Goldorak, a thundering return made in France!

The front page - Forty-five years after conquering the airwaves of the PAF, Goldorak, the most famous robot in the world, returns to comics. Under the pen of the talented Dorison, Bajram, Cossu, Sentenac and Guillo, Prince Actarus will have to save the Earth from a new danger.

"The first page": discover the new comic book meeting of L'Internaute, where authors analyze the first board of their album.

The five comic book companions - Xavier Dorison on the screenplay, Denis Barjarm on the screenplay, storyboard and drawing, Brice Cossu on the drawing, Alexis Sentenac on the drawing and Yoann Guillo on the colors - could have produced a remake of Bioman, they were the right number, but their common passion was a giant robot king of recreations at the end of 1970-beginning of 1980, Grendizer! Created in 1975 by Gô Nagai, the robot piloted by the Prince of Euphor took three years to cross the world and land in France in 1978 on Récré A2.

Renamed Grendizer (in Japanese it's called UFO Robo Grendizer), the cartoon smashed ratings records with lightning fists and established itself as a first generational phenomenon - we speak of "Grendizer generation" - for at least eventually become a timeless icon of pop culture. The first part (25 episodes) of the animated series is available in France on the Anime Digital Network streaming platform, the opportunity to be lulled by the soundtrack composed by the late Shunsuke Kikuchi.

It was in Angoulême during a business meal that screenwriter emeritus Xavier Dorison expressed his love for the Goldorak license to Christelle Hoolans (general manager of Dargaud-Lombard editions). Won over by the storyteller's passion, she offers him to put together a file that she will send to Gô Nagai. It's the beginning of an incredible adventure whose conclusion is an album which, beyond its inherent qualities, is a true love letter to the Prince of Euphor and his companions. A comic that will undoubtedly become a reference of the genre at all levels: story, narrative rhythm, character, colors, staging, tributes, everything is there and everything is perfect.

A work of titans and team

"Twenty times on the loom hand over your work." The quote from the classical poet Nicolas Boileau could have been the motto of the quintet of authors as they have never ceased to refine and revise their album throughout the last five years. When the project was launched, the three designers divided up the assignments according to their main qualities, but over time they each worked on everything. "We all wanted to touch these iconic characters, to play a little with the robots and futuristic machines. Rather than compartmentalising ourselves, we preferred absolute freedom. Which gives not a gloubi-boulga but on the contrary a real harmony with three inks. It is moreover this sharing which makes that, for once, I like to look at the pages of the finished album. Usually, I have either the syndrome of the cursed artist never satisfied, or fear of unjustified self-satisfaction Working together gives us a real perspective that allows us to judge our work without preconceived ideas, explains Alexis Sentenac.

The designer continues: "The script starts from Xavier, but Denis worked on the synopsis and we all had our say at each stage. We were with Brice at the airport waiting for our plane when we received the latest version. of the script. We devoured it on our smartphones, we looked at each other and smiled and nodded at the same time. Likewise, the colors are Yoann's prerogative, but there too all the pages were collectively validated."

Discover exclusively the first page of this album, deciphered by Denis Bajram, Xavier Dorison, Brice Cossu, Alexis Sentenac and Yoann Guillo.

To create this page, the team went through three storyboard versions, then two inked versions which themselves gave two colored versions. The record is seven versions of the storyboard for the same page. A requirement that has continued to guide the quintet of artists to the heights of the 9th art. Like the world of animation, retouching work during inking is quite common.

"From the start of the project, we and Xavier decided on a problem: Goldorak has been absent for 40 years. The introduction must highlight this absence, we could not start the comic strip by showing it, explains Denis Bajram. We made the decision to approach this album with a little more realism and to clearly situate the story in Japan. When we watched Grendizer children on television, we were not at all aware that it was happening in Japan. us White Birch Ranch set the story in Mexico Everything else seemed more carnival to us, even Rigel's fundoshi (traditional Japanese men's underwear) didn't sound Japanese to us. who guided the design of this introductory scene. Finally, starting on the Moon is a parallel with the series: if the Moon is red, then it is a sign that the forces of Vega will attack. Moon is dominant in the Grendizer universe."

