Carcajou, wild western in the vast spaces of the Canadian Great North

“To all those despoiled of the Earth, betrayed, stolen or dispossessed, starting with the countless members of the American and Canadian “first nations”, of whom this story is of course intended to be a respectful tribute,” writes in the preamble Eldiablo, screenwriter of the Western Carcajou. An ambition carried out brilliantly. The 220-page work brings together all the ingredients of a story that is both edifying and gripping.

Carcajou takes the reader to the Canadian Far North at the end of the 19th century. Jay Foxton, an unscrupulous entrepreneur, reigns supreme over the small town of Sinnergulch with the complicity of the mayor and the police. Despite his wealth and power, the industrialist is eyeing the field of Gus Carcajou, a loner with a violent temperament living away from society while exploiting his meager gold mines. But the world is changing, “gold is over...The future is oil,” believes the businessman. However, Gus, this “son of a demon” as the townspeople call him, lives in a land rich in oil. Furiously coveting this windfall, Jay Foxton will not hesitate to foment the worst stratagems to achieve his ends.

Massacres, shattering action scenes, revenge, wide open spaces, manhunts, despoliations, Indian legends, family dramas and romantic stories make up the rich plot of Carcajou. An album that keeps the reader in suspense from the first to the last page. A gallery of colorful characters confronted by men without limits, capable of the greatest ferocity and the greatest abuses struggle in a thrilling plot imbued with fantasy and sprinkled with a few pinches of humor. Eldiablo has concocted a story of revenge against the backdrop of the rise of industrialization in the Canadian Far North where inequity and pain are rife, between nature disfigured by oil wells, dark negotiations and poor souls robbed of their end of life. earth. The authors offer an immersion in a time devoid of morality where few people emerge grown.

The abundance of warm colors, the outrageous expressiveness of the characters, the semi-realistic and vivacious line of Djilian Deroche places Carcajou in the vein of the new westerns, flooding comics for several years, dusted off from the clichés established by the sacrosanct Jean Giraud aka Moebius. The dynamism brought by the variety of framing and atmospheres, oscillating between smoky bar and wide open spaces, the returns in time which immerse the reader in very dark family secrets contribute greatly to the pleasure of reading.