Gipsy is a science fiction comic series by the Swiss artist Enrico Marini

Enrico Marini

Enrico Marini is an Italian comics artist.Famous works include Gipsy with writer Thierry Smolderen and Le Scorpion with writer Stephen Desberg.-Biography:...

 and his writer Thierry Smolderen

Thierry Smolderen

Thierry Smolderen is an essay writer, and a scenario writer of Belgian comic strips, for example of Gipsy.He is a teacher at École des Beaux-Arts of Angoulême, and he devotes his energy to realising Coconino World, the webzine he animates with some friends and former students.- External links :*...

. The eponymous main character is a charismatic Roma truck driver who works on a worldwide net of motorways as a freelance trader with his own large truck.

The series is drawn in a style that combines elements from the ligne claire

Ligne claire

Ligne claire is a style of drawing pioneered by Hergé, the Belgian creator of The Adventures of Tintin. It uses clear strong lines of uniform importance. Artists working in it do not use hatching, while contrast is downplayed as well...

 school, American comics, and Japanese manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

, and was first published in 1992 by Dargaud

Dargaud

Les Éditions Dargaud is a publisher of Franco-Belgian comics series, headquartered in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. It was founded in 1943 by Georges Dargaud.Initially, Dargaud published novels for women...

. It has six volumes so far published as of 2010. It has also been translated from the original French to German, Dutch, Danish and English, and rights have been sold in multiple other languages.

Setting

The 'Gipsy' setting posits a near future (roughly several decades into the 21st Century) where ozone layer

Ozone layer

The ozone layer is a layer in Earth's atmosphere which contains relatively high concentrations of ozone . This layer absorbs 97–99% of the Sun's high frequency ultraviolet light, which is potentially damaging to the life forms on Earth...

 damage has forced all air travel to be abandoned (except for some airships), while the world is now spanned by an interconnected mega-motorway system called C3C. At the same time, global cooling

Global cooling

Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth's surface and atmosphere along with a posited commencement of glaciation...

 has intensified, and large areas of the globe are covered in snow, inhospitable and difficult to cross, but also allowing land connections via the northern arctic.

This stylistic tool allows the series to imagine a globalized future world where it still takes weeks to travel to from one point to another, and where private truckers and megacorporations compete (and sometimes fight) over lucrative freight. It also allows the series individual books to be set pretty much anywhere in the world, often travelling through remote and dangerous areas. The comics have so far been set in the arctic

Arctic

The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

 from Alaska to Siberia, in Mongolia, fictional Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

ern and Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

n countries as well as in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

Characters

Tsagoi - called 'the Gipsy' for his Roma heritage, Tsagoi is an impulsive, charming and normally very carefree person, with his personality and athletic physique ensuring that he does not lack for romantic attractions. While generally a simple man with simple interests (his sister Oblivia, his truck, his women - in that order), he can also be quite intelligent and resourceful. His personal past and Roma roots can make him deeply melancholic at times, which usually ends up with him singing sad Roma songs or playing the violin. A good fighter, he is especially handy with throwing knives.

Oblivia - the little sister of Tsagoi, being maybe ten years younger, she spent much of her early life together with her brother in slum orphanage in Eastern Europe, before her brother fled to become a truck driver. However, Tsagoi was both very protective and successful, and soon started sending her money and eventually had her transferred to a Swiss boarding school, though without ever managing to see her again. Reunited as a teenager with Tsagoi a decade later — after Gipsy's money to pay for her school runs out through misfortune — she states that she cannot remember anything of her youth, and is shocked by her brother's rough behaviour and the often violent encounters on their travels. Only later on does she start warming up to him and rediscover her own Roma heritage. Moving to Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, she becomes a writer, describing her early life and exposing the activities of a major occultist-criminal organisation, the "White Wing", which serves as a loose thread tying the stories in the series together.

Heavy Metal publications

Heavy Metal Magazine introduced the series to the English speaking audience in 1995. In some countries one of the stories has been censored by ripping out a page of thousands of copies of the November 1997 issue. The magazine offered readers replacement for a small fee.

List of Stories published in Heavy Metal Magazine:

• Gypsy: The Wandering Star (60 pages, 1995-May - Vol. 19 No. 2)
• Gypsy: Siberian Fires (54 pages, 1997-November - Vol. 21 No. 5)
• Gypsy: The Day Of The Czar (55 pages, 2000-May - Vol. 24 No. 2)
• Gypsy: Black Eyes (54 pages, 2001-September - Vol. 25 No. 4)
• Gypsy: The White Wing (54 pages, 2002-September - Vol. 26 No. 4)
• Gypsy: The Aztec Laugh (54 pages, 2004-January - Vol. 27 No. 6)

Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing

Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing (NBM) published the first two stories of the graphic novel series in paperback album format in 2000 and 2002.

List of NBM albums:

• The Gipsy Star (64 pages, ISBN 978-1561632688, 2000-September)
• Gipsy: The Fires of Siberia (64 pages, ISBN 978-1561633265, 2002-July)

Movie

At one stage in 2000, the comic was set to become the base for a major live-action movie produced by Barry Levine, with Demian Lichtenstein (of 3000 Miles to Graceland

3000 Miles to Graceland

3000 Miles to Graceland is a 2001 American crime film, starring Kurt Russell, Kevin Costner, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Bokeem Woodbine, Christian Slater, and Kevin Pollak. It is a story of theft and betrayal, revolving around a plot to rob the Riviera Casino during a convention of Elvis...

) to direct. However, this project apparently fell through in the early stages.