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mediatoon January 2021
 
We wish you a healthy new year!
 
The New Year has arrived, and custom has it that we exchange positive wishes for the months ahead. To put an original twist on the age-old tradition of New Year’s greetings, let us reveal a few books that will do the job for you!

In Thérapie de groupe (Group Therapy), Manu Larcenet tackles his mental illness and its effects on his work. The result is anything but depressing! Ne m’oublie pas (Forget Me Not) is a tender yet exuberant tale of a young woman and her Alzheimer’s-suffering grandmother, whom she saves from a lifeless nursing home.
If you’d rather focus on something a little different, Sur un air de fado (A Fado Melody) tells the story of a Portuguese doctor in the 1960s and Pompiers, Les métiers (Firefighters) will tell you everything there is to know about what firefighters do to keep us safe.

Stay healthy,

The MFR Team

Compilations & special editions

BEST-SELLERS

 
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Nottingham

La Rançon du roi (1)

By Benoît Dellac, Vincent Brugeas & Herzet

Mainstream Comics
Publisher: Le Lombard
Genres: Action & Adventure 

What if the true story of Robin Hood turned out to be different from the one we know and love?
A forest, a sheriff, an outlaw who robs the rich to give to the poor… we all know how it goes. Disney made him popular, Kevin Costner made him sexy and Russell Crowe made him credible. But do we really know the whole story?
What if Robin Hood and the sheriff were one and the same person? What if the sheriff was actually just a normal guy, fed up with the King’s ridiculous new laws? What if he had found a way to keep his land in a good financial state simply by stealing from his own soldiers? Would it be worth the risk?


 
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Le Spirou de Christian Durieux

Pacific Palace (one-shot)

By Christian Durieux

Mainstream Comics
Publisher: Dupuis
Genres: Action & Adventure 

Confined in a hotel with a dictator on the run, Spirou has but one occupation: trying to understand the political schemes playing out around him. Unless, that is, he happens to fall in love with the tyrant’s daughter…
In Pacific Palace, Christian Durieux delivers a very personal Spirou, somewhere between a subtle political fable and a heartbreaking romance. A lively album made exciting by a politically charged police investigation.


 
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Thérapie de groupe

Ce qui se conçoit bien (2)

By Manu Larcenet

Graphic novel
Publisher: Dargaud
Genres: Humor 

The story of a comics author in search of inspiration. In his tireless quest, he roams the creative universe, going back through history and asking for help from the great painters, and from God himself. This journey to the sources of creation allows the reader to observe Larcenet’s extraordinary graphic talent and the breadth of his artistic range. But it also shows us a glimpse of an artist in pain, banging against the walls of incomprehension and loneliness. With ferocious lucidity, the author pulls no punches and poignantly depicts an artist adrift. Except that this artist, Larcenet, is also the master of self-mockery ! Facing the anxiety of creation with brutal honesty, he lays himself bare in this rich, deep, and surprisingly funny exploration of an often harrowing truth. Not everyone can combine humor and helplessness. With this moving, cultured, and hard-hitting work, Manu Larcenet masterfully does just that.


 
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DOGGYBAGS ONE-SHOT

Trenchfoot (one-shot)

By Mud & Nicolas Ghisalberti

Mainstream Comics
Publisher: Ankama
Genres: Action & Adventure 

A small town in Louisiana in the early 2000s.
Sid Widow, around thirty years of age, was born and raised in the small town of Trenchfoot. He’s watched on as unemployment and insecurity slowly ate away at the inhabitants as well as himself. To make money, he relies on a dog that he found on the side of the road named Hobo. The mutt might not look like much, but he wins every dog fight that Sid signs him up for, giving Sid a glimmer of hope. That is, until the organizer of the fights, a redneck named Lazy, figures out what’s been going on: before each fight, Sid laces his champion’s fur with cocaine, temporarily paralyzing the jaws of the dogs trying to bite his throat. As punishment, Sid gets taught a lesson in pain.
His sole comfort is a wallet that had fallen to the ground while his attackers were stringing him up from a leash. In it, he finds enough cash to buy some beers and a lottery ticket. A winning ticket. And just like that, Sid’s rich. He has more money than he knows what to do with. But once he buys his barbecue and giant TV, he becomes directionless… And the envious townspeople will drag him into a circle of violence.


