La Frontière invisible, Volume 1

Les Cités obscures #8

by François Schuiten, Benoît Peeters

C'est une sphère gigantesque truffée de fenêtres en forme d'alvéoles. Une boule à moitié sortie de terre, perdue au beau milieu de la campagne de Sodrovno-Voldachie. Bienvenue au Centre de cartographie ! C'est là que débarque un jour le jeune Roland de Cremer. Descendant d'un cartographe fameux, Roland pense pouvoir assouvir sa passion inextinguible pour les cartes, leurs courbes sensuelles et leur matière à fantasmes. Là, sous la houlette de monsieur Paul, "géographe de plein vent" rompu à l'interprétation des cartes, il va découvrir un monde étrange. Un monde où l'on se déplace juché sur une espèce de bicyclette inversée suspendue à des câbles aériens. Surtout, il va faire la connaissance d'une femme envoûtante, Shkodrá. Une femme à la peau recouverte de mystérieuses taches, qui dessinent comme les contours d'une carte de géographie épousant les formes de son corps. Mais très vite, des bouleversements s'annoncent : le Centre s'apprête à recevoir la visite du Maréchal Radisic, suprême dirigeant du pays. Radisic mène une politique expansionniste. Et les travaux du Centre lui sont d'un précieux secours : à ses yeux, la cartographie n'est rien d'autre que l'une des branches de l'art militaire. De grands changements sont à prévoir du côté du Centre…

Avec ce premier tome de La Frontière invisible, Schuiten et Peeters poursuivent leur saga des Cités obscures, cet ensemble de villes parallèles dont ils tissent les liens depuis l'album Les Murailles de Samaris. Urbicande, Brüsel, Pâhry, Mylos… Autant de noms mythiques dont Schuiten et Peeters n'ont cessé d'explorer les recoins, ajoutant ici une nouvelle pierre à leur description d'un monde global et cohérent. Un monde dont ils offrent une vision plutôt sombre, porteur de perspectives peu engageantes. Leur description de cette contrée imaginaire évoque l'écho glaçant de pays d'Europe pas si lointains. La Frontière invisible traite du détournement du savoir scientifique et de sa récupération par une idéologie va-t-en guerre imprégnée de nationalisme. Le lecteur frissonnera sans doute. Mais ce frisson risque d'être un frisson d'effroi : car l'enthousiasme né de formes architecturales à la puissance onirique, mises en images dans d'autres albums de la série, comme Les Murailles de Samaris, laisse ici la place à un pessimisme politique très contemporain. La série des Cités obscures ne cesse d'affirmer sa place à part au sein de la bande dessinée. Il semble que les utopies ressemblent à certains individus : parfois, elles vieillissent mal… --Gilbert Jacques

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Bande Dessinée, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Comix

64 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

François Schuiten was born in Brussels in 1956, as the son of two architects. He studied at the Saint-Luc Institute where he met Claude Renard. Together, they created the comics 'Aux Médianes de Cymbiola' and 'Le Rail', as well as three volumes of '9ème Rêve'. François also collaborated with his brother Luc on the series 'Terres Creuses' which was published in the legendary Pilote magazine. His final breakthrough into the mainstream of comics came with his transfer to the more adult Métal Hurlant magazine. In 1980, together with Benoît Peeters, he created the series 'Cités Obscures', in which his love of architecture is magnificently visible.

Reviews

[Hamed Manoochehri · Rating 5 out of 5]

در مورد خود داستان، تا ولوم دوم تموم نشه نمی‌تونم چیزی بنویسم.
اما در مورد جلوه‌های بصری چیزی که خیلی دوست داشتم آرایه های ادبی‌ای بودن که نه با کلمات بلکه با استفاده از تصاویر به شاعرانگی ختم میشد. دوست ندارم یه اثر هنری رُ در "ایسم" خلاصه کنم و درباره این ولوم هم می‌تونم با اطمینان بگم هدف تصویرگر سورئالیسم نیست؛ صُوَر خیال که در این جلد تجربه کردم بیشتر به شعر نزدیک بودن تا تلاشی برای وارد شدن به مرز رویا.
مثلاً استعاره بدن زن و به خصوص استعاره باسن به میهن یه انتخاب شجاعانه بود که می‌تونست در لایه های سطحی خودش، خودشو گم کنه و به یه تابوشکنیِ نوجوانانه تبدیل بشه اما نتیجه‌ش این بود که دائم یاد شعر نرودا میافتادم اونجا که می گه:
Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender.

