposition, but delivers the thrills and the sense of wonder as promised. It’s a story of decent people in a world of decent people, where problems can be solved with smarts and conversation (and science!) instead of violence. Granted, I missed the awe I felt when, around 1976 or ’77 I first discovered the series, but I am not yet so cynical and soul-dead to find the story irritating.
And as I said, this is still the first outing for the characters and the series – we’ll see how things change with #2, L’Orgue du Diable (The Devil’s Organ).