Graphic novel

 
 
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Blanc autour

Blanc autour (one-shot)

By Stéphane Fert & Wilfrid Lupano

Publisher: Dargaud Benelux
Genres: Historical fiction 

Canterbury, Connecticut, 1832: a charming female boarding school has found success among the locals, with two dozen girls enrolled. Some in town question the purpose of educating young girls—but surely there’s no harm in trying? At least not until the Prudence Crandall School announces its plans to start accepting black students. Thirty years before the abolition of slavery in the United States, in the so-called “free” North, these students will be met by a wave of hostility that puts the future of the school in question, and their very lives in peril. Even in the land of the free, not all of America’s children are welcome.


 
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Ne m’oublie pas

Ne m’oublie pas (one-shot)

By Alix Garin

Publisher: Le Lombard
Genres: Drama 

Clémence’s grandmother suffers from Alzheimer’s. After another failed attempt to escape from the nursing home, the staff decide that the only solution is the chemical straitjacket. Clemence can’t bear this idea, so she kidnaps her grandmother and takes her on one last trip to her beloved childhood home. This impromptu road trip strengthens the bond between Clémence and her grandmother, allowing Clémence to better understand the disease and prepare for the inevitable…


 
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Le Labo

Le Labo (one-shot)

By Lucas Varela & Hervé Bourhis

Publisher: Dargaud
Genres: Humor 

1975. Jacques-Marie Bertrand is the head of a flourishing company called Bercop Photocopiers. As a good manager, he knows that planning ahead is the key to success. So he appoints his son, Jean-Yves, as director of the new research and development division, “The Lab”. Jean-Yves believes that computers are the future! With its meditation classes, communal jogging and cutting-edge research, the Lab is lining up to become the success story of the century…
Bourhis and Varela bring us a quirky, almost true story about the beginnings of computer science, start-ups and futurism as we know them today!


 
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L’homme de la situation

L’homme de la situation (one-shot)

By Lou Lubie

Publisher: Dupuis
Genres: Suspense & Thrillers 

Manu has always thought of himself as the strong, stable type; the kind of guy who’s got it together and knows how to take care of his own. His world is turned upside down when his partner leaves him and the promotion his boss promised him goes instead to one of his female colleagues. Feeling lost, he falls in with a family of seven difficult children. It’s not long before he becomes a sort of adopted dad. And so it begins: the long spiral into the depths of his deepest anxieties. This graphic novel is a reflection on the role of men in society today.


 
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Sur un air de Fado

Sur un air de Fado (one-shot)

By Nicolas Barral

Publisher: Dargaud
Genres: Historical fiction 

Portugal, 1960s: the country remains under the thumb of authoritarian Prime Minister Salazar.
Far from the tensions casting a pall over the country, a young doctor from Lisbon has led a calm life up until now. But when he is sent to care for prisoners of the regime, he finds himself confronted with the harsh reality of a dictatorship he can no longer ignore. To do nothing is to enable, and he soon has no choice but to join the Portuguese resistance.


 
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POMPIERS

Les Métiers (one-shot)

By Gérard Berthelot & Duc-Anh Duong

Publisher: Petit à Petit BD
Genres: Non-Fiction 

Are you finding it hard to decide which job you would like to do later on? This new collection’s goal is to help teenagers make this important decision by showing them the everyday lives of people with different job titles. The first volume provides enlightening anecdotes and facts about police officers.


 
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Palais-Bourbon

Les Coulisses de l’Assemblée nationale (one-shot)

By Kokopello

Publisher: Dargaud
Genres: Non-Fiction 

How does the French National Assembly work? Kokopello is out to answer that question with this extensive investigation into the daily lives of parliament members. The author decodes the operations carried out in a complex institution, revealing to readers what it’s like to work on a committee or in a district, to take part in a debate – in short, he leads us behind the scenes of the Palais Bourbon, and his sharp eye and even sharper pencil ensure that nothing is left unnoticed.


