LARGO WINCH- Hard-Boiled High Society
O P A - cover of the 3d episode
Decor says it all..
Largo Winch, the adopted child of a multi-billionaire, inherits the Winch financial and business empire at his father's death.
Largo is 26 and becomes the "billionaire in blue-jeans" as the several blurbs of the series like to name the good looking hero.
The internal struggle to evince Largo and to appropriate the business monster that the Winch group is, inspires hard-boiled schemes to a lot of insiders, high flying villains and high society thugs. Good looking ladies and young bimbos are the spice of his saga, and contribute to make Largo's life a can of worm.
But, as foreseen, Largo fights back. And survives.
Largo in action...
Loosely based on set of novels that Jean Van Hamme wrote in French many years before the comics, for which he now produces the scripts, the story of Largo Winch is definitely hard-boiled. This is due to the several plots and actions, designed mostly from villains of the business world, that create though situations and some though visual sequences. Even if the central character is not really hard-boiled, the script is enough to keep it in the category.
This is true for the 6 first albums only, each describing a typical episode of Largo's struggles to keep his dad's business.
The recent episodes nb 7 and 8 however push the hero towards other grounds: adventure and action stories, all distant from a real HB setting. Even if some events are still tough, if violence and sex are presented in an aggressive way that disturbs some of the continuities, we cannot qualify it as Hard-Boiled comics anymore. Ingredients are now just what the general public expects...
From left to right: the traitorous dame, the gorish dish, one male friend...
If the drawing by Philippe Francq was efficient enough to keep the stories rolling, it never presents real creativity. Which matches part of the stories and characters designed by Van Hamme, all lacking the same touch of real inventiveness.
The Largo Winch comic series is so successful in Belgium and France, and in many other European countries now, that we could not ignore it in our inventory. Marketability, added to the lack of good HB references in the general public, insured a commercial success to the series that is still on with a volume nb 9 programmed for mid 98.
A TABLOID'S DREAM
There is however good Hard-Boiled stuff in the reality of the recent promotion of the book nb 8 of the series (L'Heure du Tigre - The Hour of the Tiger), organized by the marketing people of the Belgian publisher. It's however more in the Donald Westlake manner of its Dortmunder novels than in his Parker's way... It was in May 97, it was laughable and ridiculous, or was it?
Anyway all the marketing people were sent in jail on the spot! The Belgium judge was fed up!!! Bad court-room drama? Not at all... Just a backfire that got the marketeers right on the throat...
You want to know more?....
Go to the attached page.
A tabloid's dream!!! A true Hard-Boiled marketing example...
