Here's a Franco-Italian collaboration about an English pilot leading an historical Dutch expedition across the mighty Pacific, towards the Southeast Asian 'lands of silk,' circa 1600. (this was an historical thing, no joke)
Bah, and as happens far too commonly with me, my initial thought was to simply share some nice art, namely the two halves of page 11:
To me, the above is nice, satisfying and competent art in the draftsmanship sense, but what really sent me was the overall sunset gradient, saturation and mood. It's just nawt something I'd seen before in comics, and thus wanted to share.
(like it? don't like it? just meh?)
Anyway, (*oh boy, and here we go again*) then I just had to share a couple more panels in order to help improve the narrative sense, which IS....
Yes... in fact, it's about the real-life historical figure of sailor William Adams, whose preliminary life & times in Japan were captured by a great book by James Clavell (and further, creatively elaborated upon), and later, two great series and a stage play, all united by the title Shōgun. [link]
Oh, and it also has heavy overtones directly upon the great Catholic vs. Protestant rift in Christianity, in which we observe that the mutual antipathy was nawt confined to merely Europe. That these allegedly 'brothers in a Christian God' were perfectly willing to shred each other to bits based on the old yadda-yadda of 'mine is the one true faith,' etc.
In any case, this was a two-book series which mainly focused on a sort of running, philosophical / ideological battle between Adams and his daimyo captor / frenemy Tokugawa Ieyasu (i.e. Lord Toranaga in the books).
Now I wouldn't call it nearly as spellbinding (and incredibly long & epic) as Shōgun itself, but it did capture an interesting, more historically-accurate picture of the situation, in a mere two books of standard BD-length. (about 56pp each)
Oof, and I'd not previously heard of this creative team before, so let me just quote:
Scénario : Mariolle, Mathieu
Dessin : Genzianella, Nicola
Couleurs : Alquier, Fabien
Lettrage : Dewrée, Amaury
https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-55149-BD-William-Adams-Samourai.html
Nice work there, mateys! 😃
THEME MUSIC: While I was working on this post, I enjoyed listening to Azymuth - Cuica Laranja Azeda, which sorta-kinda represents the Portuguese members of the drama.