Mainstream

 
 
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Elecboy

Naissance (1)

By Jaouen Salaün

Publisher: Dargaud Benelux
Genres: Sci-Fi 

In a devastated cityscape, a lone man fights off creatures of fearsome power—white, winged, serenely impassive, and capable of terrifying transformations. Decades later, the world as we knew it lies in ruins: the “before-world.” In a desolate American southwest, a meager colony of human survivors ekes out a precarious existence between dwindling water supplies and magnetic shields that screen them from roving bands of aerial attackers. An ancestral upper class presides while in the lower city, laborers do the hazardous work of keeping everyone alive. But all that may be about to change when the mysterious Joshua comes of age…


 
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F.C. Brugge

Le Chemin de la gloire (1)

By Rémi Torregrossa & François Maingoval

Publisher: Dupuis
Genres: Action & Adventure 

Arthur van Hee is a young football player from Namur who has just been brought onto the Bruges Football Club. Exceedingly talented, Arthur, who comes from a D1B club, is not used to the harsh practice sessions of one of the best D1 Belgian clubs. Behaving recklessly, making trouble, he is about to be fired when an ex-player, Pascal Plovie, takes him under his wing and guides him to success inside the prestigious club.


 
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MAUDIT SOIS-TU

Moreau (2)

By Carlos Puerta & Philippe Pelaez

Publisher: Ankama
Genres: Suspense & Thrillers 

The trilogy Maudit sois-tu, mixes real-life and fictional characters with a touch of fantasy. The originality of the series lies in its reverse storytelling: 2016, 1848 and 1816, with each chapter shedding light on the stories coming before.
2017, a man is found dead in the sewers of London. For the coroner there is absolutely no doubt: the unfortunate soul was killed by an arrow in the back of the neck. The police investigators quickly take an interest in the deceased’s girlfriend, as their relationship seems to have been arranged by their mutual boss, Nicholas Zaroff. Who is this Russian oligarch? What is his secret?


Zéphyr Editions
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Les souris de Leningrad

La Ville des morts (2)

By Du Caju & Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem
Historical fiction
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Petit à Petit BD
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LES FOOTEUX DU DIMANCHE

Une bande de copains (2)

By Various artists
Humor
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Le Lombard
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Une Histoire de France

État pathologique (3)

By JEF & Thomas Kotlarek
Historical fiction
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Ankama
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BAYOU BASTARDISE

Voodoo U luv (3)

By Neyef & Armand Brard
Suspense & Thrillers
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Children's & family

 
 
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Créatures

La Ville qui ne dort jamais (1)

By Djief & Betbeder

Publisher: Dupuis
Genres: Fantasy & Esoteric 

In a post-apocalyptic New York City obliterated by a Big Night that wiped out most of civilization, bands of children struggle to stay alive in the wreckage, hunting for food under billowing clouds of toxic fog and running from hungry zombies. One child is endowed with the power to keep them at bay, but will it be enough to protect the survivors from the terrifying creature that has just risen out of the Hudson River? Meanwhile, a raving old man with a house full of books says the worst is yet to come…


 
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Lolicornes

La Grise-mine (1)

By Gorobei, Pierre Waltch & CED

Publisher: Dupuis
Genres: Comics for girls 

The enchanted land of Younicorns is inhabited by every imaginary creature you can think of as well as creatures that are now extinct on Earth. It’s a great place to live, as long as you’re one of the “Beauties.” If you’ve been deemed an “Ugly,” you have to do all the chores. Penny, a girl who was born with a horn on her forehead, shows up in this enchanted – and very unfair – world, but she can’t remember anything. Granny Youni then instructs three heroes (Uglies) to take Penny far away… Get ready for a humorous, action-packed and thrilling adventure in a world that is not so enchanted after all.


 
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Hercule agent intergalactique

L’Intrus (2)

By Dalena & Zabus

Publisher: Le Lombard
Genres: Action & Adventure, Humor 

Hercules and Marlon are in their second year of intergalactic agent school and they still have a lot to learn! But when their teacher is bitten by a strange alien creature, they’ll need to put down the books and leap into action because the sickness affecting Teach seems to be spreading throughout the school…


Illustrated books

 
 
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Zhinü

Zhinü (one-shot)

By Stéphanie Léon & Pog

Publisher: Little Urban
Genres: Picture Books 

A Little Light in the Night

I hate going to bed. As soon as the lights are out, darkness takes over. Mysterious shadows creep out from the cracks and crevices of the room, and even from under my bed! Luckily, my little light Zhinü and my doll Puck are here to watch over me. But enough is enough: it’s time to get out of bed and turn the lights on!

A dreamlike narrative in which darkness turns the short walk from bed to the light switch into an epic adventure.