The parallel with the series goes beyond that, explain the authors. By the end of the cartoon, Grendizer is gone, Vega's forces are decimated, so the quintet of writers were keen to show off the remnants of the warlike alien moonbase. "When we grew up in the 70s, the Moon was our horizon, we were all convinced that we would live on this satellite one day. It was at the heart of most of our futuristic fantasies. It's strange to say but the Moon was more closer to us at the time than today", analyzes Denis Bajram. "The knowledge of space that we have today is much greater than before. We were on surface knowledge, today space exploration is so rich that we no longer know where to give of the head: Hubble, Voyager, Curiosity, etc. I love this scene because it perfectly lays the foundations of what we wanted to do with this album: revisit iconic places and references from Goldorak but also from general culture in a realistic context", adds Brice Cossu.

"We start this board by anchoring in reality with a reference to Neil Armstrong with the cosmonaut's footprint. And very quickly, from the third box, we put the logo of Jaxa (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), to give credit to Caesar what is Caesar's and put Japan very clearly at the center of the debate", explains Denis Bajram. "We create the mystery thanks to close-up boxes that raise a question: what is the problem of these cosmonauts?", adds Xavier Dorison. We start and end this page with strong links to the original series: the laserium in the third box as well as the black moon camp in conclusion and in wide shot.

"The lines of force direct the reader to the camp of the black moon: the cosmonauts who walk, their gaze on the 4th square, the lights, all point to the remains of the base of the Vega army. There are lines of force throughout the album, decrypts Denis Bajram. Comics are very complicated in reality. We stick images side by side which have a whole force to form a board but the result must not be a mess unreadable. And then we also have to balance the color. We treated the balance of all our plates under the eye of the double pages. This allowed us to play on symmetries. It's an old tradition of the medium and at this game The Mystery of the Great Pyramid of Jacobs remains for me an absolute reference."

"The base, at the beginning of the story, is almost a war memorial. There is a religious side to this scene. The heavy silence of space - no onomatopoeia - reinforces this very majestic aspect. For all fans of Goldorak, the forces of Vega are dead. The cosmonauts are approaching a mausoleum", adds Alexis Sentenac.

"The last box, with lost edges, opens onto the immensity of space, it is filled with emptiness. We spent a lot of time managing the details of this box, on how to have a rich decor without be too busy to respect this void of the Moon", analyzes Denis Bajram.

"We did dozens of tests just on the craters, to adjust their positions, their number, their sizes. The advantage of working digitally is that we can modify these elements more easily than in analogue", adds Alexis Sentenac.

To find the balance at the level of the line, the trio of designers put about twenty boards. "I started coloring with the pages of the temples and the page where Goldorak is at the bottom of the lake. I only attacked this first board later, when I already had a vision of the charter of the album, explains Yoann Guillo. And fortunately because starting on such a difficult page would have been an indescribable anguish. You have to find how to put depth, hues, textures, enrich the landscapes by being in black and white because on the Moon I put colors where I could: the crest in red, the screen in blue and a yellow-ocher on the visors of the helmets. For the rest we cheat with physics by playing with the density of oxygen to enrich the gray with shades of blue or yellow. Like the drawing, the color throughout the album has been designed as a double page. When I attack the colorization, I choose which boxes to highlight, either at the level of the narration, either from a purely graphic point of view and which must be a little behind t so that the whole is balanced and harmonious."

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"There are a lot of different grays on this page. If Yoann had made this page just in black and white, it would have been dull and boring. Yoann has put a rainbow of grays on this page", adds Denis Bajram. "There are 50 shades of gray", concludes laughing Alexis Sentenac.

"We pay real attention to colors in different conditions. We have professional screens calibrated to perfection, but our readers will not read the album in these conditions", continues Denis Bajram.

"Denis' test reading place is the toilet. At the printer's, he took the boards, went to the small corner to check the rendering in these conditions", adds Yoann Guillo. "A reader must be able to appreciate his comic strip in all conditions, including with 30W back lighting. On the printer's table it's always beautiful, but you have to be careful", justifies Denis Bajram.