به علاوه استفاده از مارپیچ، دایره و نیم کره، مشخصاً با هدف استعاری و در راستای تم داستان انتخاب شده که با تموم کردن ولوم بعدی باید در موردشون تصمیم بگیرم. یادمه کیشلوفسکی هم از دایره و مارپیچ در فیلم " آبی" به عنوان سمبولی از "گیرافتادگی" و "تکرارِ درد" استفاده کرده بود و یه ترانه‌‌ٔ حزن انگیز تصویری ساخته بود.
یه یادی هم میکنم از اِوِن بولند و شعر That the Science of Cartography Is Limited:
[...]
He had grown sick.
He had come to
like them more than food.
The map was everything.
So I have traced it—
not with the convention of cartography,
but memory,
that is another way of knowing.

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most extravagantly beautiful books in an extravagantly beautiful series, La Frontière invisible is a dreamlike, cartographical mystery about how human beings relate to their environment. Schuiten – showing himself as much a master of moody, ochreous watercolour as he is of every other form he's experimented with – here conjures visions of ossified bureaucracy and stunning landscapes, whose swells and ridges are mirrored by the curves and wrinkles of the human bodies and faces examined in so many of the panels.



Our young, Tintinesque hero is a newly-qualified cartographer who has just landed a job at the vast Cartography Centre in the middle of the desert, deep in Sodrovno-Voldachia (an Obscure City which we haven't got a good look at in any of the previous books). He arrives to find things in a state of flux: the old interpretive methods of creating maps are being replaced by modern machinery, while at the same time, hawkish politicians are taking a sudden interest in the Centre's work and how it might support their plans for military expansion…



In this fraught atmosphere, he becomes entangled with a girl whose body is covered with some strange markings – tattoo, birthmark, figment of his imagination? – which resemble a map of the country's disputed border and which could place her in terrible danger.



In some ways, the book reads like a spiritual sequel to Brüsel, the sixth volume of the series. Here again we have a tension between traditional skills and modern industrialisation; here again there is a playful curiosity about scale (the model city from Brüsel is matched in La Frontière invisible by a vast 3D map, where people step over mountain ranges and place boulders in river-valleys) – it reminded me a little of some of Will Self's stories. The concern about how the size of a human being determines the way we react to our surroundings is very much in keeping with the focus on architecture which has run throughout the series – though here, environments are not so much architectural as geological, or, for that matter, corporal.



Originally published in two volumes, modern editions usually collect it all together into one, bumper-sized BD treat. I found the ending disappointing, but it seems so ungenerous to complain in the face of all this goodness that I won't bother. A beautiful fantasy of people, and places, and how they come together, and a special place to visit that you won't find on any map.

[Dream.M · Rating 3 out of 5]

ریویوو رو برای ولوم دوم میذارم

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This gorgeous graphic novel by Schuiten explores a curiously desertic world (the future? the past? another planet? all is left ambiguous to the reader). The underlying issue of the relationship of real three-dimensional geography to two dimensional maps reminds me of the Platonic search for mapping reality against the ideal. The entire series is a wonderful read and this first volume definitely plunges you willingly into Schuiten's universe. Note that there are two volumes (tomes in French) and that there is a beautiful map from the French National Geographic Institution (IGN) included with the second volume of Schuiten's world - it is pretty awesome!!

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and mysterious

[Hmpf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I kinda read this series for the art and the atmosphere and this was one of the most beautiful volumes yet.

[Steve Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Brian Selznick's THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRAY and seeing the film it inspired, HUGO, I felt inspired to reexplore the fantastic so I went to my bookshelf and pulled out THE INVISIBLE FRONTIER VOL 1 & 2 by Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten.

What followed was a weekend of sitting in a comfy chair with several "freshen ups" of Diet Coke and a very bittersweet conclusion for me.

The Invisible Frontier, or La Frontière Invisible in its' original French, is a confused love/obsession story involving a young cartographer, Roland, and Shkodra, a young brothel worker who bears an unusual map tattoo on her lower back. Roland falls in love with, and attempts to rescue Shkodra, from the cartographic Institute's leaders, who, in perfect Orwellian tradition, manipulate borders based on changing treaties. Roland fears that if Shkodra's markings were to be discovered, her life would be in jeopardy. It isn't until later in the book that we learn she was taken from her home and forced into her profession following an earlier military conquest.

