Harum Scarum

AUTHOR: Trondheim, Lewis

ARTIST: Lewis Trondheim (illustrator); Brigitte Findakly (colorist); Jeremy Eaton (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Editions Dargaud (French); Fantagraphics Books (English)

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION:Walter, 1996 (English translation, 1997)

Publication History

Harum Scarum is the English translation of Walter, the third volume of French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim’s comic book series Les Formidables Aventures de Lapinot (1993-2003), rendered as The Spiffy Adventures of McConey in English. French comics publisher Editions Dargaud published the original French edition of this title in 1996. In 1997, Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books published comics editor, translator, and publisher Kim Thompson’s English-language version of Trondheim’s work. Though Walter represented the third volume of Trondheim’s original series, Fantagraphics marketed Harum Scarum as the first volume of The Spiffy Adventures of McConey.

In 1998, Fantagraphics published The Hoodoodad (French title Pichenettes, 1996) as the second volume in the McConey series. German, Dutch, Finnish, and Swedish editions of Harum Scarum have also been published. Series numbering among translated editions is inconsistent, a detail that is in keeping with the loose thematic connections between volumes, all of which treat stand-alone stories featuring an ensemble cast of recurring animal-like characters.

The stories in the series center on the exploits of an anthropomorphic rabbitlike character known as Lapinot in the original French and McConey in the English versions. In total, Trondheim has published fifteen Lapinot comic books, ten of which belong to the Les Formidables Aventures de Lapinot series. German publisher Carlsen Comics has published German translations of all ten volumes in the series. Trondheim’s first Lapinot story, Un Intérieur d’artiste, appeared in 1991 and is the only Lapinot story to reveal the character’s first name (Antonio). The volumes in the Lapinot series were published between 1993 and 2003, and all feature the work of noted comics colorist Brigitte Findakly, Trondheim’s wife.

Since 1997, Trondheim has published four volumes in a companion series entitled Les Formidables Aventures sans Lapinot. Also colored by Findakly, these comics feature characters and environments featured in the Lapinot series, but the title character is absent.

Plot

As the first volume of Les Formidables Aventures de Lapinot to appear in English, Harum Scarum introduces English-language readers to one of France’s most beloved and recognizable comics characters as well as to Trondheim’s unique and influential cartooning and storytelling style. It also marks a departure from other volumes in the series with its evocation of a nineteenth- century Paris inhabited by mad scientists, political agitators, and monsters. As such, it calls to mind the adventure stories of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and John Buchan, as well as the earlier popular fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In contrast, most Lapinot stories occur in various contemporary settings, though a few volumes pay homage to specific literary genres (such as Westerns and Romantic literature) and antiquated settings (such as the Wild West and nineteenth-century England) as evinced in Harum Scarum.

The story opens with McConey screaming in terror at the sight of a sinister, crooked silhouette of a monstrous reptile and bounding out of a Parisian townhouse. Figures resembling a cat and dog follow, yelling all the while. The three retreat to a café to collect their wits over a couple of bottles of wine. During the course of the trio’s conversation, readers discover that the cat is a wisecracking journalist and the dog is a detective. After the detective leaves to file his report, McConey and the journalist decide to return to the scene of the monster sighting. After running into the detective once again, McConey fills in the backstory preceding the shocking event that opens the book.

The previous day, one of McConey’s fellow medical school students, Bertrand Walter, asked him to visit his father the following day. Familiar with the elder Dr. Walter’s research into animal behavior, McConey agrees to Bertrand’s request. McConey’s neighbor, the journalist, tags along. Hearing what sounds like a violent struggle from inside Dr. Walter’s home, McConey and the journalist race to the police station, which brings readers up to speed with the detective’s role in the extraordinary caper.

From this point, Harum Scarum moves quickly through a series of remarkable events. The journalist vanquishes the monster at Dr. Walter’s house, and Bertrand Walter reappears only to narrowly escape the Chief Inspector’s dragnet. Meanwhile, McConey and his partners urgently search for Dr. Walter and, in turn, are hunted by the Chief Inspector, the head of the Secret Service, the ambassador of Jakkanstan and his thugs, a gang of Czekovian communists, and a pack of monsters. Ultimately, they prevail against mad Dr. Walter, who has created a powder that alters people and animals into monstrous manifestations of their aggressions and fears.

Characters

•McConey is the sensible and good-natured main protagonist. Rabbitlike in appearance with buck teeth, long ears, and enormous feet, he is the only character in the story that does not wear shoes or have a nose. McConey studies medicine and once worked for Dr. Walter as a research assistant. His even temper and cool intelligence provide a notable contrast to the excitable nature of almost all the other characters in the book.

•Cat remains unnamed in this particular book; however, he appears in most of the Lapinot stories as Richard. Here, he is a journalist who lives next door to McConey. Cat has a smart remark for every situation, and he often courts danger with his back talk and verbal barbs. He continuously quests for the perfect headline. The Jakkanstanis and Czekovians insist his ubiquitous cap is a time machine.

•Inspector Ruffhaus, his canine appearance aside, resembles a classic noir detective in his trench coat and peaked hat. Anxious to solve crimes and preserve justice “by the book,” he initially betrays Bertrand Walter to the Chief Inspector. Once he realizes that his boss is an accomplice to a criminal conspiracy, Ruffhaus becomes a worthy ally for McConey and Cat.

•Bertrand Walter, crocodilian in appearance, hopes to enter the medical profession in his father’s footsteps. His potential theft and sale of his father’s mind-controlling formula to the totalitarian regimes of Jakkanstan and Czekovia may have driven Dr. Walter over the edge. Bertrand comes to a tragic and ironic end.

