THE CHAOS EFFECT REVIEW

[Joel Phillips]

Reviewer: Joel Phillips
Quick Rating: Excellent!
168 Pages, Full-Color; $19.95
Story Titles: The Black Order Brigade; The Hunting Party

Writer: Pierre Christin
Artist: Enki Bilal
Translator: Justin Kelly
Book Designer: Thierry Frissen
Letterer: Patrick Lehance
Editor, Collected Edition: Francis Lombard
Editors, Original Edition: Maximilien Chailleux & Fabrice Giger

The Chaos Effect is a collection of two original graphic novels by writer Pierre Christin and artist Enki Bilal, the same team that brought us Townscapes. Christin and Bilal complement each other perfectly, and the best material I’ve seen from either has come through the partnership with the other.

In the first story, The Black Order Brigade we’re shown a group of aged terrorists wiping out a small village as part of a campaign continued from the Spanish Civil War… forty years earlier. Soon the revival of the Black Order Brigade comes to the attention of Pritchard, one of the members of an international team of soldiers who fought the Black Order Brigade decades earlier. When it seems that neither the authorities or the press consider the Black Order Brigade a priority, Pritchard gathers the old team together to take out the terrorists themselves.

One of the great things about this story is that the heroes and the villains are all senior citizens. This is a story of action and espionage, zigzagging across Europe in a delicate game of cat and mouse. Ordinarily these adventures are for the young, which our heroes are not. Thankfully, Christin and Bilal recognize this fact, and make it a recurring theme in the story. The characters are old men and women, having spent the majority of their lives not as soldiers but as politicians, professors and even priests. The characters act, look and sound like people who are in their twilight years, and yet their adventures are still exciting and real.

Of course, being a tale of espionage, there are plenty of places to roll ones eyes at the improbable actions of either side. Some things either go the heroes way, or go against them, because the story requires it rather than because it would actually go that way. The opening terrorist act, for example, is so massive that the apathy towards it everyone else seems to show is pretty unbelievable. This story is set in a different place and time, long before “terrorism” became the buzzword it is now, but it still takes some serious suspension of disbelief. Of course this is a forgivable fudging with reality, because the genre traffics in these sorts of stretches all the time. If the authorities took it as seriously as they would in real life, then the heroes would have no reason to reassemble, and we’d have no story.

Which would be a shame, because this is a great, deep tale. It takes up the first 80 pages of the collection, and boy is there a lot to it. It’s not a quick or easy read, and there’s a lot of talk of politics, ideology and history here to keep track of, but you don’t need to be an expert in these things to appreciate the story. In fact one of the larger points of the story is how ultimately pointless the rivaling ideologies are, and how silly a thing it is for old men to kill each other over, so being confused about some of the issues at the core of the story isn’t at all unreasonable. There are also a lot of characters to keep track of, which is difficult in the early goings, but you develop a familiarity with them as you go along through the story. The ending is incredibly abrupt, though, and even though it’s not an uncommon way to end stories of this nature it still feels hurried and is a bit of a let down in that respect.

The second story, The Hunting Party, is about a group of Socialist leaders gathering together for a weekend hunt. As they wine, dine, and hunt their quarry, they relive the events that have brought them all to the present, and made them the men they are today. The stories offer a fascinating glimpse of Russian and Eastern European history as seen through the eyes of the individual men who shed blood – theirs and others – making that history. Each man is representative of a nation and an ideal, making the entire hunting party a microcosm of Socialist politics and ideology. The story builds on these characters, these ideologies, towards a climax that is more about the clash of ideas than the literal clash of individuals.

Beyond being an engaging read on a literal level, this is fascinating when really examined on a symbolic level. There’s a lot of history here, and Christin and Bilal do a good job of providing you the information you need to understand the basics. As with the best stories, however, this story is made even richer by taking time to familiarize oneself with the culture and history that the story is so steeped in. You don’t need to know your history to understand and enjoy the story, but if you do it takes on whole other levels of significance.

Bilal, whose art is always gorgeous, is at the top of his game in both efforts. In The Black Order Brigade he takes us on a guided tour around Europe, capturing the unique feel of the many cultures stretched across the continent. His characters, all older people, look like older people: they often seem haggard, arthritic, and slumped over, yet he still manages to have them convey the life and energy required for the story. Even greater is his work on The Hunting Party, which is just as effective with characters and locales, but also delves into symbolism and dream, allowing Bilal’s artwork to wander off into the rich fantasy he is so good at bringing to life. Bilal’s use of symbolic imagery in this story is so precise that it’s not until halfway into the tale that you really appreciate how much of what you are looking at is not purely literal. As the tale progresses, the symbolism becomes more and more pronounced, until nearly every panel and every scene is packed with images that show far more than a literal picture of events. As the tale nears its climax Bilal pulls much of that symbolism away, giving those climactic scenes a stark realism that is all the more powerful for its contrast with the rest of the tale.