Physical laws with variable geometry

"When I started drawing the backgrounds for this page, I said to myself that something was wrong. Not being able to put my finger on it, I went back to my documentation by looking online for visuals of views taken on the Moon and there it struck me: the sky is always black there, we can't see any stars because of the brightness of the sun. Removing them added the touch of sobriety necessary for this board while respecting the universal laws of physics" , says Alexis Sentenac.

"We allowed ourselves an artistic license with physical laws by adding stars on the following pages according to the needs of narrative evocation but we respected them as much as possible. On the fourth box, the lights seen from the front are not supposed to have a diffusion effect, these halos that we see on historical photos are linked to the use of silver film which has been burned by the luminosity. history", explains Denis Bajram.

"Denis is a real space enthusiast, he shared his science with us with a very detailed artistic and technical direction", adds Yoann Guillo. "And this level of detail and requirement, we have kept it throughout the album. There are not many designers who would wonder how wide a chainsaw guide is, fortunately Yoann is passionate about these machines", laughs Brice Cossu.

A comic with chapters

“Using chapters is an idea that came up by accident, explains Denis Bajram. When rereading a sequence, we realized that we had to add a page, but that shifted the whole album as we work by double page We then had the idea of ​​creating chapters to be able to catch up with this balance. We sometimes reversed pages or added three pages on another sequence. It's a real work of craftsmanship, we never agreed to close a scene if we weren't all happy with it. If we hadn't been so numerous, we wouldn't have been able to meet this level of requirement, we would have collapsed. Also, the fact that the chapter titles are exergues of sentences pronounced by characters gives a very solemn side to the album."

"This chaptering also refers to manga and animated episodes, which we consume in series", adds Alexis Sentenac. For Yoann, "this system is an element of punctuation of the story. It can easily mark a change of place, time, atmosphere. And this allows the reader to take a break in his reading if necessary."

"But for the moment, all our test readers have devoured the album in one go", concludes Denis Bajarm with a smile.

A record pre-order

The collector's version of the comic was sold out in less than 24 hours on Amazon even though the content was not yet defined. A proof of appetite for the license but above all of confidence in the quintet of artists. A success that surprised the authors themselves: "The pre-orders were launched even before the visuals of the box were finished. We had no idea of ​​the bonuses or supplements, and we still sold 10,000 copies in one no time. It was a shock. I immediately talked to my wife Annabelle about it and we agreed that something was going on. However, as long as I don't have the album in my hands, I don't think I realize what's going on", explains Alexis Sentenac.

"It's the PS5 of the comic book world, we were number one in Amazon sales for all books combined, it's crazy. Especially since we showed very little content", explains Brice Cossu.

"It scared me very much, having so much expectation. I was afraid of disappointing the readers. As we were about to finalize the album, we didn't have time to gamberger too much. But a time I sent the final files for printing, I slept poorly for two weeks due to the stress. But I sleep better with the first press reviews which are all rave reviews. Creation is not an exact science and success does not depend solely on the love we have for a work", adds Denis Bajram.

"It's a difficult balance to find to teaser enough without showing too much. I find that today we show everything too quickly. We forget the interest of waiting, of this pleasure in anticipating a good thing. It was complicated to refrain from sharing too much because we wanted Grendizer fans to feel concerned. We were lent luxury toys with this license, but these belong to more than 4 million French fans", concludes Alexis Sentenac.

And the adventure continues?

"Since the start of this crazy project, we have had this fantasy of making a manga version of it, in black and white, which we would read from right to left and with the original names of the characters", confides Denis Bajram. "This album is intended for the general public, we would have lost people if we had read it from right to left. By doing Grendizer in comics, we will reach a readership beyond the classic readership of Franco-Belgian comics, but the latter will remain the majority of our readers", adds Brice Cossu. "Besides, it's not because we knew the Grendizer cartoon that we are a manga reader!", Adds Yoann Guillo.

One thing is certain, after reading this album, the author of these lines is convinced: it is with old robots that the best comics are made!