I'm not going to lie. I did not like the way this story ended. I wanted a romantic conclusion. But at the same time, the author, Peeters, provides a more realistic ending filled with remorse, resentment and emptiness. I still hope, nonetheless, than an addendum, or vol 3, might someday surface, complete with a redemptive and romantic ending.

As in all Peeters/Schuiten titles, the artwork is impeccable, and the storytelling remarkable. These two volumes rekindled my love for this series. I should note that a new edition from Casterman in Belgium, collecting both (French-language) volumes into one beautiful edition, is currently available from Amazon.fr (ISBN 978-2203049079) for 19,00 euro (roughly $24,12 US).

[Nicolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drôle d'histoire que celle-ci.
On y découvre un centre de cartographie perdue dans une espèce de désert des tartares, et revitalisé par la venue d'un général en chef, dictateur manifeste d'une nation visant à retrouver sa grandeur passée.
Et pour cela, le dessin d'une belle frontière est nécessaire. une belle frontière se heurtant manifestement à une frontière imaginaire, que le héros croit voir sur la chute de reins d'une ... comment dire (???) femme-objet du bordel des cartographes ?
Le thème est mince, mais l'art des auteurs est là. Et autant le dessin que la divagation dans un paysage toujours évocateur suffisent à me séduire.

[Florin Pitea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can hardly wait to read the sequel.

[Xabier Cid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't remember when I read this album for the first time. I think I borrowed it from the library of Carlos, my high-school janitor, where I truly discovered graphic novels. Maybe not, as this album was published later, when I was living in Santiago. I can't remember for sure. Last weekend I didn't hesitate to borrow it again from my local library when I saw it on the shelves, but I feared disappointment.
Quite the opposite, though. It is still a wonderful story, a perfectly drawn album. And the world of the Dark Cities is a jewel that I know I could revisit and savour it with every reading. An album to buy, definitely.

[LuinGor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tous les ingrédients de la série sont réunis : des amours contrariées, une architecture grandiose, une administration rigide et omniprésente et des méchants ambigus.

Le personnage de Roland de Cremer est intéressant mais je regrette que la deuxième partie n'accentue pas plus le côté "aventures" (l'aventure était réellement présente dans La Tour par exemple) et que le personnage de de Skhodra ne soit pas plus fouillé. Et la fin est peut-être un peu trop simple / rapide.

Mais La Frontière Invisible reste un superbe album

[Mauricio Díaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maravilloso el arte de Schuiten. La historia es fantástica, como ya nos tienen acostumbrado la dupla Schuiten y Peeters. Lo que veo de novedoso en esta historia es, por un lado, la ausencia de cajas de texto y, en su reemplazo, el uso de las calles entre viñetas para ello. Por otro lado, desde lo artítico visual, me sorprende cómo ilumina los crepúsculos.
Añoro la edición en un sólo tomo en español de esta historia.

[Daniel De · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent story telling and amazing illustrations! I didn't particularly like the setting - some Balkan-like state with its pet dictator and some sniveling brown-nosers - and not so sure there needed to be so much nudity (though I don't mind esthetically speaking) and therefore objetification of women. But I did feel like I was missing the following volumes, though the 2 I read did end on a note that could be the end of the tale, the continuation being left to imagination.

[Gabriel Infierno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitivamente mi titulo preferido de la serie, la historia es una metáfora muy cercana de una realidad cada vez mas presente, la historia me pareció increíble, los dibujos son como siempre asquerosamente excelentes, amo este libro.

[Rick Ouellette · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more beautiful graphic novels you're likely to come across, esp. in its stunning geographical and architectural world-building. Given the intrigues of the plot, it did kind of sputter to a halt, though the teaser pages leaved me intrigued and ready for Volume 2

[Derek Jacoby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story and art. Well done again. Not enough attention paid to female characters

[Audrey C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for French class and i actually thought it was pretty good! role of women was a bit questionable…🤨 but otherwise interesting themes

[Marc Bosch · Rating 5 out of 5]