Two engaging, thought provoking, and thoroughly entertaining reads in a single volume. If you didn’t pick this up already, this is definitely one to go back to the shop for.

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[dreamer]

i've read them many years ago in turkish and boy, they were awesome! the art, the story and all the historical and political backstory crammed in there! this is truely one of the masterpieces of 21st century in my opinion.

i love bilal's art and the recurring woman image in he second story (and the 'symbolism' as you've put it) stands out as one of his finest artistical imprints. and i am also fascinated by the use of colours and the flamboyant red attons the read to an extreme.

what makes hunting party stand out even more for me is the critique they build to the 'actual socialism'; the buraucratic statis despotism is one from inside, not only in the sense of having in depth knowledge and placing appropriate characters in well crafted relationships but also prefering to depict these men, despite their respective crimes (least of which is not ones against humanity) as having their ideals and trying to act according to them. It was not simply the mean and evil people, power hungry and did create horrific events; but rather actual people who have become inevitably corrupted depending the whole process of the establishment of the absolutist bureaucratic state structure and the eventual crushing and supression of the emancipatory struggle in order to stabilize the social setting and establish 'the new order' of the totalitarian rule. the ultimate twist at the end shocked me to an extreme and spined a whole new meaning to my regard to the work and the bureaucratic cast of the former soviet union.

say, we had a special edition which included a couple of (more than 10, i guess) pages at the end of mixed pin-up which showed where the characters ended up after ten years. bilal and cristin had added this part after 10 years + of the original publishment of the book and this addition dealt mainly with the chaotic nature which merged after the collapse of the union. did the dc version had this part? (i haven't yet seen it)

it has been longer since i have read brigade so i don't feel like i could comment on that; but i guess i was not disturbed by the 'apathy' people had against the terrorist. i think the hate against the terrorist acts that people have are more fundamentally rooted than the attempt to simplify it to a level where we hold them as a recent media (or else) created sentiment. i don't know..

anyways, nice to see a well phrased and well written review of these favourites in here. well done joel. i hope you keep up the good work and looking forward to hearing more form you later.

oh and do yourself a favour and buy these to indulge in a decidedly different graphic novel experience.

one more thing before i leave, what is the price tag on this edition?

[Joel Phillips]

Glad you liked the review... I so rarely get long, thought out responses, so thank you.

This edition is $19.95, and doesn't have any of the pin-ups you describe. I'll have to hunt up an older edition so I can at least get a look at them.

[dreamer]

was there another, older version printed in english? i would advice that you would look for an original special edition, if your french permits you. they were really good stuff, with some poems and ecritures and i think they were written from the mouth of the young apprentice in the series who advanced several ranks in the hierarchy in the years that followed. there were some beautiful reprouctions of the pics from the broken statues in the streets from the soviets collapsing...

[James Groves]

This sounds very interesting. And $20 or about £15 for that many pages is very good value.

Is the cover art done by Bilal?

Excellent review.

[Joel Phillips]

Originally Posted by dreamer

was there another, older version printed in english? i would advice that you would look for an original special edition, if your french permits you.

I don't know if there's an earlier English edition, I was just saying I'd need to look and see. My French doesn't permit me much, since I don't speak French.

Originally Posted by James Groves

Is the cover art done by Bilal?

Yep. It's the original cover for The Black Order Brigade. The original cover for The Hunting Party is included inside the book as well.

[BoomBot]

Great review Joel. Damn, I have got to get this. It looks like my shop didn't have it when I went on Wed. but I'll have to order it through him. I'll even show this to my Russian history professor.

[Alex Groff]

There are older editions of both-- the oversized, hardcover Humanoids books. I bought The Hunting Party while I was driving through Pennsylvania because I stumbled on a comic shop while I was looking for a Radio Shack (my tape recorder broke), and it was there, on sale for $5. It was unquestionably worth full cover price, so on the drive back, I went out of my way to stop there again... but the shop was closed on Sundays. I would up picking up The Black Order Brigade later, and while I didn't enjoy it was much as The Hunting Party, it was still excellent. (But then, I studied Russian and Chinese history, so of course the story on Russia will interest me more.)

I'm trying to figure out a way to incorporate The Hunting Party into my classroom... no success as of yet, but I'm still working on it.

[James Groves]

Originally Posted by Joel Phillips

Yep. It's the original cover for The Black Order Brigade. The original cover for The Hunting Party is included inside the book as well.

Great, well i'm sold. I love historical stuff, and the artworks very good.
Cheers Joel.