The Bluecoats: The Navy Blues

/By Willy Lambil & Raoul Cauvin
Publisher: Cinebook
ISBN: 978-1-905460-82-3

It's baffling at how this sort of book can be created in mainland Europe but spectacularly fail to exist in the UK and US, and there's the added irony here that the subject matter is the American Civil War. Certainly in the UK, we have such a horrendously depleted comic industry that unless the publication comes packaged with with fourteen pages of press releases, games tips and worthless plastic detritus it won't even make it the shelf in the first place. Anyway, enough of that.

The Navy Blues is the second in the The Bluecoats series, following the misadventures of cavalrymen Sergeant Chesterfirld and Corporal Blutch. Following yet another blundering and decimating charge into enemy fire the disgruntled heroes throw in their lot with the cavalry and become infantrymen, then join the artillery before finally ending up in the Navy. As with the Lucky Luke books, the creators clearly care about the subject matter they're writing about, so there's a slice of history to hang the story one, and in this case it's one of the world's first working submarines.

There's some really lovely cartoon work in here, which can be a strange mix at times when people are being slaughtered under cannon fire (but it's never gruesome or gory), along with some wonderful illustrations of tall ships. It's a good read, you'll learn a thing or two on the journey, and you'll smile too. That's got to be worth the price of admission.

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