•Dr. Walter looks like a wrinkled, bespectacled version of his son. Once a great animal behaviorist, he has become a paranoid megalomaniac who believes his creation of a volatile formula that mutates all living creatures that come in contact with it into violent monsters, is a divine gift.

•Chief Inspector of police possesses a crooked beak and continually squints and scowls. He uses his title and rank to manipulate his underlings and enforce his sinister will.

•Grimaldi, the lion, is the head of the Secret Service. He is in cahoots with the Chief Inspector as they attempt to steal Dr. Walter’s formula.

•Stanislav Khambehl is a despot from Jakkanstan. Bearish and pompous, Khambehl is an avid chess player and aspires to rule the world. He plans on using Dr. Walter’s time machine to achieve this end.

•Mister Vincente, like the Chief Inspector, has an enormous hooked bill as his most prominent facial feature. A communist leader from Czekovia, he vies with Stanislav Khambehl for possession of Dr. Walter’s time machine. Once the device is in his hand, Vincente plans to crush the capitalist regimes once and for all.

Artistic Style

A self-taught cartoonist, Trondheim has a loose, confident, and deceptively simple drawing style. His renderings of his animal characters seem almost childlike in their exaggeration of characters’ features, but his accurate depiction of period clothing, vehicles, and furniture reveals a deliberate eye for detail and subtlety. Trondheim’s signature gift for convincingly evoking complete, coherent worlds in which readers can readily immerse themselves is most evident in his astonishing drawings of architecture, city streets, and domestic and public interiors.

In Harum Scarum, Trondheim’s intelligent illustration is devoid of drawing techniques such as cross-hatching to suggest depth and contrast. Instead, these visual qualities are evoked through Findakly’s extraordinary coloring work. She is a prolific and influential colorist who has worked with several comics artists, most notably Trondheim’s frequent collaborator Joann Sfar. Findakly’s work is characterized by a sophisticated encompassing of bold primary shades and subtle pastels. Most effective in Harum Scarum is her rendering of light from direct sources such as shaded light bulbs and fires burning in drawing-room hearths and the shadows they cast. Her work in this regard lends an eerie yet warm film-noir mood to the work.

Trondheim hews to a traditional page layout in Harum Scarum, arranging multiple small panels on each page. Beyond this conventional arrangement of images, Trondheim does not observe a regular or consistent placement of panels per page. Wider and horizontal panels sometimes break up the presentation of small square panels as the story requires, and Trondheim treats readers to a variety of perspectives, from eye-level to three-quarter view, to zoom into and out of action, emphasizing the story’s action-packed pace.

Themes

One of the characteristic features of Trondheim’s work in general is an improvisational storytelling style that allows his characters to free associate or “riff” on topics. Harum Scarum is no different, with its juxtaposition of Cat’s lame wisecracks with McConey’s thoughtful psychological and philosophical insights. Between these extremes, Trondheim seems to be exploring the theme of human vanity expressed as a will to dominate others in Harum Scarum.

What makes this particular idea so poignant in Harum Scarum is Trondheim’s treatment of it in what appears to be a funny animal story. Trondheim’s anthropomorphized animal characters provide an ironic frame in which to consider human ambitions and their most sinister expressions. Trondheim further underscores this irony by placing an examination of these ideas in the context of a literary genre, detective fiction, in which truth ultimately prevails, though it is always complicated by false impressions and misleading clues. Harum Scarum, on the other hand, concludes on an ambiguous note, leaving readers to consider the questions raised in the story.

Ultimately, Trondheim invites readers to consider how noble intentions such as serving the common good can become perverted by prejudice, ideology, and greed. McConey, Cat, and Ruffhaus demonstrate the antidote to these temptations by working together in an effort to preserve their shared interest in one another’s survival as they face and escape one danger after another.

Impact

Trondheim’s Lapinot stories enjoy a wide readership in Europe. The publication of Harum Scarum in English is significant for many reasons. First, while many Trondheim titles have been translated into English, Fantagraphics Books’ editions of Harum Scarum and The Hoodoodad remain the only examples of his work in the Lapinot comics universe in English. These stories offer yet another view into Trondheim’s prolific art and serve as an example of a small-press comic book achieving mainstream status with comics readers of all ages.

In addition, Harum Scarum provides an example of how Trondheim’s work often seeks to challenge literary and comic traditions and conventions. Even though Harum Scarum contains recognizable comic book features such as panels and conversation bubbles, Trondheim uses these elements to juxtapose themes, images, and texts that may seem discordant, such as his almost childlike characters roaming the streets of a realistically drawn city street or dialogue about complex ideas interspersed with puns and jokes. The overall effect of these disparate qualities merging on the pages of Harum Scarum is a delightful dissonance rooted in tradition that surpasses the arbitrary limitations of conventions reinforcing reader’s expectations.

Further Reading

Guibert, Emmanuel, and Joann Sfar. The Professor’s Daughter (2007).

Jason. Werewolves of Montpellier (2010).

Trondheim, Lewis. The Hoodoodad (1998).

Bibliography

Beaty, Bart. “The Strange Case of Lewis Trondheim.” In Unpopular Culture: Transforming the European Comic Book in the 1990’s. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.

Chaney, Michael A. “Animal Subjects of the Graphic Novel.” College Literature 38, no. 3 (Summer, 2011): 129-149.

Miller, Ann. Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip. Chicago: Intellect Books, 2007.