Shadowmen: Heroes and Villains of French Comics

Shadowmen #1

by Jean-Marc Lofficier, Randy Lofficier

Meet Arsène Lupin the Gentleman Burglar and Fantômas the Lord of Evil; Captain Nemo and Robur the Conqueror; Alexandre Dumas' Count of Monte-Cristo and Cagliostro; the Phantom of the Opera and Belphegor, the Ghost of the Louvre; Monsieur Lecoq and Rouletabille, the first detectives; the gangs of the Black Coats and the Vampires; Rocambole, Judex, and the Nyctalope, the first super-heroes; Harry Dickson, the American Sherlock Holmes; Doctor Cornelius and Doctor Omega; Fascinax and the Sâr Dubnotal, investigators of the occult; Antinea, Queen of Atlantis and Eugene Sue's Mysteries of Paris!

Shadowmen book includes biographies of the authors, reviews of their major works, biographies of the characters, timelines and concordances, bibliographies and filmographies, including television, radio and comics, and an index.

308 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2003

About the author

Jean-Marc Lofficier is a French author of books about films and television programs, as well as numerous comic books and translations of a number of animation screenplays. He usually collaborates with his wife, Randy Lofficier

Reviews

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a junkie of Victorian and early 20th century pulp/mystery/adventure fiction, this book was a treasure. I'd heard of a couple of these characters, but the others gave me a whole new list of books to hunt down.
Tons of great info on a wide variety of thieves, detectives, rogues and monsters.
The author obviously did a lot of research and even presents a couple interesting theories on how some of these characters fit together or into the larger world of fiction. Sort of the French cousins to Philip Jose Farmer's Wold-Newton family.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first became aware of Black Coat Press when I revived my interest in Philip Jose Farmer's Wold-Newton Universe concept and through Win Scott Eckert discovered Black Coat's annual Tales of the Shadowmen short story anthologies. This book is a compendium of a range of classic French pulp fiction (and some slightly older) characters. Some of the names are familiar to American audiences (The Phantom of the Opera, Captain Nemo, the Count of Monte Cristo) and some will feel vaguely familiar (Judex feels like the French Shadow; Dr. Omega is the French Doctor Who). The Lofficier Brothers' research is detailed and flawless. For the most part their author biographies and character bibliographies and filmographies are succinct. The character biographies occasionally wander a bit (if there's one consistency to "Wold-Newton scholarship," it's that penchant to wander through a character's familial history in sometimes circular fashion. Farmer was great at it!) but overall are also well done. I enjoyed learning a bit more about these characters.

The one downside to a book like this is that it is difficult to read straight through as you would a novel or even a short story collection. I actually started this sometime last year, and kept it by my bedside at home (which meant I sometimes went more than a month without reading an entry). Of course, the upside is that you don't have to read it in order, nor do you have to read it all at once. It's an excellent resource book. I finally ordered volume two last week, so I'll be looking forward to that as well.

[Duane · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent survey of French popular fiction/pop culture characters and creators primarily from the 19th Century. Very readable and informative essays on individual characters and their incarnations in other media outside the literary genres in which they originally appeared. Great reference for readers interested in the intersection of French and English/U.S. pop culture fiction in the Romance and adventure genres.