The Twenty First Years of LOU!

Over the barrage of crap from the very dismal 2004 year, there is still ONE little nugget that comes to mind: Julien Neel's slice-of-life and to-been author character's series LOU!

The series itself, was for that time, a real game-changer of the way stories, narratives and characters will be made. By tells the evolution of a little girl character name... You know, and see her grow up and evolved with fans and readers over each individual volume. Even the dialogues were a refreshing change of the odd and repetitive Auto-Pilot kind of writing that were seen in older series from the past. The characters feels and talks like "real people", with their enormous syntax problems and crummy lines. (A flaw that have kills to me what wrote for a comic series' have to be) Thankfully, Neel's gamble have pay-off by own loves of critics and awards like two Angoulême in the course of the former series, a TV animated series based of this and even the production of a live-action feature. The first five volumes were all gold in the prime of the series and the evolution of the artist, author... and also musician for that matter!

But regardless of this recongition, the rock in the shoe started to lingers by 2012 with a very shoddy 6th book and premise: The Age of Cristal.

In this, the characters and series fans usually loved to read started to become like another Saturday Morning-fare, and even the "flawed" dialogues of old started to become too dodgy and hard to read. Sure, we have to forgive him today to have at least, trying to find his path at author by even bragging himself later in interview that by this volume, it predated the real-life 2020s pandemic and that "Childrens will save the future", but at that time, that was a ordeal to look at. For make matters much worse and incoherent, the main heroine got glasses! At a point she bceome none at all the character we'll love but a sort-of "Missing Cousin" character-type from another planet/series/land. The Saturday Morning-feel of French-Belgian comic-book artform started to lingers its sneaky fingerprints again after over a mid-century from Dupuis, Dargaud or Le Lombard to producing a "Heroes' Factory", which thankfully, went torn down by the 1980s.

To make things much more complicated, we were sure that by the 8th and finale volume at that time, the series will be over, but NO!!! Julien Neel, now much busy to make paychecks than claiming himself in his work, having made the premise of a sequel series for 2020! The 8th volume regardless, was typical of the 2012s volume, at a point they started to be less the characters we enjoyed, but lame caricatures like pointing boring Instagram hashtags to the dialogues (It don't work in comics! You're not on a stand-up!) and even the greetings for thanks the fans feels to me insincere, like the way Infomercials have to explain you the crap for over 30 minutes of what they tried to sells.

For a series that was a "Game Changer" at a time more youths and people like me giving up to read these, the supposed lasts three books were trying too hard to be relevant by started to become like Saturday Morning fillers if Neel and Glénat have done lots of Euros to this thing.

Over the next couple of days, they will have a following post about the graphic novel era of the series and how that may changed it for the worse... and also for the best! Stay tuned!

(No! I didn't giving up to review the remaining Brandy & Mr. Whiskers episodes on any capability. I getting back to an art dealing that took me all the week to make it done! It was my first time to do this thing, but all of this was done legally and fair. No DeviantArt scams for once!)