En mi opinión, La frontera invisible tiene las ilustraciones y la paleta de colores más espectaculares; y a la vez la historia más desasosegante de todo el ciclo de las ciudades oscuras. Todos los personajes que aparecen en esta historia están irremediablemente extraviados, lo que no deja de ser una fina ironía tratándose de un volumen dedicado al centro de cartografía de la ciudad de Sodrovno-Voldaquia.
Roland, el brillante cartógrafo protagonista es incapaz de conectar con la vida y las emociones porque solo ve puntos, líneas y rastros de fronteras. Deambula por la historia sin tomar decisiones y dejándose llevar sin poder reconocer el suelo por donde pisa. Incluso cuando abraza a Shkodra y podría llegar a conectar con su ánima, sólo es capaz de apreciar las marcas que tiene en la piel. El resto de personajes demuestran también estar completamente aislados o desconectados del mundo y de la vida, cada uno a su manera. Unos por vivir encerrados en sí mismos, otros por dejarse impresionar por la ilusión del progreso, algunos porque se conforman con representaciones más o menos cercanas a la realidad y otros porqué hacen un uso desmesurado del poder que solamente alimenta a su ego. También el único personaje femenino que se desarrolla a lo largo de la narración tiene dificultades para hacerse cargo de su propia vida y sigue al protagonista mucho más allá de lo que puede consdierarse como razonable.
En definitiva, La frontera invisible es una hermosa (y dolorosa) fábula donde Schuiten y Peters desarrollan las implicaciones que tiene para los seres humanos habitar el mundo físicamente sin que sus almas estén necesariamente conectadas a la vida. Puestos a pedirles a los autores clemencia por algún personaje, hubiera estado bien que dieran a Shkodra las dos últimas viñetas con las que termina el segundo volumen.
En relación a las ilustrciones que separan cada uno de los capítulos de la historia, puedo decir sin dudarlo ni un minuto que están entre las más bellas láminas que uno puede encontrase en un cómic/novela gráfica.

[Tom Loock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich zähle mich seit fast 30 Jahren zu den vielen Fans von Schuiten und Peeters und ganz besonders deren Serie "Die geheimnisvollen Städte" (Les Cités obscures) zu denen dieser (Sammel-)Band zählt.

Natürlich(?) schätze ich ganz besonders die architektonisch beeindruckenden Zeichnungen, die man sich immer wieder und ausführlich ansehen kann. Die Story? Na ja, da muss man schon ein paar Konventionen über Bord werfen und sich, sagen wir mal 'einlesen'.

Daher würde ich diesen Band – so gut er auch ist – nicht als Einstieg in ihr Werk vorschlagen, denn er setzt doch Einiges voraus. Stattdessen sollte man zunächst "Die Mauern von Samaris" (Les murailles de Samaris) genießen.

Anmerkung: Diese kurzen Bemerkungen beziehen sich auf die bei "Schreiber + Leser" erscheinene Gesamtausgabe von 2012 mit Band 1+2.

[Artur Coelho · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carácter borgesiano e new weird dos argumentos de Schuiten, por atraente, poético e surreal que sejam, sempre ficou em segundo plano para o espantoso olho de Peeters para a arquitectura imaginária na série Cidades Invisíveis. Este livro é um exemplo típico. Se a história nos mergulha num mundo de realismo difuso com a história de um jovem geógrafo que atravessa desertos para se instalar num instituto de geografia dividido entre maneiras antigas e novas de mapear o mundo e se apaixona por uma prostituta de serviço aos funcionários do instituto isolado que busca o conhecimento do mundo. Mas, como é habitual na série, são os desenhos de Peeters que dão ao livro o carácter imaginário de realidade difusa dentro de arquitecturas de sonhos impossíveis.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nerdy cartographer arrives at his job, a massive dome in the middle of nowhere (year: 761), and gets situated in a map-making organization that's been either co-opted or rendered useless. The "industrial design" and location of this comic (terrestrial but obviously not in our known timeline) are a saner version of the Codex Seraphinianus, filled with warmth, mass, and tension. Memorable, beautiful, unique.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The artwork in this series is in a special class. Winsor McCay comes to mind, but with a touch of the engraver to create a more serious atmosphere. The themes are mature and plot not immediately obvious, which is refreshing. At the end of reading Vol. 1 I was left really wanting to know where this story is going. I am pleased that there is a Kickstarter campaign to insure that other material by this artist/writer team is available in English translation.

[Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reminded me of Waiting for the Barbarians. Not quite as bloody but the storylines are similar, which kind of made me anticipate exactly what would happen as the story unfolded. Visually the book is ridiculously amazing!

[19DESTINIES · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you know what was the crazy thing?

It was that I read it in French and could understand no more than three sentences!

[Bruno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intrigerender dan La Douce, maar ook in dit verhaal raakte ik niet echt volledig in.

[Florin Pitea · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthy addition to the series of Obscure Cities. Kafka meets Borges.

[S · Rating 4 out of 5]

As if Borges wrote a children's book for twenty-somethings.

[D1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reminds me of my adventures in education and adventures on my travels.