Le photographe is a graphic novel (3 albums) created by Emmanuel Guibert (script, design and colors), Frédéric Lemercier (colors and layout) and Didier Lefevre (scenario and photographs). It retraces the journey of a Médecin sans frontières team (MSF is an independent humanitarian medical aid organisation). The story takes place between Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1986…
In Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau collects « 99 retellings of the same story, each in a different style. In each, the narrator gets on the « S » bus , witnesses an argument between a man with a long neck and funny hat and another passenger, and then sees the same person two hours later getting advice…
On the cover of « Le meilleur du Chat » album, Philippe Geluck makes a joke by inventing an interaction between the map and the user. Such an interaction was impossible at the release of the album (1994 for this Best Of and years before for the original). As new technologies (GPS, GSM, IP geolocation…) allow now…
The adventures of Nestor Burma, the private detective created by the French writer Leo Malet, have been brilliantly adapted as a comic book, first by Jacques Tardi (4 albums) and then by Emmanuel Moynot (3 albums). Each investigation takes place in a different Paris arrondissement, which is mapped at the beginning of the album. Nestor…
A picture is worth a thousand words says the favorite adage of people working with images. The two first pages of the novel The Betrothed (in Italian I Promessi sposi) by Alexandro Manzoni published in 1825, could illustrate this adage since they could be summarized with a map like this one. This novel starts with…
A systematic inventory of maps in The Adventures of Tintin has still to be be done, but, surprising though it might seem, the reporter and globetrotter does not use maps very often. Take just one example : the Red Rackham’s Treasure album, that Steven Spielberg is adapting for the cinema. No map is shown in…
There is one map in the Watchmen movie (see also Wikipedia). It appears in the War Room scenes behind President Nixon when the Army staff presents a simulation of the consequences of a Russian response to a US strike. This is an animated world map, first displayed at a medium scale, followed by a zoom…
In his geocriticism (‘géocritique’) approach, Bertrand Westphal (2007) attempts to reconnect the mimetic arts such as literature, cinema and painting to the real world through the spaces they represent. To do so, Westphal proposes a set of conceptual tools relevant to understanding how human spaces structure themselves ‘by and in the text, by and in…
On revient sur la fameuse et habiel carte qui ouvre chaque album d’Astérix, de Uderzo et Gosciny /\ Let give a look at the very famous and clever map that opens every Asterix’s album.
Google Maps appears in Joseph O’Neill’s novel Netherland. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first time that Google Maps appears in a literary work. If you have an earlier example, please write us a comment. Of course Google Maps doesn’t play a central role in the book. Google Maps appears in two…
(e)space & fiction 